Why your camera is holding you back

Why do your photos never look the way the moment felt in real life?

In this episode, we’re talking about the real reason so many beginner photographers feel disappointed with their photos — and why your camera might actually be holding you back.

If you’ve ever felt frustrated by blurry shots, dull colours, flat lighting, or confusing settings, you are definitely not alone. Most people assume they need a better camera, but the truth is: the problem usually isn’t the gear — it’s relying on Auto mode to make creative decisions for you.

You’ll learn:

• Why cameras “see” differently than your eyes
• What Auto mode is actually doing behind the scenes
• Why manual mode feels so overwhelming
• The biggest myth beginner photographers believe
• How understanding your camera creates confidence

This episode is designed to help you stop blaming yourself, simplify photography, and start feeling more in control every time you pick up your camera.

Because you don’t need a better camera —
You just need to understand the one you already have.

🎓 Want to learn manual mode without the overwhelm?
My beginner-friendly course, Ditch Auto: Manual Mode Made Simple, opens soon.

You can find out more by clicking the title, or use this link: https://learn.ge.photography/Ditch_Auto

It's time for another podcast...

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever taken a photo of something really beautiful? It could be a sunset, it could be a view, something really amazing. And then when you looked at the image afterwards, uh you just think to yourself, why doesn't this look like what I saw? Why doesn't it look like real life? So it might be that the photo was too dark, it could have been too blurry, it could have been too flat, or even worse, your phone took a much better image than your really expensive camera. And that frustration is exactly what I'm going to be talking about in today's podcast because your camera could well be the thing that's holding you back. Now, I do know a lot of people, um, I've certainly spoken to other photographers who have invested a lot of money in really nice gear, great quality cameras, spend a lot of money on it, and their photos turn out just the same. So if you're in that situation, I've got some good news for you. And um what I'm going to do is take you through why you might be feeling disappointed with your photos. And look, you might be feeling a bit overwhelmed by camera settings, or you might be just stuck in auto mode because trying to use the other modes just feels confusing. You don't know what these F number things are, you don't know why there are fractions coming up. Um, you don't know what an ISO is. So that's fine. And the truth is that it doesn't take a lot of let's say, study. Um, I use that word very, very cautiously, but it doesn't take a lot to turn that whole situation around. And start getting not only the full potential of the camera, because these cameras, modern-day cameras, are really good, but if you keep yourself in auto, you are kind of strangling the camera. You're severely limiting what it can do. And in doing that, you're also limiting your own creativity. Because the question I've been asked the most on photo walks is how do I get a sharp subject and an out-of-focus background? Because that looks really cool, and also it's a brilliant way of isolating your subject. You can start really composing great photographs, but if everything is sharp and maybe even a little bit underexposed or flat or whatever, that's just going to be frustrating. So let me just for a moment talk about why photos don't match what you see. So, one of the things to remember is that our eyes and our brain work together to automatically adjust the light. And this is particularly true where light levels change. So, from a photography point of view, this is likely to happen in the golden hours. So the hour immediately after sunrise, the hour immediately before sunset, where you get this lovely orange light. It's most photographers' favorite time of day because you get amazing light. But your eyes and your brain are automatically adjusting as the light changes. So you need to make sure that your camera is still correctly exposing. And the thing about cameras is that while they're really useful machines, that's what they are, and we they're programmed to give you a certain result, but that programming has to do with how much light there is and what the expected result is. So it comes down to actually a grayscale. Um, I'm not gonna go into that because it's technical again, but basically the camera is pre-programmed to create a certain level of exposure, a certain light level, and that's what it's gonna do. And it's gonna adjust all its settings to make sure that it achieves that result, which may not be what you saw. And this is why, or one of the reasons at least, why what you see in your photograph is not the same as what you saw. So cameras can flatten depth, they can flatten light, and they can definitely get rid of emotion unless somebody understands what they're doing and just tweaks the camera settings to make sure that doesn't happen. So, auto mode, if you're in auto, it's guessing what the scene should look like. And in normal daylight, it's probably doing okay, other than what's in focus and what isn't, uh, because it won't know how to do that. But particularly where you have changing light, the camera won't know what the scene is that you're going for. So you can end up with a sunset that looks dull, indoor photos become very blurry. You might have experienced that. You might have a bright sky, but when you look at it in the photograph, it's gone white. Backgrounds are very sharp, they're they're actually distracting. It's difficult to pull the subject out of the background. And move any movement can either be uh completely frozen or it could be blurry, and that wasn't what you were going for. So to cut to the chase of all this, what your camera does is it records data ultimately. You've got a digital file on a memory card in the camera, that's what the camera does. You create the photograph, you are the one who is deciding what the subject is, what's going on, why you want to take a photograph of whatever that situation is. So the obvious question is well, what why is auto mode getting it wrong? Well, as I've said, auto mode doesn't know, and the camera doesn't know what you're trying to take a photograph of. So auto mode is set to expose to a certain level. So that means it's making decisions about brightness primarily, but the decisions about brightness also impact the motion that you capture, so there might be no motion or a lot of motion in the picture. That it definitely drives the depth of field, it will definitely impact the colour, and it will impact the focus priorities. So although you have autofocus, um that's just part of the the way the camera works. And auto, even if your photos focus correctly, the thing that you want in focus will be in focus, but other things that maybe you don't want in focus will also be in focus. So the problem you've got looking at it from the other perspective, rather than what the camera's doing, what are you trying to achieve? Well, the camera doesn't know what subject matters most, it doesn't know what the mood is you want in the camera in the photograph. It doesn't know whether you want to intentionally blur what's going on, which is a brilliant way of putting uh making a more dynamic image by having a bit of blur in there. It doesn't know if you want the background to be really clear or if you want it out of focus so that the subject really stands out. So it's a little bit like uh we all have GPS in our cars these days, or most of us do. So relying on auto is a bit like relying on your or letting your GPS choose your holiday destination. It's it doesn't know where you like to go, it doesn't know what you want to get from your holiday. It all it can do is take you to a certain point, but that's it. And auto does the same thing. And the reason why I chose this title for the podcast, the that your camera could be holding you back, is that often, particularly people who are beginning at photography, but also people who have tried a bit of photography and and the results have been pretty mediocre, they're not happy with them, and the camera goes away for a while, and then they pick it up again, have another go. They often think they're bad at photography, but the the truth is they're probably not, they just don't know how to communicate with the camera so that it starts shooting what they want it to shoot in the way that they want the camera to shoot it, they're just going what the camera is pre-programmed to do, and that will always be very, very limiting. So, what's the biggest lie that beginners believe? Well, it's it's it's the phrase, I need a better camera. And um, I've I've said this before in other places, so um one of the things I hear a lot is and in fact, somebody gave me a testimonial on my um on my course, um which was about using um DSLR mirrorless cameras, discovering DSLR mirrorless photography. Somebody did that course, and it is designed to take you really from absolutely knowing nothing. Um, he made the remark that he thought buying a better camera would give him better results than when he bought a better camera and the results were the same. That was pretty disappointing, as you can imagine, and you may well have experienced that. So, why do you think you need a better camera? Well, often there's pressure from social media that particularly with phones. Uh I I mean it's crazy. They want you to change phones every few months, which is a nonsense. Um, but also you get social media pressure on cameras and the latest gear to come out. If you're using DSLR, that's old hat now. You need to go to mirrorless and all this kind of stuff. Uh, there's YouTube, loads of people on YouTube have a real obsession with you using the latest gear, and this belief that expensive gear fixes the problem. Well, you know, the fact is that it isn't about that at all, and I will almost guarantee to you that the camera you have right now is absolutely great for what you need to shoot, what you want to shoot, it will do a fantastic job because any camera, I'm choosing my words carefully, but pretty much any camera you bought, at least in the last 10 years, maybe probably longer, is a really good camera. Camera technology has moved on hugely, particularly in the digital area. And if you've been around a while, if you think back to how digital was at the beginning of uh the century in in the 2000s, and the difference that it has now, how how good it is now. There is just no comparison between the two. So if you are not getting the photographs that you want, I I would say there's at least 90% chance it's got nothing to do with the camera you're using. It's simply about you don't understand how to get the best from that camera. So that's not to put you down in any way, but it's simply to say if that's all it is, then this is down to now education, it's not about using new gear. So what it comes down to is that yeah, settings can appear confusing, but in fact, they're less confusing than they at first appear. And also, what it comes down to is there aren't that many settings you really need to remember, to be perfectly honest with you. So the the bottom line with all this is that a better camera helps you to think, but understanding your camera helps you more than you realise. Once you understand how to start setting the camera up properly, you'll find that you can take the kind of photographs that you know perhaps you've always dreamed about taking. So before you do anything else, don't buy a new camera. So I'm gonna jump into the next topic and the or the next aspect of that, and and that is why does manual mode feel so intimidating? So the first thing is that there's a lot of information, and if you're not technical, and I I don't regard myself as being especially technical, but if you're not technical, it is very easy to get overwhelmed by just the the detail. You know, there are these fractions, one two fifth of a second, one thousandth of a second, the tenth of a second, two seconds, um, all these F numbers, F8, F11, um, f5.6, what is all what do all those numbers mean? Because they don't really relate or don't appear to relate to anything. Um, ISOs, what's that's all about? Um the thing about it is that these are simply numbers. And the analogy I always use when I teach the exposure triangle, which is another thing, but when you understand that, and it's a fundamental part of how cameras work, and I would say it's the one technical thing to get your head around, and it's really not as hard as you think. But once you have your head around that, then you can really start opening up the full potential of the camera. But it's a three-way relationship, and it's the relationship between aperture, shutter speed, and um how sensitive, and I I use the term sensitive incorrectly, but I'm gonna use it for convenience how sensitive the camera is. But if you drive a car, um you're already dealing with a three-way relationship every time you drive because when you put your foot down harder on the throttle or on the gas or on the accelerator, whatever you want to call it, what happens? Well, your speed changes, it goes up, but your fuel consumption will also increase. So immediately you've got a three-way relationship happening. Now, the chances are that you know that your speed's gonna go up when you put the when you press down on the pedal. If you don't know that, you're gonna find driving to be a very expensive um thing to do. So you know some numbers there, you know what the speed limits are, that kind of stuff. Do you know how many newton meters pressure you're applying with your foot? No clue at all. I wouldn't have a clue. So I don't need to know those numbers. Um, what else is going on? Fuel consumption. Well, that's useful to know, you know, how many Ks per litre or how many hundred Ks per litre, that kind of thing, or miles per gallon, however you're measuring. So it's nice to have an idea about that. And these days, computers in cars will tell you what your instantaneous consumption is. So you can look that number up if you really want to, and then you've got an idea of whether it's good or bad. But do you need to know that number to drive the car? No. Um, and you just know that if you're gentle with the throttle, then you're gonna be using less fuel than if you absolutely floor it every time. So this is really the point about understanding the exposure triangle. Yes, there are numbers there, and the truth is you will get to know them over the over time, but you don't need to know them when you start. So this is not about remembering lots and lots of settings. You don't need to know the settings, you just need to understand the relationship, and that's what I teach in in my courses and um in workshops. So what's important about this? Um I'm gonna give you um a quick introduction to exposure triangles so you've got a brief idea. So aperture basically is the control, it controls how much light gets into the camera, and it also controls depth of field, and that's what we call what's in focus and what isn't. Uh excuse me. So if you want everything to be in focus, your subjects and the background and everything, that's what we call a big depth of field, large depth of field, and that would be one setting, excuse me. Or you go to the under other end of the scale, and then your subject is in focus, whatever you focused on, but everything else, foreground and background, goes out of focus, and that's how you visually isolate your subject, and that's how you start to get really powerful photographs. Shutter speed also controls how much light comes in, but it also controls motion. So depending on the shutter speed you're using, you can absolutely freeze motion, things are happening very quickly, you can freeze an instant, or you can have lots of motion. So these, if you think of a flowing river, these more ethereal looking um photographs, that's just um a long shutter speed. It means the shutters open for um a longer, a relatively long time, so you get that deliberate blurring, and then again, in between those two extremes, you can get some level of motion. So you might be photographing a car going past you, you might be pivoting with the vehicle so that it stays sharp, but the background is all blurred, you've got that motion blur in there, and then ISO controls brightness, it control is another way of controlling brightness. So all three impact how bright the image is, but you work together, you use the three of them together to get other elements within the photograph. So primarily it's depth of field and it's motion. And the the fact of it is that you don't become confident by memorising a lot of photography theory, you become confident by using the camera, and that's what it comes down to. So, and I think where some people go wrong is they try and get it all straightened in their head without going to the camera, and it's it's it's a lot of information, and if you're not particularly technically minded, it can be overwhelming, it can be very confusing, and then you just give up and the camera goes back into either into the cupboard or you keep it on auto and you keep shooting really ordinary average images. So, what's the real shift? Well, the real fun, honestly, in photography is when you get control of your camera. First of all, once you've used it a little bit and you you have experimented with the exposure triangle, you get a lot more confident very, very quickly because you realize it wasn't anywhere near as confusing or complicated as you imagined it would be. Once you start using it and trying things out, you'll find that you can pretty easily get the kind of images that you've always wanted to shoot. It so you feel confident, you look forward to going out with the camera rather than almost having a gun to your head to get it out of the uh the cupboard or wherever you keep it. The second thing you can start getting really intentional about what you're shooting, so you can start looking at images you love on Instagram or in books or somewhere else, and you look at them and you realize you know how they got that shot. You you've got an idea of what settings they used, and then you can go out and try and replicate, and you'll get closer, further away, you you experiment with the camera, with what you're shooting, but it becomes intentional. You now are shooting with a particular outcome in mind, and you know pretty much how to get there, and then you start to look at why particular photos worked, and that is another real eye-opener because you realize that the photographer who shot that image just did certain things, and there's probably maybe three or four, even if that that photographer did, and you can you realize that you know what they did, and that means you can do it. You could you can be consistent. I always recommend to everybody when you're learning actually anything, just be consistent, practice consistently is definitely one thing. But if you're consistently bad, it doesn't matter. The important thing is that when you get a result, is that you know how you got there, you know what you did. And it might be really pretty horrible, but you can replicate it again. So it's then a case of looking at what's gone wrong, what makes it horrible, what do you need to change next, and then work on that one area. And what happens is that you stay consistent, but your results steadily improve. So that consistency is really important. And then once you've got through all of that, you you realize that you have a huge amount of creative freedom, and this camera that maybe at one stage was something that you, as I've said, you know, maybe maybe almost had to have a gun to your head to get the wretched thing out of the cupboard, is actually a source of uh great enjoyment for you. It's a source of pleasure. You can get photographs that you love, you're sharing with people, you're sharing experiences with people who weren't there, um, maybe even people who weren't born when you shot the original photograph. And this is the power of photography. Uh, we can share experiences, life experiences, and when you start getting good at it, you can all you can also share emotion in the photograph. You can allow people to connect with other events and people, and and and the people looking at it were never there, but they can begin to get a sensation or a feeling of what was going on. So the reason for doing this podcast is that I really want to stress to you that instead of just hoping one day your camera is gonna get it right, I want to put you in the driving seat so that you start making decisions, you're making them on purpose, you're making them with intention, and you are getting the results you want. So your photographs are sharper, your portraits are much better, they're better lit, the can do your depth of, you know you how to control depth of feel. So now you can steer the viewer's eye to the subject. You feel more confident when you're on vacation or you're traveling, you feel confident about being able to catch at least some essence of where you are so that you can share it. You can capture family moments properly, those little events that happen throughout life. You've got a a record of them and you've recorded them in a way that really um allows other people who weren't there to get some sense of the emotion of it. And finally, you get value for money. Um, and I'm a big one. I know how expensive camera gear is, and um I'm a big one for not buying things unless there's a really good reason to buy them because it's very easy to spend a lot of money. So I do want to offer an invitation to you. Um I'm gonna be starting. Well, if you're listening to this when it goes out, and that will that is I'm recording it now, but we're in the um middle of June uh 2026. So I am running a short course, it's a four-week course, it's happening um in a week or two, and all the details I'll put a link. There's a link in the description when you when you get to this. And what I'm doing is taking people through very simply over a four-week period, how to get out of auto and how to really start beginning that journey to shooting the photographs you love. So we're going to be focusing on the exposure triangle. It assumes zero knowledge, it's as non-technical as it's absolutely possible to be going into this stuff. And there are also lots of um practical activities, so specific things to practice that will get you familiar with each aspect of the exposure triangle, and there's a community element, which is why it's timed. So I want everyone starting at the same time. So uh you'll be able to share your work, ask for feedback. There are a couple of live sessions as well. So the it's four weeks, so each week there's a module drop, which is four lessons, um, which you do on your own. Um, and then there are also uh two live calls uh during the course where we all get together if if you want to, and they're all recorded. If you can't make it, that's fine, because I tend to get people from all over the world, so it's really hard picking um a time of day that works for everyone. So, look, I hope that sounds of interest to you. Please um take a look. There's a link, as I say, in the description, so that will um get you there. The thing I the thought I want to leave you with though, regardless of whether you do that or not, is that the truth is if you have a camera right now, you probably don't need a better one. You really just need to take the time to understand that camera you already have, just get it out of auto and start using different aspects of it, and you'll find that modern cameras are really really good. Um, and coming out of auto doesn't mean you're in full manual either, because there are things called modes, and that's what I use, and you'll find that most professional, unless they're working in a studio, most professional photographers don't use manual, um, particularly wildlife, they'll tend to use one or other of um a couple of modes. So that's the message I want to uh leave you with, really. So if you enjoyed this episode, please remember to like and subscribe. Connect, send it to uh a friend who's also stuck in auto. And I hope to see you on the course. So I hope you found that useful, and um bye for now.