Over the recent past few years, digital photography has grown by leaps and bounds and from those early expensive tiny gadgets to the highly affordable ones that you can easily buy today. And, with so many different features available today, one can easily get confused whether to make use of all the automatic features or to use manual settings, which has thus given rise to the digital vs. manual photography debate.
Learn About Aperture, Focus And Shutter Speeds
In any case, you need to realize that whether you use the manual controls available on digital cameras or the automatic settings, the answer to the digital vs. manual photography revolves around just a few things.
The first thing that will require your attention is the automatic feature known as aperture priority which really boils down to letting in more light by using a bigger aperture opening or closing the aperture to let in less light, which the digital camera does automatically for you or which you can set the aperture manually.
You can choose whether you want to do these controls on your own or have the digital camera do it for you based on how confident you are of your own abilities in setting the aperture.
The second aspect to deciding which is the better option with regard to digital vs. manual photography is the shutter priority which means automatically setting the amount of light that will strike the ‘film’ for a specific (usually, predetermined) time. Here, using the manual controls can be quite beneficial to you especially when trying to shoot objects that are moving fast. Setting the shutter speed gives you a lot more opportunity to be creative than when using the camera’s shutter priority option.
Another aspect to digital vs. manual photography is the ability to focus on an object or subject, and here again it requires knowing how to get the maximum focus while using manual controls though most people prefer the auto focus feature of the digital camera. You certainly don’t need to do this manually, unless you have to shoot under special conditions which require manual settings; otherwise, automatic focus will do you alright, especially as there are many scene selections for you to set, which should give you the desired results.
My recent attempt at photographing a lunar eclipse left me wishing for my old manual camera. My newfangled digital camera was very difficult to manually focus and it’s autofocus feature on a dimly lit full eclipsed moon was impossible. I was only able to photograph the moon before full eclipse.
To conclude, digital vs. manual photography is something that is related to personal preferences rather than any hard and fast rule in which one form of digital photography scores over the other. With full manual control you will be able choose the aperture, focus and shutter speeds for yourself for each shot that you take. Of course, you will have to pay the penalty if you end up choosing the wrong options, though it must be said that modern digital cameras are so well made that there is hardly any need to use the manual options. Still, the die hard photographers may still do some tinkering on their own, though otherwise it can be safely said that automatic settings are the way to go for most people.