Your Guide To Camera Modes

Who needs all these modes?

You might ask yourself this question when you pick up a digital camera loaded with custom exposure settings.

Program, Aperture priority and Shutter priority modes have been around for a long time on film cameras, but many new modes have been added on the latest digital models, each finely tuned for specific shooting situations. Some cameras have more than a dozen of these specialized scene modes.      
             
The point of these automated modes is not to dumb down the camera. Like Aperture and Shutter priority settings, the goal is to create quick shortcuts to correct exposures.

These modes help make photography more enjoyable and successful, bypassing the guesswork, particularly when you need to act quickly in order to catch the shot. They also make your camera more family-friendly so that anyone in the clan can get better results.

One important thing to note about these modes is that while they practically guarantee a good exposure, you’re usually restricted in your ability to override certain aspects of exposure, such as white balance, flash, ISO and the like. Manual and semi-manual modes, like Aperture priority and Shutter priority, will allow these sorts of changes, but the modes dedicated to specific conditions generally will not. If you’re wondering why you can’t change your white-balance setting, check your mode.