Aperture vs. Shutter Speed Mode - or Birds, birds, birds!
The early cherry trees are already in bloom in Tokyo and I took the opportunity to shoot birds. To be more precise, to take pictures of the Japanese White Eye - a tiny and super quick green bird that loves to drink nectar from the cherry blossoms. The green feathers are a beautiful contrast to the pink blossoms, and it is a fun challenge to try getting sharp photographs of the small birds hopping and dropping all over the trees.
This year I got to go out to the park twice. Each time I had my camera set to a different shooting mode. The first time I used my preferred method: shooting in Aperture priority mode. The second time I used the Shutter Speed priority mode, which I admit is probably the more appropriate mode for shooting quick little birds.
Still, I am not sure that I got better results, so I wanted to compare them a little further here.
This comparison is not very scientific though. Firstly, the weather and therefore the lighting conditions were very different during the shoots. The Aperture priority mode (from now on I will just refer to it as A-mode) shoot happened on a very cloudy day. Therefore, my ISO was set to 640 for most of the shots.
When I did the shooting session with the Speed priority mode (from now on S-mode) the sun had come out and it was a very bright morning. My ISO stayed as low as 200 for all of it.
Secondly, I am more used to shooting in A-mode. I got a bit stuck using it, no matter what I am shooting. Therefore, getting a bit of a push towards using a different mode does my photography good! Still, I know more about correct use and work arounds for issues in A-mode that in S-mode, which of course influences the outcome as well.
And thirdly, for the A-mode shoot I didn’t even have an hour before another appointment, while the S-mode shoot was done on a day where I had all the time in the world and I spent more than twice the time shooting.
Since I am talking about camera settings here, I should also let you know what I am shooting with.
I am using MFT, that means I have a crop factor of 2. My camera is an Olympus OMD EM1 markII, and all pictures were taken with my Panasonic Leica 50-200mm f/2.8-4 lens.
My first observation was, that despite the longer shooting time, the better weather, and even using continuous shutter mode (which I also had not used for the A-mode shoot!), I got about the same amount of good, decently sharp pictures. I found that quite surprising and a bit disappointing.
On the left, picture from the A-mode shoot, shot at ISO640, f4, 1/500sec.
On the right, picture from the S-mode shoot, shot at ISO200, f4.5, 1/1250.
Why is that? I believe the main reason is depth of field. In A-mode I had set my aperture to be as open as possible most of the time. Only when I found it very difficult to get my focal plane alined with the area around the birds eyes, I closed it a little to allow for more depth of field and a higher tolerance for miss-focusing.
The S-mode set to a shutter speed of 1/1250sec kept the aperture pretty open a lot of the time as well. So even if I had a higher chance of getting the bird in the picture, I still had a low likelihood to get its eyes right in the focal plane.The outcome were many many pictures of birds that where not in focus.
In A-mode I mostly reached shutter speeds of 1/500 to 1/640sec. I had not as many pictures with birds in them. Also, I had less pictures over all, because I only took a shot when I was somewhat certain that the bird would stay still long enough. That also gave me a better chance to get the focus right before hitting the shutter. And I had less work sorting out the pictures at home.
Left, A-mode shoot: Bird sitting still.
Right, S-mode shoot: The bird is frozen midst hop, a shot I would never have gotten in A-mode. Still it is mostly out of focus due to it leaving the shallow focal plane.
What worked better with the S-mode was the ISO. I confidently set it to Automatic because I knew it wouldn’t slow me down anyway. It stayed at a very low 200 for all of the shoot.
When shooting birds in A-mode I had my ISO set to 640. This was where I could still be fairly certain that my shutter speed would be fast enough. With the ISO set to Automatic the camera would most likely have chosen to keep it as low as possible again, and I would only have gotten pictures of very blurry green blobs.
Left: Pictures taken in A-mode. The ISO640 already causes quite a bit of noise.
Right: Pictures taken in S-mode. I already cropped in quite a bit, but the ISO200 kept the noise low.
In conclusion, A-mode made me more selective with what I shoot and it gave me the option of increasing my depth of field. S-mode enabled me to keep my ISO as low as possible and there was also a higher chance of getting a lucky shot, where the bird is frozen in motion but within the shallow depth of field. But taking more pictures also means way more time in front of the computer afterwards. Personally, I prefer to have fewer, well chosen pictures.
This makes me think that maybe choosing Manual mode and setting only the ISO to Automatic would have been the best choice for me and the way I like to work. I will definitely try this next time I get the chance!