It has been a few weeks since I posted my first installment of Exposures Photography Tips. It has been a busy last month for me and I have been itching to get back to passing along tips. Last time I discussed the basic photography principles and in a way that most everyone should be able to understand. This time I am going to build on that information. If any of the following information doesn’t make sense, please check out my last Exposures post HERE to catch yourself up.
Basic Automatic Camera Settings…
Almost every camera on the market now a days has some sort of automatic settings and/or “Scene” mode. The ones I will be talking about are some of the most popular and most used such as, Landscape, Portrait, Sports, Macro, Sunset, and Night modes. Typically the icons on your camera are the same or similar to the following ones I have posted images of below.
There really is no rocket science going into each of these modes. What the camera is doing when you select one of these “Scenes” is setting the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO to a preset value. I will try to explain this a little more in detail in each of the following descriptions. Note: When I refer to making aperture or shutter speed a priority, I am saying that the camera will make that the setting of most importance. It will adjust all other settings as needed to expose the image correctly.
Landscape Mode – When photographing landscapes you typically want as much of the scene to be in focus as possible. You want the distant mountains in the background, the lake in the mid ground, and the flowers in the foreground to be as sharp as possible. This setting will help accomplish that. The camera will make the aperture of your camera the priority and attempt to make it as small as possible to ensure a very deep depth of focus/field (DOF). This means the entire image will be in focus. Typically when shooting landscape shots you don’t want to use flash and you want to steady the camera as much as possible (or use a tripod).
Portrait Mode – What makes a well photographed portrait stand out from the others is separating the subject (person) from the background. The way the
camera will do this is by again making your aperture the priority. However, this time it will go with the largest aperture to create a shallow DOF. This means only a small amount of the image will be in focus (subject) while everything else in the photo will be out of focus or blurry (background). When photographing subject in dark areas (indoors, clubs, night) or when the background is brighter than your subject, using a flash is recommended.
Sports Mode – Shooting sports or anything that has fast movement involved can be difficult. Most of the time you want to “freeze” the action in the photograph. You may see movement show up as blur or tracers. To help alleviate this, use this mode. Your camera will now make the shutter speed the priority. It will default to a faster shutter speed to allow only a very small window of the action to be captured. This will help “freeze” the action in place and make for better sports or action photography. Some cameras allow you to take photos one after another as fast as possible for as long as you hold down the shutter button. How many photos a camera can take per second will vary from model to model.
Night Mode – Taking photos indoors or in low lit locations can be the most frustrating thing to do with a camera. A camera must shoot with a larger aperture and usually have slower shutter speeds in order to accomplish this. In this mode, that is exactly what your camera is doing. It is setting your camera up to open the aperture as large as it can and the shutter to stay open as long as it can in order to ensure enough light is being captured. Most cameras will also bump up the ISO (or the sensors sensitivity to light) in order to expose properly. Using a flash may be needed as well when in very dark environments. The more still the subjects can stay during the photograph the better. This will help keep the subjects from blurring.
Macro Mode – Everyone has seen an image that looks like it was photographed looking through a microscope or magnifying glass. A lot of modern cameras can take some pretty amazing macro shots right out of the box. In this mode, your camera is really just setting the distance that it focuses as close to the lens as possible. Some cameras can focus on a subject that is as close as 12″ away from the lens! Every camera’s minimum focal distance is different so play with your camera in macro mode and see how close you can get to a subject. Pulling all the details out of a flower or an ant can be quite fun.
Sunset Mode – What most cameras do in this mode is really just bump up the reds and oranges in the image. Obviously pulling out the warmer tones in makes for some breath taking sunset photography.
So, now you should hopefully have a little more understanding of each of your camera’s modes. To get more information on your specific camera’s preset modes, look in your camera’s manual. Try experimenting with them from now on if you have not already and see how much better your images turn out. If you the type of person (like myself) who wants more control and is wondering, “If the camera can determine the specific shutter speed, aperture, and ISO settings, why cant I?”, the answer is you can. Manually changing these settings and understanding how to will open up an entire new creative world. Most point and shoots do not give you the full range of manual camera settings that you will need to experiment like you want. If you are wanting to make photography a hobby, upgrading to an SLR camera is usually a good start.
I hope I have sparked some interest in picking up your cameras and trying to demand more out of them. Ever wonder what the the little letters on your camera dial are? Ones like “A”, “S”, “P”, and “M”? Next time I will be discussing these and how to use them if your camera has them.
Thanks!
Jason =)
Credits:
Las Vegas Photographer
www.exposurebyjtalley.com
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