Do you want to know how to get a great digital photo from your camera?

Do you want to know how to get a great digital photo from your camera?

For the most part your digital camera can take a good digital photo without you having to adjust a thing. Take the time to learn a little bit about the options you can adjust on your camera's exposure and the different modes your camera can use to enhance photo taking.

You will be able to take great digital images with no trouble. This will also enable you to understand when it's necessary to take your camera off auto-everything mode and take control of its features.

The facts about scene modes

Does your digital camera have a scene mode?

If so then lets explore how to make use of this feature. Scenes Modes are automatic settings on your camera that are customized for those certain scenes that may not come out quite as you expected if you were to use the camera's automatic settings. The scene modes can be a useful tool to taking great images even under problematic lighting situations.

Twilight Mode is almost a required setting if you're shooting outdoors at night and want the digital photo to reflect that. Basically, Twilight Mode will underexpose the scene in order to keep lights from being too bright. In turn, this will cause the darker colors and shadows in the night scenes to stay dark, and give the picture a classic "night" look. Since this mode often requires slow shutter speeds, it's a good idea to brace your camera against something before taking the picture, or even use a tripod.

Using Twilight Mode allowed the image to come out properly dark and night-like, though the 1/2 second shutter speed demands a tripod.

Landscape Mode

When shooting a landscape digital photo, most of what you're capturing is far in the distance. This mode will cause your lens to focus on those far away subjects, making sure that we don't have a nicely focused tree in the foreground and a blurry cathedral in the background. The best use for this mode is when you're looking at a sweeping landscape that extends far away from you, with no dominant subjects nearby.

In Landscape Mode, the picture remained sharp and in focus despite much of it being far away from the camera.

Portrait Mode

Now if your wife, mother, or close personal friend has agreed to let you take a nice image of them you most certainly want to get it right. With Portrait Mode, the emphasis is on your subject. The image will be captured at the lowest possible aperture, giving you the minimum depth of field. What we are getting here is the subject in focus and the background out of focus in order to give priority to your lovely wife or mom. Try stepping back a bit from your subject and zoom in slightly in order to avoid any wide angle distortions. Take a shot, check it out on the screen and then decide if you got it right or need to take another. The beauty of digital images eh?

The background is slightly blurry in this picture shot in Portrait Mode, emphasizing the subject.

Using Shutter Priority and Aperture Priority Shutter Priority Mode allows you to specify the shutter speed for your photo. The digital camera will then measure how much light is coming in, and adjust the aperture to get a properly exposed picture. Shutter Priority Mode may be most useful in situations at opposite ends of the spectrum - when you want a very slow shutter speed, and when you want the fastest shutter speed. Let's say you want to take a photo of moving water in medium light and you want to emphasize an object in the picture. If you slow the shutter speed down it will allow the object to be captured in full detail while letting the movement in the background blur out of focus.

Setting my shutter speed to 1/2 second in Shutter Priority Mode caused the motion of the water to blur around the rocks.

Apeture Priority

When you utilize the Aperture Priority Mode you now control how much of your picture is in focus in front of and behind your subject. When you set your aperture, the camera will take control of the shutter speed setting that will give you a well-exposed picture. Controlling the depth of field is the key to Aperture Priority Mode. When shooting a scene that demands sharp focus for everything in the picture, setting your camera to a high aperture (like F/16) will ensure sharp focus from front to back. On the other hand, when shooting in macro mode, or if you just want to keep a main subject while blurring the rest of the picture, setting a small aperture (like F/2.8) will give you the narrow depth of field that will emphasize one part of the picture.

In Aperture-Priority mode, I selected the lowest possible aperture (f/2.1) to control the depth of field, so that only a small portion of the fern leaves were in focus. How to utilize Manual Exposure Manual exposure may be the most difficult thing to learn about your camera, but it is also the most powerful. Manual exposure can be used to your advantage if you first understand the way the camera's meter determines exposure. As an example, if you point the camera at a blank white wall and take the picture in auto mode, you'll notice that the wall looks greyish, definitely not the color it actually is. The light meter in your camera is changing what you're focusing on to a "middle gray", halfway between black and white. This makes sense most of the time since colors average out to that middle gray. But when shooting certain subjects that have a predominant amount of light or dark colors, using manual exposure will be the only way to get a properly-exposed picture.

In Program Mode, you can see that the camera's meter was thrown off by the white posterboard behind the hammer. By switching to Manual Exposure and decreasing the shutter speed until the posterboard was completely white, the digital photo came out well-exposed.

To photograph a very dark subject (like a black cat), your camera's meter will attempt to lighten it up, bringing it to middle gray. Therefore, you'll need to adjust the camera's exposure to make it darker by using a faster shutter speed or higher aperture than what your camera recommends. Since less light will be hitting the sensor, the picture will be darker and correctly exposed. The reverse process will work when shooting a very light subject (like a snow scene) - you will need to set a slower shutter speed or lower aperture in order to lighten up the picture. What's fantastic about digital cameras is that you are able to see your manual adjustments in real time on the LCD screen, and adjust accordingly in order to get a perfect exposure.

Wrapping Up

Can you take your fancy digital camera out of the box and use it everyday without knowing any of these controls? Yes of course you can. But if you want to make the best possible use of the great technology in your hands it is a good idea to spend some time getting to know your digital camera's various exposure modes and knowing when to use them will make you a better photographer. It's best to start with the preset scene modes and understand how they work before moving onto Priority Modes. When you're comfortable with these modes, it'll be time to set the dial to Manual, giving you complete control over your digital camera. With some practice, you will see your pictures improving greatly and your mastery of your camera will translate into knowing how to take great photos anytime and anywhere. The fantastic thing about digital cameras is that it costs you almost nothing to experiment and try things out while learning the various functions of your camera.

Digital photo tips continued
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