How I Use Aperture Priority Mode for Travel Photography

Whether you’re a professional travel photographer or simply a tourist taking in the view, most travellers typically carry some form of camera to capture their adventures. Sure, most smartphones these days come with pretty powerful cameras, allowing you to easily snap photos of your surroundings without putting much thought into the process. But, for travellers who have taken things a bit further by purchasing a mirrorless camera system, snapping epic vacation photos can be a bit more challenging. This is due to to the vast amount of potential camera settings offered on most modern cameras. Similar to smartphones, mirrorless cameras do provide an automatic mode, which essentially tries to determine the best camera settings based on the scene. This, of course, has it's limits, as the camera has no way of knowing exactly how you want your end photo to look, leading to photos that you may or may not be satisfied with.

As your travel photography journey progresses, you will likely want to have more control over the final look of your shots. This is where manual mode, or the “M” on your camera dial, comes into play. If you’re just learning about the exposure triangle, I’d strongly suggest taking some photos using manual mode. Manual mode forces you to manually set your aperture, shutter speed and ISO, allowing you to fully dial in the exact final look for your shot. Sounds great, right? On paper it is, as you do truly gain full control over the image making process. The problem, however, is that, when traveling, epic scenes, colourful sunsets and massive surf waves pass by quickly. This means that you need to dial in your camera settings quickly to capture them. Again, manual mode allows you to fully dial in your settings to capture these scenes exactly how you want them, but it does take a bit of time to fully dial in all of your exposure settings, which may lead to some missed photo opportunities when you’re on the road.

Now, you may be wondering, surely there must be some sort of middle-of-the-road camera setting that provides some of the speed of auto mode, while providing a similar level of control as manual mode. Well fellow travel photographers, there is. It’s called aperture priority mode. On its own, aperture priority mode doesn’t provide quite the same level of control as manual mode. But, if you use it the right way, aperture priority mode can provide almost the same level of customization as manual mode, while still providing a faster photo taking experience. So, what is the best way to use Aperture priority mode for travel photography? First, let’s quickly touch on what aperture priority mode is.

What is Aperture Priority Mode?

Aperture priority mode is marked by the “A” on your camera’s dial. In aperture priority mode, you can manually select whatever aperture you’d like to use for your image, and the camera will automatically select an appropriate shutter speed and ISO to ensure your shot is exposed correctly.

If they’re not using manual mode, many photographers prefer to use aperture priority mode, as your chosen aperture can really dictate the overall look of your image. For instance, when snapping portraits, a wide open f stop of f1.8 will create a shallow depth of field, providing a nice blurred background behind your subject. If you were to take the same photo with a more closed aperture of around f11, your photo will have a much deeper depth of field, meaning your subject and everything around them would be in focus.

Having the ability to adjust your lens’s aperture is highly beneficial when snapping travel photos, as you can quickly shift from a shallow depth of field for environmental portraits to a deeper depth of field for landscape shots, ensuring all of the scene’s epic details are in focus. Sounds pretty solid to me.

How to Effectively Use Aperture Priority Mode

Now, having full control over your aperture while the camera automatically adjusts the shutter speed and ISO may seem like a perfect scenario, but there are a few potential cons. Firstly, if you’re trying to take environmental portraits of your subject and the scene isn’t lit very well, your camera may automatically set a low shutter speed to let more light hit the camera’s sensor. Again, this seems great, as the camera is figuring out a way to take the photo with a proper exposure, but, if your subject is moving at all or if you’re shooting handheld, you may end up with a blurry photo.

To compensate for scenarios like this, I turn off auto ISO and set it manually. This turns my aperture priority mode into an almost fully manual set up, allowing me to select the ISO and aperture that I want to use, while the camera still selects the best shutter speed.

So, why would you want to use an almost fully manual aperture priority mode set up? Well, drawing back to the example above, if you set your aperture to the setting you’d like to use and the shutter speed is too low, you can simply bump up the ISO a bit until your camera automatically reaches an appropriate shutter speed (when shooting portraits, I like to use a shutter speed of around 1/200 or higher to limit the chance of any blurriness).

In my experience, I have found this process to be much faster than manually setting the aperture, shutter speed and ISO individually in Manual mode. Why? Because, if you are shooting in pretty consistent lighting conditions, you don’t really need to change your ISO that often. For instance, if you are shooting in broad daylight, your ISO will likely stay around 100. Where this technique becomes particularly effective is during golden hour, as the light constantly changes and becomes darker. Again, instead of tinkering with all three components of the exposure triangle, all you need to do during a golden hour session is bump up your ISO as the light begins to fade, and your camera will help you automatically set an appropriate shutter speed for what you’re trying to capture.

Potential Cons

Of course, the first potential con is that you almost have full control over all of your camera’s exposure settings, but not your shutter speed entirely. By adjusting the ISO in changing lighting conditions, you are, in a way, manually adjusting the camera’s shutter speed, but you aren’t truly picking an exact shutter speed. The camera is simply just determining a good shutter speed based on the aperture and ISO you’ve set. For most instances, I think this works well, as you, again, have some level of control over the general shutter speed using this method. But, if you need to use an exact shutter speed, you’d be better off using shutter priority mode or manual mode.

In addition, increasing ISO can create noise in your photos. I typically use this method of boosting the ISO when I’m snapping portraits during golden hour, so I never really need to boost the ISO too much to increase the shutter speed to a level that I need. Modern cameras and sensors have also come a long way, so you can crank up the ISO quite a bit before you see any noise affecting your photos. This is, however, a potential con to be aware of when using the semi-manual aperture priority method.

Conclusion

As you progress in your journey as a travel photographer, you will likely start to notice the limitations and lack of control in auto mode. Transitioning into using manual mode can be a great way to take full control over your images and help you grow more as a photographer, but it can also take time to properly set up your camera for each shot. When traveling, aperture priority mode provides a good middle ground between auto mode and manual mode, allowing you to dial in your aperture fairly quickly, while the camera automatically adjusts the rest of the settings. During low light situations, such as golden hour, switch from auto ISO into manual ISO. By doing this, you will be able to simply boost the ISO as the light becomes darker, forcing your camera to utilize a faster shutter speed to compensate. While you won’t be able to select an exact shutter speed with this method, your choice of aperture and ISO will allow you to somewhat control the approximate shutter speed, ensuring you achieve the level of sharpness or motion blur that you’re after.