Photography Tips - Further Common Picture Modes
Creative Control Without Technical Knowhow - Fireworks & Kids Scenes
May 22, 2009
Picture modes (also called scene modes and programmed image modes) are a great next step for photographers wanting more creative control than the automatic settings on their camera, but without needing to know the technical details behind them, such as aperture priority, shutter priority, depth of field, ISO value, saturation and white balance.
The three most common picture modes (portrait, landscape and sports) were covered in this Suite101 article, while this article looks at the Kids&Pets, Night Portrait, Fireworks, Snow/Beach and Foliage settings.
Digital Camera Creative Picture Modes - Kids and Pets Mode
The Kids&Pets Mode will usually select a higher ISO value than the portrait mode. This enables a faster shutter speed to be used in any given level of light than the portrait mode allows, which is very helpful when children or animals are moving around in their normal active way. This setting is best used in good light to reduce the risk of motion blur, although the flash will fire if light levels are low. (In which case, ensure the child or pet is within 5m of the camera for the flash to have any effect).
Digital Camera Creative Picture Modes - Night Portrait Mode
The Night Portrait Mode will select a slow shutter speed combined with automatic flash. This allows the photographer to capture a natural looking background rather than the black background often produced by night-time flash photography, but using flash means that the subject in the foreground is captured in sharp detail. Because a slow shutter speed is used, the camera should ideally be used with a tripod, unless creative motion-blur is wanted for any lights in the background. Also the person or people in the foreground should be within 5m from the camera for the flash to be effective.
Digital Camera Creative Picture Modes - Fireworks Mode
This setting selects a long exposure with a small aperture, no flash and a low ISO value. This keeps the shutter open long enough to register multiple firework trails, but in doing so, this setting requires the use of a tripod to avoid camera shake. Flash has no effect at the distance away from the camera that the fireworks burst at, and the small aperture helps to keep the image sharp from the nearest to furthest firework trail.
Digital Camera Creative Picture Modes - Snow/Beach Mode
Because these scenes typically involve much brighter tones than the camera normally exposes for, this setting increases the exposure time. This allows the white of snow, or bright reflective shades of the beach to be properly exposed, rather than the muddy grey often rendered on the auto setting. In doing so, it also enables correct exposure of people in the foreground, rather than as dark shadows.
Digital Camera Creative Picture Modes - Foliage Mode
This boosts the saturation of greens to give a rich colour to foliage. It does not automatically set the focus to macro, the photographer will need to remember to set this as well for close-up pictures of flowers. In particular this may often get reset between a switch from auto mode to foliage mode.
Additional picture modes are found on many digital cameras and can help the photographer gain better exposure and more creative effects than the automatic setting, but their use may sometimes require a tripod to prevent camera shake. The exact modes offered by any indivudual camera may vary, this article lists 5 of the more common additional modes.
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