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Good Settings for Photography

When considering which camera setting to choose, there is a good chance that you will select auto. This may be because you have a wide knowledge of how settings work and what each means and you have decided that, on balance, it is best to let the technology within the camera adjust to whatever type of picture you are taking. Alternatively, you may not really understand what all of the setting options are so you choose the one that allows you to take photographs without really understanding what good settings for photography are.

Settings
- When you want to take a picture, there are many different kinds of situations and each setting on your camera is designed to maximize the pictorial effects. According to the Digital Photography School of the University of Leicester, you should ask yourself four questions when considering which ISO setting to choose ̵1; in traditional photography, the ISO or ASA was the relative indication of how sensitive a film is to light, but now ISO refers to how sensitive the image sensor is to light. The questions concern light, grain, the use of a tripod, or whether the subject is moving.
Low or High Grain
- Fundamentally, the lower the ISO setting, the finer the grain quality will be and vice versa with high settings. The lowest and most commonly used ISO setting, for example, is 100, and this will give clear and fine shots. However, not all pictures are taken in ideal and static situations. As you raise the ISO setting, you are effectively changing the aperture and shutter speed. This means that you can take distance, action and poor light quality shots and your camera will reproduce the image that you want. However, you will have traded grain quality against these features.
Shutter Priority Mode
- A shutter priority mode on your camera will be particularly useful if you are taking action shots or night pictures. This basically changes the shutter exposure time. For example, if you want to shoot a speeding car, an exposure of 1 second will probably not show the car, rather just the background. However, if you adjust the shutter to 1/4000 seconds, you will probably get the shot that you want. Conversely, if you want a good night time scene, you will want your shutter open for longer and you will be able to get some excellent shots. However, you will need to use a tripod to keep the camera steady.
Zoom
- This is probably the feature of your camera that you will most use. It allows you to close in on a specific feature of a subject or scene. However, there is some confusion about what it actually means. For example, some cameras use 1 x number to indicate the zoom setting. Therefore at 1 x 10, your lens is magnified by a factor of 10 and the view reduced proportionately. Others use a 35mm standard, so if you adjust the lens to 140mm, it is magnified by 4 and, again, the view proportionately reduced.

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