digital camera controls & technical stuff

• camera training DVDs

---

OK you want to take better quality photos -

Getting the best from your digital camera is easy, just learn the basics of how a camera works then learn how to use the facilities your camera provides - ok, its not easy but its not difficult to grasp the basics

Why does a camera need so many program modes ?
Clever though your digital camera is, it needs help on occasions to tell it what sort of photograph you want to take. The camera manufacturers have done an amazing job in simplifying the settings on your camera by using symbols.In the good ol days you would have to set the shutter speed and aperture manually, which of course meant you had to understand what you were doing. Nowadays you just select a symbol that represents what you want to do. So when you select a sport program for example you are adjusting the shutter speed, told you it was easy.
Lets take a quick look at the basics -

How a camera works -
A photograph is just light captured by the chip inside your camera through the lens. There are three things on your camera that control the quality of that light, they are - the ISO setting, aperture and shutter speed, the aperture is the size of the opening on your lens which is adjustable and the shutter speed is the amount of time the chip is exposed to light through the aperture of the lens. The combination of both shutter speed and aperture is called the exposure setting. The ISO is the sensitivity of the chip to light, which can also be adjusted, is similar to the old film speed of 100 asa for summer and 400 asa for winter.

BEWARE of High ISO settings - Iso is the sensitivity of the chip to light. Many compact digital cameras are quoting ISO figures of 1600. Generally the higher the number the less light you need to take a photograph, so it all sounds good right ? Wrong, the problem lies in the pysical size of the chips used in compact digital cameras. The higher the ISO the more noise or grain on your photos. So although adverts may boast of great low light photos, they will almost all be of relatively poor quality due to this noise or grain. The exception to this to a degree, is the Fuji range of cameras as they use a unique chip, but bear in mind all small cameras, with present technology anyway, will not give wonderful low light quality at anything over an ISO of 400.

Exposure in more detail, Exposure is a complex subject. As this website was intended particularly for for those not wishing to get too technical about their photography, I will attempt to give you an overview of what its all about without having you reach for the mouse to select another page.
Briefly exposure is the term used for how long the light sensitive chip in your camera is exposed to light, if its exposed too long the image is too light ( over exposed ) and if its not exposed long enough ( under exposed ) its too dark.
The camers automatic exposure system works on the principle that most of the time the mixture of tones in a normal picture will average out to 18% grey, whicg will be the correct exposure.
So if a scene is far too bright like a snow scene it cant average out to 18% grey so the exposure is wrong.

Take a look at the diagram below - this shows in basic terms what is happening to the shutter unit when either you manually adjust the aperture or the camera selects a different aperture automatically using a program mode.

The diagram to the right shows you in picture form what is happening to the aperture at the various camera settings. What's odd is the smaller the number the larger the aperture eg: f/2 is larger than f/16. You can see that f/2 being a large hole, will let in more light to the chip than f/16. Its a combination of the size of the aperture and the length of time the shutter stays open that decides the amount of light let through to the chip to make the correct exposure. You can influence the aperture and shutter settings using the program or scene settings. Sport settings give priority to the shutter speed to freeze your subject, but choose the landscape setting and priority is given to the aperture to make sure everything in the forground and back ground is sharp. Thankfully you don't have to think too much about all this if you don't want to, just use the program/ scene modes provided by your camera to make the necessary adjustments.

What happens when you press the shutter ?

The button has two pressures. The first pressure of the button takes an exposure reading through the lens, from the image you view via your LCD screen or viewfinder, calculating the shutter speed and aperture required to capture the image at the correct exposure. The second pressure activates the shutter to capture the photo and store it on your memory card.

A quick look at controls -
As all digital cameras are different I have picked a typical camera to explain the type of functions you can expect to see. Take a look at the photo below and I'll run through what the control buttons do.


Firstly you will see a rocker type Zoom Lens control that adjusts the lens, and is marked "W for wide angle" and "T for telephoto" You will also see on this camera, a small minus sign and plus sign on either side of the zoom control. As with many compact digital cameras the controls do more than one job, in this case when viewing your photos in the playback or viewing mode, moving the zoom control magnifies the photo on your LCD screen and the minus side zooms back out.

Next you will see the Program Mode Dial used to either change what the camera does, in this example you can see the Movie Mode is selected. Also this type of dial allows you select the various programs/scene modes supported by the camera. Below are some examples

The photo below shows the Sony W80 digital compact camera and its user friendly approach of displaying the program selected and a text box with an explanation of what the selection will do for you, very slick.

Next you will see the play button with the universal black triange symbol used on remote controls. If you press this button even with the digital camera turned off, it will turn on the camera display showing the photos on your LCD screen. Some digital cameras have a small dustbin or waste paper bin symbol to delete either one image at a time or several selected images. On the digital camera shown pressing the Home Button displays a page of options including deleting and printing photos. When you have finished looking at you digital images turn the digital camera off.

The "menu button" offers different options for Playback and Record so when you are taking a photo, pressing the menu button will give you different options to pressing the same button when viewing a photo on the LCD screen. Please take a closer look at the digital camera menus section over the page.

The "D Pad" the four way rocker control with a select button in the centre is used by the majority of digital camera manufacturers. On this digital camera you can see that when using the camera in the "Record or Take a photo mode, pushing the button at the top "DISP" will scrol through different LCD screen displays. Pushing the button to the right ( the lightening flash symbol ) will display the camera flash options on the screen. Pushing the button down ( the ticking clock symbol ) selects the self portrait timer for taking your own photo. Pushing the button to the left ( the small flower smbol ) selects "Macro mode" used for taking photos very close to the subject, for example, close up of plants or perhaps text in a quick way of copying text from a document.



You will also see four arrow head symbols around the sides of the D-Pad, in Playback mode when scrolling through photos you have taken, its also used when Viewing the digital camera menus when the D-Pad is used to navigate in all directions, and the centre button pushed to make a selection.

The "HOME button" found on this camera gives you a page where you can do things that you want to do often, such as print a photo.


---


next page link >