do you set your camera manually for these exposures?
Almost manually, with specific reasons for the choices, but sometimes I mis-set something by accident or have to compromise. Examples above show all of these - purposeful settings, accidents, and compromises, so note those settings with a grain of salt.
Of course, it all depends on what your subject is, what effect you're trying to achieve, and what environment you're shooting in. I've found that Fv (flexible priority) mode works best for me. It lets me set two variables and have the camera figure out the third. In bight light I'll set aperture and ISO to what I want (aperture for desired focal depth, lowest reasonable ISO), but in darker settings I'll choose aperture and shutter, while keeping ISO on auto. It's a good idea to keep an eye on what ISO happens to be in this case, and adjust either the shutter or aperture if it gets too high - that's the compromise.
For my most common subject, bugs, I try to keep aperture at f8-f11, and shutter speed as high as I can while keeping the auto-determined ISO as low as possible. With R6's large sensor and having recently acquired Topaz Denoise, I've been seeing how high I can push ISO and still retain quality; normally, high ISO will really ruin a shot...
When shooting macro (and often with a close-up attachment) hand-held I've only had good results with higher shutter speeds of at least 1/320-1/400, especially if the subject is constantly moving or I'm trying to do focus bracketing. If it's a stationary subject, like a butterfly, I can go a little slower; or if I can rest my hands on something or use a tripod it helps a lot. Bees on the other hand, twitch (buzz) a lot, so I had to really turn up the speed to freeze them; and forget focus bracketing - too much movement.
This ended up a bit rambly, but I hope it helps. The bottom line, I think, is to give
Fv a try.
. The images are resized down to be web-friendly.
