Understand Your Digital Camera Settings And Controls

Many digital cameras offer a few different ways to take pictures:

Automatic, where the camera selects the optimal exposure for the scene

Shooting modes, presets that help you get the best settings for different
situations

Manual mode, where you choose the settings

Though easy-to-use, auto mode isn’t the best option for every situation, especially conditions where varied lighting may confuse the camera, or if you are going for an artful photo where you want to exaggerate or mute different elements.

Since Auto is pretty straight forward, let’s dive into the other modes.

Shooting modes

Different conditions require specific camera settings. Use the following list of popular digital camera shooting modes to capture flawless photos.

Landscape
This mode is designed to capture distant scenes such as landscapes and cityscapes, keeping everything in focus both near and far.

Portrait
Setting the camera to portrait mode allows you to take close-up portraits with your subject in sharp focus and the background blurred.

Panorama
Digital cameras with this mode let you take multiple shots of wide scenes, then stitch them together with software or in-camera to make a single photo.

Action
The shutter is set to a high speed (1/400 second and above) to capture your moving subject without blurring.

Night
Night mode preserves colors and fine detail in low-light conditions. Since night mode uses slow shutter speeds, you need to either use a tripod or keep the camera on a stable surface.

Beach
This mode adjusts color saturation to preserve warm beach tones and is ideal for taking photographs in strong sunlight.

Snow
By correcting the white balance automatically, Snow mode makes sure whites come out looking white, as opposed to grey or orange.

Sunset
Like Night mode, Sunset disables your flash and slows your shutter speed to capture the saturated colors of sunset or sunrise.
Manual controls

Many cameras have a manual mode that lets you control the settings. The two key variables are aperture and shutter speed.

Changing aperture adjusts your depth of field–the distance in front of and beyond the subject that appears to be in focus. When taking portraits, for example, you might want a narrow depth of field so that your subject is in perfect focus while the background is blurred. Aperture priority mode automatically chooses an appropriate shutter speed to match the aperture setting you’ve selected. This is also useful for landscape photography where you want all objects–foreground, background, and everything in between–in crisp focus.

Shutter priority mode is just the opposite, letting you select a shutter speed, while the camera selects an aperture setting to match. Adjusting shutter speed allows you to compensate for different lighting conditions and gives you more control over subjects in motion. If you wanted to photograph, say, a seagull swooping over a beach, you could choose a fast shutter speed with the camera automatically setting the appropriate aperture.

Additional controls

These controls on your camera allow you to fine tune your images so they come out the way that you remember.

White balance
Setting the White Balance when needed can be the key to great, accurate color photos. Common settings include Daylight, Tungsten, and Fluorescent lighting.
These different types of lighting give off different kinds of tints. For example, Tungsten is generally orange, Fluorescent tends to be greenish in hue, while Daylight can often be blue. The corresponding white balance settings compensate for this tinting to make sure your photos are true to life.

ISO
A camera’s ISO control sets your camera’s sensitivity to light. If you were taking a photograph in a low-light situation where you couldn’t use a flash, for instance, then you would increase your ISO number, picking up more light. The more you increase the ISO, however, the more likely your photograph will contain visual “noise” or grain.

Digital zoom
Digital zoom takes the information provided by the optical zoom and logically zooms in on the subject using software built into the camera. Digital zoom actually stretches pixels so that your image looks bigger, yet has lower resolution. This may result in a slight degradation in photo quality, so experiment with your camera’s digital zoom before you need to take an important picture.

Saturation
The saturation mode on your digital camera allows you to either capture photos with vivid authenticity, or to get creative and boost the mood of a photograph through color.

Selecting a color mode on your digital camera allows you to capture photos in different color tones and create moods in your pictures. Some cameras offer settings for color saturation in addition to black-and-white and sepia tones.