Reading your camera's manual allows you to familiarize yourself with your camera's settings. It is important to know how to use your camera properly so you take photos effectively and efficiently. If you haven't done so, perhaps you need to pull out your camera's manual and start reading. More about this topic on this article: Read your camera's manual
Your camera's manual though, might be confusing, with it's terminology and explanations. When I read my camera's manual (a couple of months later after owning my camera), I was still confused and wasn't to sure what to do with the settings. I would like to expand a little bit more about your dial settings and hope that it would give you a little more understanding about them and set you off to the right track and learn photography much more efficiently than I did.
This article, will try to explain a little bit more about the terminology and settings of your camera. There are handful of things you need to know about cameras so you can make good use of your new found toy. It doesn't really matter what kind of camera you have because all of these are one in the same. The setting names might differ though from brand to brand.
Camera mode
You would have noticed, that there are various camera mode settings that your "dial" your camera into. Let's look into them just a tad closer.Pre-defined modes
Your camera's pre-defined modes are your basic controls. There is not much control you have over the camera. This is why photographers will most likely ignore these settings. There are no vantage point for us. Beginners in photography though may want to use this when they first start learning photography. Eventually however, you too will be moving away from this and will make more use of your camera. Pre-defined modes, will most likely have a full auto, portrait, landscape, close up, sports, night portrait and possible few more. These settings in your camera means that you will let the camera choose the best available settings when you take the photo. You absolutely have no control on how the camera will act—which means, you allow the camera to take control of all your settings. All you need to do and worry about is taking the photo itself.This is fine. There's nothing wrong with using this mode. By using this mode, all you need to worry about is how to assemble your photos—a terminology we often us as composition. This is often a good path if you are only after documenting the events. But it's not a wise choice when you have an expensive camera like a DSLR. Eventually, you too would want to take more control of your camera.
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Have a look at your camera and switch the diallers around and check your display on what settings these pre-defined modes sets the camera settings into. You will notice, that the settings are more likely be similar to other pre-defined settings. Examining my camera, as I dial in my settings. There are two settings that the camera changes noticeable to me as I change the settings from mode to modes; Auto-focus. This is when the camera will try and make your subject the central point of your focus, making it as sharp as possible. Shooting mode. I refer to shooting mode as whether the camera will take one photo or multiple photos on one given click.
As you can see, when using the pre-defined modes. You don't have much control of the camera. It is set accordingly from the manufacturers specification. When you are learning how to take photos, you really need to take greater control of your camera. You need to be the driver. Eventually anyway.
Program mode
This mode, usually has a symbol of P. Under this mode, you are allowed to control your ISO setting. What you need to remember with ISO settings is that the higher the number, the grainer your image will become. Most of us who takes photos, will try to set the ISO setting to the lowest number possible. But given the environment from which we take photos from, it is not always possible to leave it at the lowest settings because it does affect the outcome of your photo. What I mean by this, if you are in an environment where there is not enough lighting, your photos might come out as dark. Perhaps blurry too because the camera need to adjust to give you the best image quality.TV mode
Often times you will see a TV mode on your dial. It's different to the pre-defined sports mode that is also available to you. This TV mode that you see is commonly known as "shutter speed" priority. What this means is that you control on how fast your digital camera will take the photo when you click it. I don't mean to say, how many shots or photos it will take when you click it. I meant how long your camera will take the photo.When you take a photo there is a time delay or time frame for when it does take a photo. For instance, if you constantly require to take a photo for 1 second a time then you set your settings to 1' and so on. This is useful specially when you need to take photos of moving objects, or for events such as sports photography. Most of us photographers who do use this setting do it mainly for fast moving photography such as sports photography. If you are not using flash, you can set your settings over 1/200 (this means 200th of a second) or more. But if you happen to use a flash (depending on your camera), you will most likely be limited to 1/200 of a second only. This is just how it is. Technology hasn't fully caught up yet for us to take a photo faster than 200th of a second using flash. Most often though, when you do take photos for events photography such as sports photography, flash is usually useless because, a good chance is, your subject will be too far away for the flash to reach.
AV mode
AV mode is commonly known as aperture priority. More about apertures in later blogs. For now, what you need to know is that higher the number the less light will be entering your camera. It's confusing I know, because this confused me so much. Normally, the higher the number to my understanding, is more not less. In this case, it's less. Having a number of 1 or less then will tell you that you get more light. Just take a quick note for now about lighting. Photography has lots of little things to learn to make it a whole.Not to confuse you even more, but here's a metaphor—a reverse metaphor if you will. Imagine you are in a dark, big room. Perhaps a function room. How many fluorescent or other kind of lights do you need to get this room well lit up. As in bright, bright. A lot of lights right? Which means, one light is not enough, you need a lot of light. The more numbers of light sources you have, the better the lighting of the room, correct? Well, in photography sense, it is the reverse of that. The more numbers you have in your AV (aperture) - also known as the f.stop, the less light you will have. This is how I see it so that I don't get confused.
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Blurred backgrounds (bokeh). There is another aspect of AV mode that we photographers use and it's not necessarily because we want to control the lighting. Bokeh litterally means blur in Japanese. Get used to this term as people in the photography world will be using these terms. AV mode (aperture priority) is a perfect tool if you want to have a blurry background but sharp subject matter. The lower your aperture number (f. stop) the more your background will be blurry, but sharp on your focal point (your subject). There is more to this though which is for another article. But in it's essence this is the idea behind it.
Manual mode
Do you want full control of your camera? Well this is the mode you need to be in. Manual mode implies, that you are in the drivers seat. You set your settings manually. All settings is set by you. That's everything, you are in full control of all the settings in your camera. This mode is more for advanced users, who has a general idea of what outcome they would like to get when they take a photo.Sometimes, the other settings do not give you the right image results that you sought for and thus needing to use the manual mode. If you are using this mode, it means you will always be in the look if your settings are correct when you take a photo because your environment might change. Thus, your settings will need changing too.
I use this mode often, I try not to, but I end up doing it anyway because it is what I got myself accustomed to and also the style of photography I do requires me to have more control of the outcome of my images. As an amateur photographer that I am. Using this mode on environments that changes all the time and taking photos of people, where, if you blink, you could miss the shot of a lifetime. Under this mode, is a risky business. I have ruined a lot of photos because of this. Unless you really know what you are doing, try not to use this mode at all.
Practice
Photography is hands on. Now that you know a little bit more about your dial settings, take some time and experiment. Take few photos and see the results you get. Pay extra attention on the details of the image and of course the photo too. What details? Photos has an exif data. You can see these data by right clicking on the photo and clicking on the detail tab.
Hope this helps you a lot :) !
Good luck and Keep clicking :).
