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 Travel with our mentors and try out all of the latest equipment from Nikon! Including world class digital SLRs, Nikkor lenses and the Coolpix line of Digital Cameras.
Mentor | Kristine Bosworth
I started on manual, setting f/stops and shutter speeds. I learned it all in school—I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography—and put it into practice when I graduated and went to work as an industrial photographer. I thrived on manual. I even fought autofocus in the beginning. Then my job changed: I joined Nikon and became a trainer for the compact digital camera department and was thrust into a world where not all cameras had manual settings. There was Auto and, later, Programmed Auto. I discovered there was a trade-off. When you go auto, you relinquish camera control to the technology that Nikon engineers pack into the cameras—not a bad thing, considering the level and sophistication of that technology. Still, some photographers who are used to making all the settings can find it a jarring difference at first. As for me, I realized that going automatic gave me the freedom to work on composition and interaction with my subjects—and to shoot pretty quickly when the situation called for it. Today I'm Assistant Training Manager at Nikon and a relentless shooter. I love the freedom that comes with auto settings, and I'm secure in the knowledge that the camera is going to come through for me and deliver on the decisions I make. Frankly, I rely on automatic settings more than ever simply because of the hurry-up nature of my work. It seems I'm always on the go. I see pictures everywhere—my problem is not having the time to capture all of them. The first photo here is a good example. On the way from my hotel to catch a bus for a trade show I walked by a stand that sold wraps for the pool. I was running late but the colors really struck me. I switched on my COOLPIX camera, set auto and made the shot...and the bus. When I have a little more time, chances are I'll rely on the Programmed Auto mode built into Nikon DSLRs. Now, there's an important difference between Auto and Programmed Auto: Auto presets everything on the camera: aperture, shutter speed, sharpening, contrast and more. Programmed Auto sets the aperture and shutter speeds, but it also lets you access the camera's menu so you can go beyond basic automatic settings. This is especially handy when you want to set your own sharpening, contrast or white balance. For example, the contrasty lighting of a friend's model railroad setup was not a problem thanks to my being able to adjust the D70s's white balance while in Programmed Auto mode. The Programmed Auto mode on Nikon digital SLRs includes a feature called Flexible Program. Rather than choose aperture- or shutter-priority, I set the camera for Flexible Program, which automatically sets an optimum aperture and shutter speed for the exposure. But if I want to change either one—say, the shutter speed to capture fast action, the Flexible Program will automatically adjust the aperture to keep the proper exposure. On a recent trip into New York City with an out-of-town friend, I went to the Guggenheim Museum for the first time since college. The outside of the landmark building didn't offer much in the way of photo opportunities—it's covered while restoration is going on. But the inside of the museum was heaven for my D200 and me. For the ceiling shot you see here I wanted a bit more depth-of-field than the camera was going to set automatically; it wanted to shoot at 1/125 second (pretty standard to avoid hand-holding camera shake), which set the f/stop at f/4. I ordered up a quick change to f/8, which dropped the shutter speed to 1/60 second, which I knew I could hand-hold. The added depth-of-field kept the floors above me sharp and preserved the pattern of the architecture that I was looking for. I learned quite a lot about trusting my equipment when I had the opportunity to take pictures of a fire dancer in Austin, Texas. I'd first set the D200 for manual, pushed the ISO to 800 and set my SB-800 Speedlight on i-TTL. When I looked at the photo on the back of the camera, the fire wasn't there. I tried a few different settings but I wasn't catching the flames. Either the shutter speeds were too high or the flash was overpowering the fire. I finally just set the camera to Programmed Auto—and what a difference. Programmed Auto took all the technology built into the camera—including 3D Matrix metering, i-TTL flash and distance information from my 14mm f/2.8D ED AF Nikkor—and put it all to work, seamlessly. If you see photographs everywhere and often find yourself with less than adequate time to capture them, put Auto and Programmed Auto to work for you. |
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