Taking control of your digital camera - Beginners Photography Tips
November 28th, 2007

    If digital cameras do such a good job in selecting settings itself, why would you want to interfere with it? There are lots of situations in which an experienced photographer can do a better job of selecting settings than even the most sophisticated digital camera. Here are a few:

    • Let’s assume that you’re looking for a special exposure effect, such as a silhouette. When faced with strong backlighting, your digital camera may correctly expose your subject anyway, allowing the background to wash out. Now, by choosing your camera’s backlight scene mode, using EV settings to dial in a little bit of extra exposure, or manually set shutter speed and f-stop, you can adjust the exposure to produce a true silhouette.

    • You’d like to use a particular shutter speed to produce a certain look. Perhaps you’ve mounted your camera on a tripod and want to shoot a mountain stream at a slow shutter speed to provide the popular fluid blurry look in the water. Or, you want to use the absolute fastest shutter speed to freeze action.

    • You want to isolate your subject using selective focus, making the main subject sharp while blurring objects in front of or behind it. Selecting a combination of large f-stop, telephoto zoom setting, and manual focus, you can do this even with digital cameras that are noted for their generous depth-of-field.

    • You need a special color effect, and therefore would like to manipulate the white balance of your camera, or specify sepia or another color filter your camera offers.

    You might not need to switch from full automatic mode to manual mode to take pictures in these situations. Many cameras let you partially override their settings by pressing a button or turning a jog wheel, that’s it. The most important thing is to understand exactly what each control can do and how it affects your photo. That is the true professional.


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