Written by John

One of the biggest tools in our trade is the camera, and getting to know your basic settings can greatly improve the quality of your images. Digital cameras and some film cameras come with presets. The presets can vary with each make of camera. Getting to know these presets and what they do is vital.

Presets:

Action = (icon is that of a stick figure running) this preset will increase shutter speed, and “film” speed. This will make it so you can capture a moving _object_ without any motion blur or freeze moving _objects in place. At the same time, it reduces the light striking the surface of film, in a film camera.
The increased film speed helps counter this by increasing sensitivity, thus needing less light to produce the image.

Landscape = (icon is that of a mountain(s)) landscape setting is primarily there to allow a far larger Depth of field. To do this the camera uses a smaller aperture setting. Because of the aperture setting, it requires more light to properly expose the image, this means that the shutter speed is slower, and stays open longer. So it’s recommended to use a tripod, or some form of stabilization when using this setting.
Depth of field basically means how much of your image will be in focus, in landscapes, you would want the whole thing in focus, where as in portraits, you want just the face and not the background.
Aperture is a setting that controls how open, or closed the “iris” inside the lenses is. The more open it is, the more light is let through.

Macro = (represented with a flower icon) macro settings, let you take close up pictures of your subject, not just zoomed in, but really fine detailed images, if you wanted to take the picture of George Washington on a quarter, a macro setting would be used to accomplish this.

Night Portrait = (usually represented by a moon icon of sorts) also called night scene, this setting slows down the shutter speed, to allow the maximum exposure to what light sources are around. The flash then fires at some point during the exposure so that both foreground and background are exposed properly. This setting will often require a tripod to reduce blurs, and streaky, shaken images.

Portrait mode = Portrait mode is often represented by a head “portrait” icon, its main purpose is to slow the speed of the “film” and use a small Aperture depth so only the subject is in focus, and well lit.

Some of the more expensive point and shoot cameras will come with an Aperture priority setting. This is shown on a camera often times as a dial marked “AV” and with several numbers on it marking the Aperture value. In this mode, you control the aperture setting/f-stop (f-stop controls depth of field as well) while the camera maintains the shutter speed and or film speed to maintain a midrange exposure.

Another feature you might have is Shutter priority mode; this is often listed as a dial marked “TV” witch stands for time value. This allows you the photographer to control the shutter speed, while the camera controls the aperture to maintain, again, the midrange exposure.

And finally, the last setting is Manual mode. This will always be represented with an “M” this is not a preset mode. In this mode you will be able to control all the functions of the camera, from film speed, on down to shutter speed. (everything discussed above) using this mode, you must know your camera, know how it reacts to various conditions (lighting, subject matter exposure) then you enter in the values and it will always take images with those values until you change it, or use a preset.

I hope this helps when it comes down to using your cameras, and if it still sound a bit foreign, don’t be afraid to replicate settings we often see in an investigation and see witch mode works best for you.

But remember, the slower the shutter speed, the easier it is to get blurry images if you don’t use a tripod.

If there is any information here that is incorrect, or information that needs to be added, feel free to email me.