"Zero Out" your camera for more consistency

Today’s tip is a really fundamental photography habit called zeroing out your camera.

What it means is that you create a consistent, neutral set of settings on your camera that you return to before every shoot.

Ideally, I'd do it at the end of the previous shoot, but if all else fails, do it before you head out on the next shoot.

Now, for what it's worth, mine on my Z8 are:

• Manual exposure mode

• 1/200 of a second

• f5.6

• ISO 100

• Raw image quality

• Daylight white balance

• Single shot release

• Continuous autofocus on a wide sensor.

Now those are mine, and yours may well be different. That doesn't matter. Set it up however you like. What matters is being consistent with those neutral settings.

Now, the logic behind this is that if you're anything like me, you probably shoot quite a range of different stuff. The needs and demands of your camera, will vary from shoot to shoot. You may well go from shooting something in really dark horrible mixed lighting indoor conditions to outside on a bright sunny day. Obviously the settings are going to be dramatically different. You’ll need to change them, otherwise all the shots you take until you realise your mistake will be pretty unusable.

So knowing that you've got a neutral starting point, puts you in a much better position. Now, of course, you can't guarantee that neutral will be good for everything. Of course it won't. But if it's consistent, you always know where you're starting from.