What settings

I try to take my camera with me most places I go. But in terms of how you leave your camera in the bag on the off chance you need to grab it to get a shot quickly, what settings do you use?

The Samsung NX1000 I've just sold would grab pretty reasonable photos on the automatic setting, but I'm finding the same cannot be said of the K5. Rather hit and miss with it.

What it's always set on, Av and around f/8 is about average.

To be honest, it's never going to happen that something leaps out at you so quickly that you've got time to fish the camera out of the bag, but no time to actually check what aperture it's set on.

If it does, it will be so momentous that the fine adjustments won't matter. The papers will still pay you megabucks for the shot.

If in doubt, The green square ie full auto, or program mode,

I myself do sometimes use the P mode but for 99% of the time it's just left in AV mode.

I've been using Tav quite a lot lately.

TAV 1/500th F8 when 55 - 300mm on camera. Max ISO set to 3200. Spot focus, centre weighted metering.

1/250 and F8 when shorter lens on camera, spot focus and wide metering. In film era I would set manual focus to about 20 feet.

P mode for me and set to P (mtf) in the menu options for optimum lens performance.

Centre weighted metering

ISO 400

This one's really easy to answer.

The camera will be in whatever mode it happens to be in for the type of shooting I'm doing or was last doing. If something important and really unexpected come up that I absolutely had to grab without thinking I'd hit the green button then press the shutter, which should do the job. And if it it isn't spot on chances are it can be rescued in PP from RAW. Hopefully I'll have an AF lens attached otherwise I'd have to then focus and take a second shot.

Modern tech and Pentax with their green button really have made this sort of thing easy for us - back in the day with no auto-focus, no auto-exposure and no auto-ISO it did admittedly take a bit more thought on what settings to leave the camera on.

My K-5 is always left in USER Mode, set up as follows - USER1 starts in P-Mode with Auto ISO; USER2 starts in Av-Mode with ISO 200; USER3 starts in M-Mode with ISO 200; AWB for all three. When the camera is switched on, the rear dial can be clicked to rapidly get to the appropriate USER #, e.g. USER1 for a grab shot.

Philip

When I put the camera in the bag, I always put it in "P" mode. This way, when I take it out in a hurry, I can go to Tv or Av instantly, depending upon which wheel I scroll first.

Its good to look at and consider the 'Memory' items in the menu - this affects which settings will be retained after the camera is switched off. If any item is not ticked in this menu then the setting will go back to a default after switching off. This affects things like ISO, Drive Mode, white balance for example - all of these can be a pain if not set to your preference on first switching on again.

same here.

I really can't be regimented enoguh to set the camera up at the end of a shoot just in case aliens land in the garden for 10 seconds the next day.

Smeg - they did, but you missed them

Surely that is exactly why there are USER modes! Save a setup that you commonly like to use in a USER Mode, so it will be ready for action when you first switch on again. This doesn't in any way prevent you from changing parameters or modes once you get going.

Philip

Have mine on AV on F16 at 200 if hand held. If something lept out at me, I'd probably whack it one, let alone take a picture of it.

The memory menu is really a way of fixing the 'defaults' to your preferences - the USER mode as I see it is more suited to quickly setting up the camera for a specific shooting scenario (eg I have mine set for brackets for HDR when needed). This way you have your main defaults to use in Av or P, but a quick way also of catching something that requires a special setup ocassionally.