Better Photos in Twenty Seconds

How Can I use My Digital Camera's "P" Setting?

"What does this P mode on my digital camera selector dial do?"

I have been asked this question a lot. Understandably, many people who want to take pictures are not necessarily photographers in the traditional sense. They are artists, or family members, or travelers, or hobbyists participating in various hobbies. They really are documentors who are wanting to capture and preserve given moments in time. They are the new definition of photographers who have been empowered by the relative ease and economy of making their own photographs. They don't want to be bothered by learning a bunch of new skills or reading a lot of technical instructions. This is great! More power to you, if you fall into this category of photographer. So let me help you expand your photographic capabilities--just a little.

It is helpful to understand what the icons mean on your camera settings selector. Most of them are fairly intuitive, requiring little explanation. Others, not so much. "P" is one of these setting Literally, it means Programmable. This setting was first offered on advanced consumer film cameras, offered by Canon, Minolta, and Olympus back in the day. The nomenclature stuck.

It may be easier for you to just consider that the P stands for Preset. It allows you to preserve the precise setting to be recalled for conditions which are not covered by the other icons. If you are inclined to take pictures of birds, it is likely that your are often viewing birds from a distance which does not fill the frame. Often these bird scenes are necessarily surrounded by the much lighter outline of the sky or lighter colored foliage. You may have noticed that these pictures are winding up being too dark at first try. You are missing a lot of good opportunities because the birds don't always stay perched as long as you'd like them to.

In this case, you may read the manual or ask someone who better understands your camera or the physics of photography and determinethat your cameras light meter is reading more of the lighter background light than the light that's reaching the bird. So adjustments are made to your camera's exposure setting, allowing for this common reoccurring condition you encounter while birding. You are not yet confident that you will quickly remember exactly how to make this mechanical adjustment. The solution may be for you to save these setting while in the P mode. Then you can recall this ideal bird picture setting to be recalled quickly by simply changing to the P setting at anytime it's needed.

The setting can be continually enhanced and resaved under P until you have it nailed for most of such bird pictures. You may determine that it needs to use the Spot Focus setting and spot exposure setting that your camera allows in order to gain the sharpest picture. You may want the additional low light capabilities of a higher ISO setting. You may also prefer the added depth of acceptable focused offered by a smaller aperture setting. All of these can be readily saved under P.

Similarly, any ONE setting combination can me saved P. Most cameras only allow for one special circumstance setting to be saved at a time. This is for simplicity sake. Too many exotic setting would be as confusing as learning how to make all of these minute individual settings on the fly. I have used the setting for quickly making all of the setting to optimized photographing butterflies and dragonflies in mid-air. This is no small feat. Thisopportunity sometimes arises out of the blue while taking other types of outdoor pictures. With one quick dial change, my camera is readied to respond in time to gain the necessary advantage to take such pictures.

I walk my dog at night. I try to have a small digital camera with me at all times. Being outside after dark, I often find the need to take pictures of objects in the night skies or otherwise in the dark These pictures can be very tricky. While I advocate learning the science behind photography for the best photographs under such extreme conditions, I also enjoy not having to fumble around in the dark to adjust from a daytime setting to a night setting encountered while walking Biggin after dark. The P mode allows me to do this.

There are so any special circumstances for which the P setting can be used that will increase your enjoyment of your hobbies and interests. If you are into skateboarding or motor-sports or other action sports, you can save a set of setting to optimized these pictures with or without the desired motion blur. If you take pictures indoors under mixed light sources without a flash, you can save setting to capture and color-correct for these unusual settings. If you travel a lot, you may want to use P to save settings for very wide-angle scenics with the most vivid colors. If you use ebay to sell coins or other small product requiring close focus and lighting, the P mode properly set for such photos could help enormously. The possibilities are endless.

As you become more familiar with your camera, you will find other opportunities for the P mode setting and others. In the future, I will attempt to bring you helpful hints about how to use the most common mode settings.

Another Blog by Doug Wright

Creative Uses of ISO Settings with Digital Cameras

Your ISO setting can be used to manipulate your camera setting for a variety of direct or indirect effects. ISO is simple an indication of light sensitivity. The numbers used are usually something like the following: 25, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, [1200], 1600,3200, 6400 . . . . Notice that each number generally doubles over the previous number; the exception of 1200 is 1.5 x the previous number. This exception is included because of a common usage for what we called push-processing film in the past. In this case the number means that the film or charge-coubled device electronics have increased by 1.5 times instead of 2x.

Conversly, a preceding number represents a sensitivity of one-half of the next number. So it easily follows that the higher the number, the greater the sensitivity. So why would you not want to use the highest setting for sensitivity. For several reasons, but the main one is that quality suffers as ight sensitivity increases. Although with a higher ISO number comes a greater ability to take photographs in lower light settings without motion blur,  the film grain or digital static or noise also increases, reducing image quality. For mostuses, this is not desirable. Sometimes the swap-off is negligible or  the quality is "good enough". Sometimes you take what you can get--SOME image being better than NO image.

There are other uses for changing your ISO setting to a higher or lower number. Often these reasons are viewed as an unintended side-effect the photographer has to deal with or are simply not even realized. But by understanding these uses in advance, these side-effects can be used as the primary purpose for changing the setting. Here are a few examples:

    1) To blur the background of a portrait or other scene where an otherwise busy background would detract from the primary subject or point of interest.  In order to accomplish the blurring of the background, the ISO setting is lowered to the lowest setting available and still maintain an image clear and free of motion-blur.

    2) To increase the clarity of a background or to increase the zone or distance wherein the clear focus is visually accepable withut detracting from a close subject over a distant subject--the ISO setting is INCREASED. A case for this might be a picture of your house with your family posed in front of it. You want both to be in focus,so you increase the ISO setting, but no more than necesary so that your image quality does not suffer with undesirable noise.

 3) To increase the closest distance that your camera will focus on a subject at a given zoom setting or macros wetting, increase the ISO setting.

4) Another use of an increased ISO setting is to make the background objects smaller relative to the subjects closer to the camera. Thismight be used creatively to distort an image to comical or dramatic proportions  for emphasis, such as making a a persons body much smaller in relation to their extended fist--or their nose disproportionately larger than the rest of their face.

Note: This effect increases varies with the distance that the camera is to the subject, or with the zoom setting.

5) You can make distant objects appear much larger proportionately to closer objects than they normally appear with our eyes or at a normal lens zoom setting by decreasing the ISO setting. Again this effect is sometimes seen as an unintended effect, but it is also often used in movies and video production. One common scene comes to mind where an orange setting-sun is made larger than life with an elephant gazelle against the over-sized sun. Or a looming tornado appears much more ominous against the outline of an automobile, line of houses, or fleeing people.

6) A higher ISO setting stops action or decreases blur from an unsteady hand or a moving automobile or from a racing subject.

7) Intentional blug of a running animal or racing car can be exagerated creatively in order to give a greater impression of speed. It can also be used in much the same way to blur the background while stopping a moving object while matching your camera movement with the movement of the object. This is called "panning". Panning adequately freezes the moving object while allowing the backround and/or forground to blur--creating an impression of extreme speed.

8) As alluded to previously, an old-time news photo such as those seen in Life Magaizine or other examples of the great news magazines of the past century by increasing the ISO setting. This increases the noise with a digital camera or film "grain" in the case of film. Although this effect may look artsy today, it was simply the best tha could be delivered with small film format cameras used by those great vintage news photographers. They made lemonade out of lemons by popularizing these "artistic" aspects of their unwanted grainy images. Clever.

9) Increase the light gather ability of your camera lens by increasing the ISO, enabling you to shoot night scenes or creatively over-expose a scene. An example of this is to double your ISO setting when shooting a subject against a brighter window or open sky. You can get a sillouette of virtually any subject even against a slightly lighter backround by increaisng the ISO setting.

10) Decrease your ISO setting in front ofr a window or light background.. This will help keep you from getting an unintended silloutte image of your intended subject.

11) Extend the range of your camera flash at night by increasing the camera ISO (without changing the flash ISO settin).

12) Blacken the background of a night scene by decreasing the ISO setting (without changing the flash setting if offered independently).

There are other effects that can be manipulated by changing the ISO settings on your camera. There are also other ways to achieve these changes by changing your manual camera setting or by selecting presets represented by various icons on cmera setting dials. the biggest benefit of using ISO setting for these purposes is that it is ve3ry quick and not hard for a budding photographer or artist who does not want to be bothered by learning all of the settings and icons inside and out.

These effects are true more-or-less, depending upon different cameras used. They are dependent upon "tricking" the camera into doing what you want it to. Therefore, you should not try to over-think these effects or apply too much logic while using them or you may wind up "correcting" these "desired corrections". Your camera may also try to correct your creativ attempts.

But by changing the ISO settings, what you get is pretty much what you get. Before depending upon the net results of your attempts, you should run your camera through its paces to get a feel what it will do specifically under the aforementioned and other circumstances. Results will vary.

I will drop in a few illustrationsof these techniques later hopefully, but I am rushing this out in order to address a specific readers request. So check back in a few days.

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