So which camera mode should you shoot in Or we always hear about manual mode? Right? And I've been talking about that in this course. Um And as I said before manual mode all it's doing is basically giving you creative control over all three of these things. Shutter speed aperture and I. S. R. We can completely control all of them. But do you really need to control all of them in every situation? And the answer to that is no you really don't. And that's because as I stated before usually only one of these settings is gonna be super important for you. So like I said before if you are a food photographer, aperture is super important if you're a portrait photographer once again aperture is important if you're a sports photographer or you're shooting nascar or something then you really need to focus on shutter speed. And you really only need to be shooting manual if you're in a low light environment and your camera just keeps bumping up your I. S. O. And you really don't want to have a high...

S. So um then you should be shooting in manual but most of the other time um I like to shoot in aperture priority aperture priority mode is basically um you set the aperture of the camera and the camera will select the shutter speed and the I. S. O. On its own. Um And cameras are smart so it won't just jack up the I. S. O. It's gonna start with shutter speed. Um And it's gonna adjust your shutter speed based on how much light is entering the camera and then if there's not enough and it goes below 1 1/100 of a second. Then your camera will boost I. S. O. So the cameras are really smart. That's why I like to shoot in aperture priority. Um It's easier especially if I'm trying to get a lot of different shots. Say I'm like at an event or something like that or street photography, aperture priority is great especially if you're shooting during the day you don't really need to worry about I. S. O. Average priority is awesome if you're a sports photographer. Well a lot of sports photographers will use shutter priority because as I said before you know they need to ensure um that they're getting everything in sharp focus and zero motion blur. So they can shoot in shutter priority. So auto mode do I recommend shooting in auto mode? I don't recommend shooting in auto mode at the least shoot in aperture priority. Um And then if you need to shoot in manual mode but you really shouldn't be shooting in auto because then you're really taking away a lot of your creative control um that you have over the camera. Um So I recommend shooting in aperture priority or in manual mode. So there are a few other useful settings that I think you should know and the first one is white balance. So we're talking about digital photography. White balance is basically adjusting the colors in your image to look more natural. So cameras have a bunch of different white balance settings such as daylight, cloudy tungsten which is like indoor lighting, really poor lighting, um fluorescent um a few different other ones as well. Um And then they usually have an auto mode as well where it'll kind of take everything into account and choose a white balance for you when it comes to white balance, I always recommend that you don't shoot and auto white balance. And the reason for that is because we can very easily adjust the white balance of our image in editing. But if we have a bunch of different images shot at one location and we used auto mode, so all the different color temperatures are a lot different. Well then it's gonna be hard to do bulk editing. We're not gonna be able to just adjust the white balance of one image and apply it to all of them. We're gonna have to do each one kind of independently. So what I like to do is set my camera to daylight. White balance um that is usually works for most situations. Um And then when I'm in editing I'll just fine tune that white balance a little bit. Um So white balance is very very important but I recommend just selecting one of the presets in your camera and just leaving it on that for most situations, the next thing I want to talk about is raw versus jpeg. You might have heard this before. Um When we're talking about raw and jpeg we're referring to the file that your camera is capturing. So every time you take a picture right the camera is actually computing. Um It's saving that information into a file. Um Jpeg is a smaller file but it is a file that your camera is actually compressing and actually editing in the camera to um just give you an image that looks pretty good out of camera. Um And is a smaller file size. A raw photo basically means that your camera is not doing any processing on it, it's not compressing it and it's giving you as much information as it possibly can. What does that mean? Well that means that we can better edit our photo and post because we have more information in our photo, we have more information in the dark areas and more information in the light areas. So I always say shoot raw because you know editing is a very important piece of the puzzle um and it's important for us to learn how to edit properly. And editing is much easier when we have raw photos. So when it comes to the raw versus jpeg debate, I'm gonna keep it simple and say shoot raw for the purposes of this course. Um That's the best recommendation that I can give you. So besides focus which we're going to get into here now autofocus and manual focus. Those are pretty much all the things you need to know about your camera. Those are the most important settings. So setting your your file type, rob and peg and then also setting your white balance. If you can understand those things and then you can also understand the exposure triangle, you're gonna be good to go.

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Sean Dalton

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Beginner Post-Processing Digital Photography

Ratings and Reviews

Matt House

Good basics class, however one of the questions in the chapter 3 quiz is incorrect: When shooting in aperture mode, what settings does the camera adjust? Quiz answer (aperture) is incorrect. The photographer selects the aperture, however the camera adjusts the shutter speed (and ISO if in auto) in order to make a proper exposure.

Neil Brumberger

This is an excellent, fast paced review of processes and techniques for someone who is not a raw newbie, but still in the beginner stage. The title is accurate. It covers the essentials, not deeply, but broadly. Being somewhat older I find the fast pace of the narrative a bit too much, but I am a dinosaur

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Is Manual Mode Necessary?

Is Manual Mode Necessary?

Lesson Info

5. Is Manual Mode Necessary?

Lessons

Class Project

Camera Settings

Balancing Exposure

Chapter 2: Quiz