Shooting modes & scene modes

Today's digital cameras come with a wide range of shooting modes and scene modes. Along with automatic mode — an option on just about every digital camera today — you can find some or all of the following shooting modes on many cameras:

Macro mode lets you capture small objects with a level of detail that's not possible in standard automatic mode.

• Macro mode: Good for close-ups of flowers, insects, and other small objects. Macro mode tells your camera you're going to be focusing on something very close to the camera, and adjusts the focal range accordingly. Some macro modes let you shoot objects as close as a half-inch away.
• Movie mode: Good for capturing video and audio of scenes in motion. One of the most popular shooting modes on today's cameras isn't a photographic mode at all. Movie mode has been available on cameras for years, but the resolution and maximum duration in length of the video clips you can record have increased with each generation of camera. Nowadays most movie modes have a resolution similar to that of standard-definition TV. But some can record high-definition movie clips — with a resolution of 1280 x 720 or even 1920 x 1080 — great for watching on an HDTV.
• Continuous/burst mode: Good for shooting fast-moving subjects like pets and toddlers. Continuous shooting mode lets you press and hold the camera's shutter button to capture a series of shots in rapid succession. Along with its helpfulness when getting great shots of high-energy kids, it's a nice option if you want to make sure you don't miss the exact moment your nephew is handed his diploma or your favorite baseball player reaches home plate.
• Manual mode: Good for getting more creative with your photography. Many point-and-shoot cameras offer some manual control over your shooting, either in the form of full exposure control, letting you set aperture or shutter speed yourself, or in helpful options like aperture or shutter speed priority modes. All digital SLRs offer manual control of your photography, along with an automatic shooting mode.

In addition to shooting modes, most cameras offer what are called "scene modes" — settings optimized for the demands of certain kinds of photographic scenes or subjects. These are some of the most common scene modes:

Portrait mode. Portrait mode was created to deliver great photos of people. The camera focuses on a central subject, and blurs the background.

Landscape mode. The camera sets exposure to achieve clarity from the front to the back of the scene.

Night scene mode. The camera slows down its shutter speed to capture a darkened scene more accurately, with little or no help from the flash. (In night portrait mode, the camera captures the background effectively with a slower shutter speed, while softly lighting a subject in the foreground with the flash.)

Action/sports mode.The camera increases its sensitivity (also known as film speed or ISO), so it can capture crisp shots of intense action without blurring the subject.

Beach/ski mode. Because sand and snow reflect so much light, many beach and ski photos show backlit subjects with darkened, unreadable faces. To avoid this problem, the camera adjusts exposure to accurately render subjects in the foreground as well as clear skies, blinding snow, or white sand in the background.

Fireworks/candlelight mode. Flash is disabled and exposure is adjusted to capture atmospheric shots of bright lights in a dark or dimly lit setting.

Focus has been set precisely on the girl's face, not on the barrel of apples in front of her.

Face detection technology

Found on many of today's models, this convenient feature gives a camera the ability to recognize when there are one or more human faces being photographed, and set focus accordingly. For example, a potentially cute shot of the kids peeking at you from between fence posts is marred because the camera insistently focuses on the posts and leaves the faces blurry. With face detection, the camera zeros in on the faces instead. In many cases, face detection also prompts the camera to adjust exposure, so that the people in your pictures are properly lit and their skin tones look natural. Some cameras even go a bit further to help you take great portraits — for instance, smile recognition automatically snaps the shutter when the camera detects a grin, and blink alert lets you know if your subject's eyes were closed right after the photo is recorded, so you can try again.