I’m writing this article during the start of March; but the idea really began several days before when several of my friends ran into situations where they were tricked by their cameras. Specifically, one was tricked by my camera. You’re probably like many others who use a feature like exposure preview. Brands call this different things, but essentially, it previews the exposure’s effects on the scene you’re about to photograph. It’s making you worse — and here’s my explanation of how.
Exposure preview is like a multiple choice test: you know that one has to be absolutely the correct answer. And if you don’t know, then you just take a guess. The problem with this is that you’re not actually learning anything — you’re just choosing from options given to you.
So when you use the multiple choice test that exposure preview effects are, you’re not really creating a photo with full intent. Instead, you’re letting the camera make a decision of some sort for you.
When you read a light meter, you’ve got a lot of reasons to manipulate multiple exposure dials.
What’s worse is that if you just use aperture priority, you’re always getting the answer.
This ultimately ends up with photographers making all the same images. None of them are really making photos with full intent.
Let me explain this more to you. Exposure preview offers you a choice. But taking it off means that it’s the equivalent of writing your answer out in a situation where you’d get partial credit because you can explain why you’re coming to a certain conclusion. It allows you to have a whole lot more shades of gray than an absolute answer.
It also, most importantly, requires you to have an actual idea of what you want to make: not just guess or go along with what a machine tells you.
You’re probably going to sit there and not believe me because it invalidates everything you are as a photographer and challenges it all. But here’s the truth: lots of you are probably letting the camera do all the work for you. And if the camera is doing all the work, why are you relevant as a photographer?
This is one of the big questions that we all need to answer these days. We’re making exposures and we are all scared that AI will replace us. So to make us irreplaceable, we need to start making more images in-camera in ways that post-production can’t. Software tends to analyze what you’re doing, send that data back to companies like Adobe, and then they use it to teach their AI. Why would I voluntarily teach AI what I’m doing? I may as well give it my bank account number, pin number, and my bank’s routing number to let it extract all the money from my account.
Photographers, you’re using the machines in a way that let them do all the work for you. I strongly encourage everyone to stop doing this. Start today, and start making photos that don’t look like everyone else’s.