First Manual Shoot

The previous night, I played with the camera in Manual mode and learned about the light-meter and what happens if you ignore it. So, here are the steps (I have used) to take a photograph in Manual mode:

1. Set the camera in Manual (M) mode
2. Set the White Balance (sunny, cloudy, etc.)
3. Set the ISO; e.g. outdoors, sunny=100, overcast=250, etc.
4. Set the f-stop; e.g. for a close-up, use f/1.4 where center is in focus; for a landscape, use f/8 or f/11 to get everything in focus
5. Look through the viewfinder; along the bottom should be (left to right) shutter speed, f-stop, light meter, ISO, shots remaining and the camera-ready indicator
6. Look at the light meter; it will indicate a number to either side of 0.
7. Spin the upper dial (which changes the shutter-speed) so that the indicator moves to zero (the indicator will move in the direction of spin; that's a nice UI touch)
8. Look at ths shutter speed and ask yourself, can you shoot at that speed? e.g. if you're shooting hand-held and the shutter speed is at 1 second, the photograph will be blurry.
9. If you can, take the shot; if you can't, do one of two things:
1. Reduce the f-stop (spin the back dial) until you get a shutter speed to can shoot at, or
2. Increase the ISO (press appropriate button on top and spin the dial or press joystick on back and navigate to the ISO setting) and try to get a shutter speed you can shoot at.

The conditions you want before you can take the shot are: first, for the light meter to be centered at 0 and second, for a shutter-speed that is fast enough to capture your photograph.

So, being used to taking photographs where the camera is ready to shoot in under 2s, you can image why I thought shooting in Manual was so terrifying, especially when I was trying to capture the GO train pulling into the station at 20km/h. I would say it took me more than 10s to set the camera and take the first photograph, see it was blurred, under-exposed, etc. and then a few more seconds to re-compute the settings and re-shoot.

I'm sure there are short-cuts to my method, especially if I memorize the exposures/shutter/ISO settings based on known conditions (and note them down in my moleskine notebook) and set the camera before attempting my first shot.