Never Mess Up Another Shot

[DaddySS]

Great tip Steve, as you say I can't even count the number of times I later realized I had locked ISO at 3200, or set the metering to spot, etc.

 

[Flyboy]

Mr. Murphy and his whole family are companions at nearly every shoot! Thanks for the tip!

 

[ruley74]

Shutter speed is a killer for me here, and the first shots with my D850 after doing some long exposures.... pressing the shutter button... hearing nothing, must be something wrong... ohhh delay on

I do try and set "stock settings" before i start.

 

[Jason]

Oh how many bad pictures of great birds I have.....
I would love to be able to bring Steve along with me so he could poke me in the neck and say "Hey DUMMY, did you check your settings first?" lol

 

[Steve]

Oh how many bad pictures of great birds I have.....
I would love to be able to bring Steve along with me so he could poke me in the neck and say "Hey DUMMY, did you check your settings first?" lol

LOL, I literally do that to participants during my workshops!

 

[pfinfante]

Here's my nemesis....forgetting to either turn off VR when I place my camera on a tripod, or turn it back on when I return to hand-holding. Luckily, when I've forgotten to turn it off on a tripod, I don't think I've seen a negative impact....YET!

 

[Diamond Jim]

The older I get the more I mess up....Going to get my camera tight now..Thanks for the tip

 

[Kumar A]

Great tip ! In the excitement of shooting an action, the focus has always been on getting the focus sharp ! The viewfinder seems to hide the rest of the settings ..... Need to practice this ...

 

[BAT]

Good advice to someone (me) sets his camera up at the start of the day and forgets to check it for the remainder of the shoot. . .

 

[Oztours]

@BAT your not alone there. In fact, I reckon that would make an interesting thread. Things we know we should do, but often forget. Just last week I had been fiddling around with WB settings and a few days later couldn't understand why my images were coming out blue until the penny dropped.

 

[David T]

I wondered why I had a strange repeated pattern of 3 under exposed/correctly exposed/over exposed shots before I realized I had left it bracketing when it wasn't needed.

 

[dcSaint]

If there's one habit you should try to get into, it's looking at your settings each and every time the viewfinder comes to your eye. So many times in the excitement of the moment, we bring the camera to our eye and start shooting away, only later to realize we have the wrong shutter speed, F/stop, ISO, or Exposure Compensation set.

The solution?

Get into the habit of glancing at those settings in the viewfinder each and every time you bring the camera to your eye. I'm not gonna lie, it's tough, but it's worth the effort. The best advice may be to keep a camera handy where you work or while yours relaxing at night. Pick it up and look at the settings over and over. Eventually, it'll become habit and even in the heat of the moment you'll remember to look.

That's a great idea

Exposure Compensation is the setting I keep forgetting about. As the old slogan went I "Set it and forget it".

Another solution is to save User Settings and switch to that when you start each time so you know what your settings are.
Then you can change them as needed.