Note: This is the first in a three-part series over the next three days exploring various settings photographers may not be aware about on their digital cameras. Part of getting the best value out of your digital camera is knowing exactly how it works, and photographers often spend a lot of time and money on trying to achieve an effect in their photos that is a lot easier than it looks. Friday we’ll explore digital camera settings for beginners, with digital camera settings for intermediate photographers on Saturday and advanced photographers on Sunday.

Aperture may be one setting beginner photographers are ignoring.
Photo by Dan Fletcher

I know the temptation just as well as you do. You get a shiny new digital camera with all the bells and whistles and you’re so excited to get out there and take some pictures. But as soon as you take that digital camera out of the box, something changes. All those dials…all those knobs…it gets pretty confusing. Pretty soon, you set your digital camera to its automatic mode and leave it there. Forever.

Let’s change that. There’s a world of features on your digital camera beyond the automatic setting. Here are three new modes and settings for you to play with on your digital camera, along with an explanation of exactly what they do.

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Aperture and Shutter Priority Mode

Where to find it: Usually on the dial on top of your digital camera. On Olympus digital cameras, the mode may be represented by A/S/M. On Nikon digital cameras, shutter priority mode is symbolized with an S and aperture priority mode is an A. On Canon digital cameras, generally shutter priority is represented by Tv (strange, I know) and aperture priority is Av. Other digital camera manufactures generally use some sort of similar lettering.

What it does: Let’s get really basic, to make sure we are all on the same page. Any photograph has both an aperture and a shutter speed. The aperture regulates how wide the lens opening is, while the shutter speed regulates how long the shutter was left open. These two items, in tandem, regulate the exposure of a photograph.

In an automatic mode, the digital camera chooses its own combination of aperture and shutter speed to create a good exposure - you don’t have to do any of the thinking. But sometimes, you want more control over your digital camera, and that’s when shutter and aperture priority come into play.

These two modes allow you to wrest control of either of the two variables away from your digital camera. In shutter priority, you control the shutter speed while the camera determines the aperture. This allows you - with sufficient lighting conditions - to set a shutter speed fast enough to freeze sports action or slow enough to create a motion blur.

A fast shutter speed allowed the camera to freeze the ball and the player without much blurring.
Photo by Dan Fletcher.

Aperture priority mode allows you control over the depth of field of an image. The more open the lens is, the more shallow the depth of field is. Generally, for portrait photography small apertures are used so as to create a silky-smooth background behind a person kept in sharp focus. Conversely, in landscape photography large apertures are used to keep as much of the scene sharp as possible.

By choosing a low aperture, the background is out of focus while the girl remains sharp.
Photo by Wiseacre Photo.

What to worry about: Using higher apertures requires more light in a scene for a proper exposure. If you set your aperture to a higher number - f/8 or f/10, for example - the camera may need to choose a really long shutter speed to ensure a proper exposure. If your hands are shaky and if you aren’t using a tripod, this could result in a blurred photo. Similarly, your digital camera may not have a low-enough aperture to support very fast shutter speeds - 1/800 or 1/2000 of a second, for example. If that’s the case, either the digital camera will refuse to take the picture or your photo will be underexposed.

ISO

What is it: ISO is a carry over from the film days. Film used to be rated at a certain speed, indicating its sensitivity to light. Now, the ISO setting on your digital camera is a way of setting the sensor’s sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO setting, the more sensitive the sensor on your digital camera becomes.

Where to find it: Most digital camera manufacturers hide ISO on one of the submenus within the camera settings. On some digital cameras, it may have its own button labeled ISO.

What it does: Ever become frustrated by your inability to take a photo indoors without blurring it because of your hands shaking? ISO may be the fix you are looking for. By setting the ISO higher, the camera is able to use faster shutter speeds or higher apertures, allowing you more creative freedom and more ability to keep shooting in challenging lighting conditions.

What to worry about: The higher the ISO setting on the digital camera, the more noise in the resulting image. Noise is represented by strangely-colored pixels present throughout your photograph. Especially on older or more compact digital cameras, noise can become a real issue. Take a few different photographs at different ISO settings and learn how much noise you can tolerate.

High ISO noise manifests itself as noise within an image.
Photo by lorZ.

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White Balance

What it is: A way of telling your digital camera how to compensate for the color of the light around you.

Where to find it: Like ISO, white balance can either be set through a sub-menu or through a button on the outside of your digital camera.

What it does: Every light source has a color temperature to it. Florescent lighting emits a greenish light, while the normal household lighting is orange. This creates a challenge situation for your digital camera. While you might not notice the lighting color just walking around, you’re sure to notice it in your photographs. To prevent this, the camera tries to set the white balance of the image as a way to compensate against the lighting color.

Lighting in a gym gives my digital camera’s white balance fits.
Photo by Dan Fletcher.

The problem is that the digital camera isn’t very good at this. As a result, there’s typically a number of white balance settings you can adjust to clue your digital camera in on the lighting conditions in the photo. Typically, there are settings pre-created for tungsten and florescent lighting, as well as for conditions as specific as cloudy or sunny days. By evaluating the scene yourself and keying it in, the resulting white balance in your photograph should be a lot more accurate than if you had left it up to the digital camera alone.

What to worry about: Always remind yourself to check the white balance setting when lighting conditions change. If you forget and leave the digital camera set on tungsten, for example, you’ll be wondering why all your photos from the baseball game suddenly have that strange hue to them. The digital camera isn’t smart enough to recognize when the light has changed.

We’ll see you back here tomorrow morning with three more digital camera settings for intermediate photographers. If you haven’t yet, click here to add Cheapshooter’s RSS feed. We update two to three times each day.

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