From the Ordinary to the Extraordinary - "Smart Shooter 1 - Far beyond Auto"

Bob Brind-Surch FRPS talk tonight was all about ‘Smarter Shooting’ - overrule some of the camera’s settings and take control! Modern cameras have powerful computer processors which can greatly assist you when taking photos. It is therefore very tempting to either set your camera and allow these computers to do all the work calculating the exposure, sorting out focus or to use the so called “creative modes” to manage a particular situation.

With all this computing power in the camera for which you have just paid so much do you ever wonder why some of your photos look too dark and some too light, do you wonder why some are blurred but some taken few frames later are not? The aim for this talk was to show you that allowing your cameras computer to make decisions for you isn’t always the best option. More importantly you will be reassured that taking back control yourself isn’t nearly as difficult as you might think. Bob does not necessarily advocate shooting completely in manual mode as he did when he started out. You just need to take control of the in camera computer, work with it and make it work for you.

By gaining a greater understanding of the basic exposure triangle, and management of the histogram, images can be greatly improved by ‘Exposing for the highlights and processing for the shadows’.
Bob showed us numerous examples of his wonderful wildlife images where this method has worked successfully.
I hazard a guess that many of us will now be taking a bit more notice of our histograms!

To find out more information about Bob please visit his website.