I do pretty much like you do, Larry, except that I use 400 for the standard setting and then decrease to 200 or 100 if the lighting is real bright. I generally use the same thing at f8-11 but I've found that other photogs seem to use the maximum aperture of their lenses. I know it makes for a shallow depth of field, but sometimes that's not too bad. And since the lenses I use are f4-f5.6 max, it doesn't seem to matter a lot.
The one place it really made a difference was with the 1.4 converter. I had to have the lens wide open before the autofocus would work...and even then it didn't work so well. Canon's website has a diagram that shows the focus area that can be used with different apertures from 2.8 to 4. The focus point has to be pretty much dead center for it to work, which generally defeats my purpose of setting the focus area toward the bottom.
Paul mentioned something the other day that I thought was pretty interesting. He said that he pretty much uses Shutter Priority all the time. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. So I found myself using that last Sunday when it was a yawner on the track and I just wanted to try something different. Seemed to work pretty well. I could set 1/1000th or 1/2000th for stop action and then 1/150th to 1/320th for panning blur, then vary the iso to get the aperture into a reasonable place.
I dunno of this is correct, but I've read that there's no effective difference between 100 and 400 ISO on Canons. I dunno about Nikons. I haven't been able to detect any difference within that range, although I can detect noise at 800 and pretty bad noise at 1600.
Finally, I use Manual a lot. I wrote a while back that when I thought of the "M" as "Metered" it made more sense to me. That's exactly how it seemed to work for me...just like my old Pentaxes. I'd turn the meter on, then use the shutter speed and aperture to set the meter needle in the center of its range. I used it a lot today as I was shooting the restored streamliner under fluorescent lights. I hate fluorescents. But I used Manual mode, set the aperture and shutter the way I want 'em, then vary the power and angle of the flash for optimum effect. Seemed to work ok for me:
http://www.chevyasylum.com/lsr/bsf2010/20100720/Welcome.html Back to work. I got a million things to do. r Sent from my Dreadnought using that barely tolerable Thunderbird email program On 7/19/2010 8:36 AM, Larry Knight wrote:
I set the ISO myself. I hate high ISO noise so I set it as low as I can get away with. Sometimes I play the ISO setting off the Apature setting to set the depth of field (if that makes sense). For example, if I am shooting 200 ISO and I see that my apature setting (I am using shutter priority mode) is getting down to 5.6 or lower, I will raise my ISO so I can get the apature back up to 8 -11 so that my depth of field is big enough to cover the distance of the car. Does this make sense to anyone?? I don't worry about it shooting motorcycles as even at apature 4.5 the depth of field is big enough for a bike. When I use Auto ISO, my ISO ends up at 400 a lot, and on slab side cars with little signage, I get noise in the paint, not much, but still noticeable to me and I hate it, so I shoot at ISO 200 or lower anytime I can. Overcast days change that I have have to go up on the ISO sometimes.Long answer to short question. LarrOn Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:16 PM, <humminboid@xxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:humminboid@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:Does anyone use the "Auto ISO" setting on their cameras at the track or anywhere else, or do you prefer to choose your own sensitivity? I was just messing around with my camera, and saw this greyed-out selection on the menu. I looked it up in the manual, and it seems it will do the same in the PSAM modes as it will in Full Auto...that is, adjust the ISO for "optimum picture results." Hmmmm...I think I still prefer to set me own. But, nice to know it's there, I think.
