Canon EOS 40D: Manual Exposure

Video Transcript

"Okay, now we're going to talk about the manual creative zone mode on the Canon 40D. To set your camera to manual mode you need to take the mode dial which is on the top of your camera on the left side, facing the back, and what I'm going to do is switch from aperture priority mode to completely manual mode by turning the dial clockwise. Now my M, which indicates manual, is lined up with the white line on the top of my camera. My camera exposure settings are now going to be completely in my hands, completely manual. And what this means is the shutter setting and the aperture setting are both completely up to the user, up to the photographer. And what you're going to need to do when you're in manual mode is notice that the exposure meter, down here on the bottom of your LCD, right now, indicates that I'm going to be too bright or overexposed by two stops. And you can see that the line is blinking here at plus two, so what I need to do is I can either change the shutter speed, and that's what I'm going to do in this case, to make that exposure correct. So what I'm going to do is increase the shutter speed all the way to one-thousandth of a second. Now at a 2.0 aperture or F stop, I need a one-thousandth of a second shutter speed in order to get a correct exposure in this light setting. What I could have done though let's say I wanted to change the aperture to compensate instead of the shutter speed. Now that exposure meter is blinking at a plus two overexposure stop there. What I'm going to do instead of changing the shutter speed with the main dial is change the aperture with the quick dial on the back of the camera. This is the quick dial, what I'm going to do is go ahead and press down the shutter button, the shutter button halfway, you can see that my exposure meter is still blinking. Right now I'm at a two aperture or F stop and I'm going to decrease that to let's say six-three or seven-one. Now I'm at a seven point one F stop with a eightieth of a second shutter speed, and it looks like according to my light meter and exposure settings on this camera that that will give me an appropriate exposure. Now there may be some situations where you don't - you want a little bit darker exposure or a little bit lighter exposure, and so, if I wanted to do that what I could do is keep decreasing the aperture and that will stop my exposure down a little bit. And it just depends on your personal preference, what you want your picture to look like in the end. Of course it's - most of the time it's going to be better to get an accurate or good exposure and then do some post-processing on the image later on in Photoshop or whatever program that you use. So just remember when you use the manual mode and the creative zone on the Canon 40D that all of the exposure settings are in your hands and it's up to you to determine a good setting."