Most common digital photography terms

Automatic Mode

If you use the automatic modes in your digital camera, the camera will take care of everything and automatically adjust the combination of settings such as aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, focus and flash. In automatic mode, your digital camera will function as a point-and-shoot camera.

However, in automatic mode, your camera will not give you the best result but give you an average result base on manufacturer’s experience. In general, the automatic mode can handle up to 85% of your shooting situations. Situations like low light or moving subjects, users need to get more control on the preset exposure modes or manual mode.

Program Mode: Program mode offers most of the automatic functions such as auto exposure, auto light metering and auto white balance just like the fully automatic mode but still allows users to override them. In most cameras, users still can make their own selection of white balance, ISO and shutter speed. 

Preset Exposure Modes:

Most digital cameras offer a selection of preset exposure modes base on manufacturer experience to support situations which automatic mode ca not handle. For examples;

1. Landscape: Usually camera makers will lock the focus on infinity, cancel the flash and use as small aperture as possible to get the maximum depth of field.
2. Portrait: It is designed for taking human or animal portraits by widening aperture to get a softer background.
3. Sport: To increase the shutter speed to get a clear picture of moving objects.
4. Pan-focus on camera: To provide the setting for really fast shooting, usually the focus is fixed on infinity and focal length is locked on full wide settings.
5. Night shot mode: It is designed for night shooting by slowing down shutter speed. Using a tripod is recommended to get steady pictures.
6. Snow/Sand mode: In this setting, snow will be rendered to be white rather than grey colour. It is usually created by overexposure. 

Priority mode and manual mode allow photographers or camera users to create pictures with more creativity.

Aperture priority mode: With this mode, you can select any aperture you wish to use and let the camera to select the appropriate shutter speed according to your aperture. You can use this mode in low light situation or night shot without using flash.

Shutter priority:  

With this mode, you can select any shutter speed provided by your camera and your camera will pick the suitable aperture for you. You may try different shutter speeds to get the clearest picture for the same moving object.

Manual mode:  

Users can get full control of aperture and shutter speed in your digital camera. Base on your experience or try and error, you can have more fun with your digital cameras or create the picture effects you wish to get.

Light metering:

In recent digital cameras, they usually equipped build-in TTL light metering system with three types you may choose from;

1. Matrix: The matrix metering system will divide the image area into a grid and gathers light information from each cell. By analysing the data gathered to calculate the most ideal exposure for your shot.
2. Centre-weight metering: The centre-weight metering system is similar to the matrix system. It also divides the image area into a grid, instead of averaging the light reading from each cell but put more weight on the centre reading of the grid.
3. Spot metering:  The spot metering system reads the light information from only a single area in your image. It is recommended for complex light situation such as dark foreground with bright background situation. 

ISO Control:

Most recent digital cameras give you a selection of ISO 50, 100, 200, 400 and Automatic ISO. In general, users will select a faster ISO such as ISO 200 or 400 when light is insufficient. However, by getting faster ISO in low light situation, you will normally get more noise in your picture as a trade off.

White Balance:  

It is a colour calibration mechanism used in digital camera. As white colour will look different in different lighting situation, we can get more accurate colour by telling our camera the right white colour in different light situation. The process is called white balancing.

Flash Modes:

1. Automatic mode: Your digital camera will automatically detect the amount of time to fire the flash if the flash is required or the flash will not go off if the light is sufficient.

2. Fill mode (Force mode): Usually the fill mode will be used in the situation that your subject is in shadow and you are taking pictures from the bright side. The fill mode flash is to fill in shadows but not overexpose the object in your image.

3. Red-eye reduction mode: By using the red-eye reduction flash, you can decrease or eliminate the red-eye effect in your picture caused by people looking directly into the lens.

4. Slow-sync Flash mode: Usually if you take pictures at night with flash, the subject can be seen but the background is all in dark. By using the slow-sync flash mode, the flash will light up the subject with a longer expose time and make the background more visible.

Macro Mode: The macro mode in digital camera can allow users to take pictures for subject in very short distance. For example 2-5cm.

Multi-burst Mode: By using multi-burst mode, users can take multi pictures  (continuous shooting) by holding the shutter button down.