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Comment by frizkie | Hacker News Reader

I've always been interested in photography but really got into the weeds over the pandemic. Learning the exposure triangle (how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO are related/not related) has completely transformed how I think about cameras and taking photos. There is definitely some inherent mathematical/practical beauty in the meaning and relationships between these different camera settings.

I wouldn't want this comment to be interpreted as "shooting in manual is superior", in fact I would suggest against it in almost all cases - the deeper understanding will help you use nearly any camera in existence.

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My dad's a hobbyist photographer and through him I've learned to generally shoot in aperture priority mode. For my intents it generally feels 'manual enough'.

Then you leave ISO on auto if it makes sense for the lighting conditions, or manually set it if needed.

> Then you leave ISO on auto if it makes sense for the lighting conditions, or manually set it if needed

Fun thing with modern cameras is that "iso" doesn't actually matter much at all. Typically you can just use one or two fixed iso settings for everything and adjust the exposure in post as needed. Keyword for reading more about this is "iso invariance".

Thanks for the term! That's a rabbit hole we'll venture down next time I see my dad.

I initially had a paragraph half written out in the comment you replied to detailing how my dad's new cameras perform extremely well at absurd (12800???) ISOs, which "iso invariance" would definitely explain.

My camera is an older Canon 5D MK1 which shoots mostly fine at 200 ISO and lower, and gets grainy quite fast at 400 ISO and above. If and when the photography bug bites me harder I'll probably upgrade to a slightly newer body aha.

Bear in mind you need to shoot raw, not jpg, in order to benefit from this.

In a tricky exposure situation, dial exposure compensation way down (-3 to -5 EV) and take the shot. You probably want a low-ish ISO selected too. Then in lightroom/whatever just crank the exposure slider up and fiddle with the levels & curves - easy way to not blow out your highlights.

Yep good point. RAW is amazing in that regard.

The problem with this, however, is that most Raw editors only allow you to increase the exposure by +/- 1 or 2 EV. So, say the base ISO for your camera is ISO 100. If you edit it in, say, Lightroom, you can only get it up to ISO 400, whereas in-camera, you could bump it up to 800, 1600 or higher.

Even better advice can (probably) be attributed to Weegee: "F8 and be there."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C6%91/8_and_be_there

Lately I'm close to apperture priority. With Nikon you can over ride the apperture setting in Programm / Automatic mode. Most of the time automatic is just fine. In case I want something "special", longer exposure for stuff like waterfalls or shorter exposure for movement, I just change the apperture until I'm happy with the shutter speed. Preferring low ISO values, that makes you appreciate fast lenses.

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