Digital Camera Setting Suggestions – Part 1 of 2

Great weather usually means more time spent outdoors, which often means taking more pictures… If you haven’t begun to play with all the different aspects of your digital camera – now’s a perfect time to begin.

With websites like www.youtube.com  and www.ehow.com  and those for your specific cameras, you can find both print and video tutorials that will help you master each and every aspect of your digital camera…

In the meantime, here are some highlights of some of the standard settings for most digital cameras – remember experiment and play with your camera – it’s the best way to learn…

Action Mode Setting – Icon usually looks like a man running and can help with shots of action, children playing, sports, etc and you want to change to this setting prior to taking your pictures; if you don’t have this setting most cameras allow you to change them to Manual Setting, icon is usually a capital '"M." and then Set your camera to a fast shutter speed setting such as 1/250th, 1/500th or 1/1000th of a second – most cameras today do this automatically when set on "Shutter Priority, icon is usually a capital "S." Remember to turn off your flash and change the ISO setting to 400-800.. to get great action shots


Burst Mode or Continuous Shooting Mode Setting – Icon looks like several pieces of paper stacked up and this setting helps reduce shutter lag and lets you take several pictures by pressing the shutter button just once. This will help you make sure that you get at least one good shot of an action sequence. If it isn’t on the top dial, then go to the cameras menu setting to make this change on the LCD screen looking for the same icon. When you shoot in continuous mode, be sure to focus your camera on the subject you want to capture and hold down the shutter button without releasing it. The camera takes pictures until you stop pressing the shutter button or the buffer memory or memory card fills up.
Notes about continuous shoots:

• Be sure you have a fully charged battery when you plan to do “continuous shooting”
• Continuous shot images are typically first stored in the internal memory buffer on your camera, because writing data to the buffer is faster than writing data to the memory card. By initially storing the image in the buffer, the camera is able to take another picture much more quickly than if the image is written directly to the card. Writing the data to the memory buffer also allows in-camera image processing to occur before the final image is saved to the card usually stored on the Cameras Internal Memory Buffer before putting them on the Memory Card. i.e. the buffer may fill up after 10-14 pictures in Fine/Large/JPEG mode, or after three pictures in RAW mode. The LCD display shows "Busy" when the buffer is full, and shows "Full CF" when the memory card is full . Once the information has been converted to a digital form, it is stored in the camera's internal-memory buffer. Image data is initially stored in the memory buffer because writing data to the buffer is faster than writing data to the memory card. By initially storing the image in the buffer, the camera is able to take another picture much more quickly than if the image is written directly to the card. Writing the data to the memory buffer also allows in-camera image processing to occur before the final image is saved to the card

ISO Settings – these can be changed to control how much light goes into your camera and it’s easy and can make a vast difference in the “brightness” of your photos… Change to the lowest possible setting as noted… By default, the standard Automatic ISO setting in most digital cameras is 200..
Other settings you might want to try would be..
50-100: for photos taken in very bright light
200: for photos when it is overcast
400: for photos taken indoors or with action
800: for photos with continuous shot action


Post continued in Part 2 of 2 on Thursday, April 12th, 2012