Your digital camera has a brain!

It’s electronic and small but very good at fulfilling its purpose in life: to make it as easy as possible for you to obtain great images. The camera can do what it’s programmed to do better than we can do it most of the time. Your camera is designed to automatically focus and choose the best exposure and color balance. Some of the newer cameras can even seek out and automatically focus on faces in the scene.

You may have noticed that I said that the camera gets it right “most of the time.” There are times when the camera can be fooled. In those circumstances, it’s up to you to give the camera a little help. For example, you take a photo of a friend outside in the harsh, bright sunlight of the early afternoon. When you initially push the shutter button, your camera takes an exposure reading of your friend and the surrounding area. It then decides that it’s a bright, sunny day and that a flash isn’t needed. After reviewing the picture on your LCD screen, you notice that there are deep shadows on your friend’s face caused by the harsh sunlight. You can change the flash setting on your camera to “forced flash” which tells your camera to use flash even though the camera thinks it doesn’t need it. You retake the photo and this time the flash fills in the shadows and you get a great photo of your friend.

This instant feedback is a great learning tool and an easy way to check to make sure that your camera has made a good decision when taking that important picture. If you don’t like the first image, then take another. It doesn’t cost anything to take another picture except a little room on your media card.

You can help your camera to “think ahead” when taking a particular type of photo by using built-in preset modes called Scene or Best Shot. These modes are optimized for specific types of images such as sports photography, night shots, close-ups, portraits or landscapes. Depending on the camera, these modes may be available by turning a dial or under a section of your camera menu. Some cameras can have as many as 20 or more different modes. Some of the other modes that can be found on digital cameras are Fireworks, Snow, Beach, Sunset, Pets, Food, Document Copy, Flowers, Party and more. The manual that’s included with your camera will list what modes are available and instructions on how to select these modes for your particular model.

Let’s look at some of the more common settings and discover what they do.

Portrait Mode: Blurs the background so that the subject in the foreground stands out. Enhances the color and slightly softens skin tones.

Action/Sports Mode: Sets the camera up to try to freeze movement so that a moving subject isn’t blurred. The flash is usually turned off. The camera may also be set to Continuous Shooting mode in which a series of photos are taken when the shutter release button is held down. This creates a series of frozen action shots of the moving subject.

Landscape Mode: Tries to bring everything into focus from foreground to background. Optimizes the camera for nature’s colors such as blue skies and green leaves. The flash isn’t usually available in this mode. It’s also best to use a tripod when using this mode.

Close-up Mode: Helps the camera to take photographs of small objects such as flowers, insects, coins, jewelry, etc. and enhances the colors. The camera also tries to bring the main subject into sharp focus from back to front. This isn’t the same as the Macro setting found on your camera.

Night Flash Mode: Use this mode when it’s desirable to have a bright background behind your subject at night. An example would be that you’re taking a night photo of a friend or family member in Las Vegas with them standing in front of a famous landmark building with the lights of the building in the background. The camera will be set to fire the flash to expose the friend or family member while staying open long enough to expose for the lights in the background. It’s important that the camera is placed on a tripod when shooting in this mode. The camera uses a slow shutter speed to expose for the background so any movement of the camera will result in a blurred image.