OK, I promise I'll stop writing blog posts about the EOS 7D shortly, but I've just come across another feature for movie exposure that is really quite interesting.

The camera features auto exposure and manual exposure possibilities when shooting video, but it also features a somewhat half-way house where it makes use of a bit of both technologies. 

A couple of cameras ago we saw the appearance of Auto ISO setting - as in choose a shutter speed and aperture, and the camera will adjust the ISO to suit. And this has been added to the EOS 7D for movie shooting as well. 

This is quite a big deal in some ways as once you start shooting a clip at a particular shutter speed, you won't want to change it. Equally, changing aperture may be undesirable either because you want a specific depth of field, or because turning the dial on the camera will result in noise (as in real, audible noise) coming from the camera dial and aperture diaphragm. By letting the camera choose the ISO, you can have your chosen shutter speed and aperture and still get the right exposure by having the ISO altered - from 100-6400.

Now clearly there are some settings you just can't do, like a fast shutter speed at a small aperture whilst shooting inside, and equally you may well find if you choose to shoot movies at 1/30-1/125 sec that the ISO can't go low enough when shooting with a fairly wide lens in daylight. This is where either extra lighting or ND filters come in. 

Are you creative or reactive? It's an internal discussion I've been known to have on occasion and in fact, a discussion I've had with several other photographers in the past. It seems the two are mutually exclusive. But are they really?

I'd firmly put myself in the reactive category. I photograph things that exist and that require little more from me than an ability to capture them as they are - landscapes, wildlife etc. It suits my mind set much more. I'm a technical person - I look at camera specs and they make sense. I can see the technology and how to apply it. The stumbling block for me is trying to make interesting pictures. Sure if the subject is good, then it's no problem. But how do you make something look good even after it's been done many times before? How do you come up with that 'different' shot. 

Some people do this regularly. They are the creative types. Those that have ideas and put them into practice. You may think this is the best way to be, but from my experience, you usually find that the most creative photographers are the least technical. Sometimes they have a great idea, but they have no way of knowing how to achieve it. At the other end of the scale is the technical person. they have all this knowledge of how to do things, but they struggle for subjects and situations to apply them to. Of course, the very best photographers are those that sit in the middle. They have some creative and some technical expertise and they're able to put the two of them together. 

From my point of view, I only get creative with a subject when I think of a technique to use on it. You see photography for me is about experimentation. Why take the same style of shot time and again when you could use 101 different techniques to get something different? I'd rather take fewer images but keep trying new techniques to push my self into new areas.  Sure you need to build up a style, but you also need to break your style now and again. It's like my now well worn mantra that "photography has no rules - only guidelines to get you started". 

So where do you fit? Where do your ideas come from? Do you look at the work of other photographers and try to emulate it? Do you deconstruct images and try to re-create them? Are your ideas innate like the creatives, or are you techy and generally need a subject to get you going?

Hit up the comments and let us know. 

Have you been caught out by the brightness of the LCD screen? Have you taken a shot and then with a quick glance decided the exposure was correct and moved on? If so, you're not alone and what you may have found is that when you get back home, the image on your screen looks either much brighter or much darker than you thought it was from your quick glance.

Well, the answer is simple - the brightness setting of your LCD screen is throwing you off. 

Now, once and for all, here's a tip not to forget: You can't judge exposure on the LCD screen alone. You need to use the histogram. And your eyes. 

Now, the LCD screen on EOS cameras has a range of brightness settings. The EOS 5D Mark II for example has 7 levels to choose from. You should select the correct brightness setting for the lighting conditions you are in. It's not just a case of set and forget. If you're in low light and you set the screen brightness too high, you'll think images are brighter than they are. If you're in bright conditions and the brightness of the screen isn't high enough, you could end up over-exposing images - especially if you don't have the highlight alert enabled. 

The EOS 5D Mark II does have one other trick as well - an automatic brightness setting for the LCD screen. Now, this is all very well, but I find it annoying. The brightness is controlled by a sensor beneath the screen. Trouble is, you can easily cast a shadow over the sensor making it change the brightness of the screen, when in fact, you don't need it too. 

What's the correct brightness setting then? The answer is simple. When you look at the brightness setting screen, there is a grayscale next to an image. You should adjust the brightness setting so that you can determine each of the levels from black to white clearly, with the bottom level looking essentially pure black. And yes, this does mean doing it on a regular basis. From that point of view, it's actually quite a useful setting to put into the My Menu (green tab) settings on your camera so you can find it quickly. 

Even with the screen set correctly though, you still need the histogram to give you a good idea of exactly how the tones are distributed within the image and whether the exposure is correct or not. If it looks correct on the screen, but the histogram is all the way down to the left, then unless it is a very dark scene, your image is probably under exposed.