005 - Picture Style Settings

So far I've suggested that starting with the camera set to fully automatic because most of the time it can decide what sort of picture you are taking and make the correct camera settings. But what if it doesn't get it right for some reason, maybe you're taking a landscape photo but there's something close by in the middle which fools the camera into deciding that you're making a portrait. What you will end up with is an image where the close by object is in focus but the landscape you were trying to capture is all out of focus. What you might want to do is to take a little more control of the camera by using the picture style settings.

Most modern cameras will have a set of picture styles that you may choose which tell the camera they type of picture you are wanting to make. On my camera there is a dial on the top but sometimes you might have to use buttons on the back or select from a menu on the screen. You will need to check with you're camera manual if it isn't too obvious. Cameras will have a different set of picture styles so I will go through the ones that are on mine and hopefully your camera will have most of the same and maybe others.

The first couple of picture styles are those I mentioned last time so I will discuss them briefly. Firstly 'Portrait' which, as I wrote last time, will typically have a narrow depth of field to isolate the portrait subject and a fairly fast shutter speed to cut down on camera shake or movement by the subject. On my camera the little icon on the dial looks a bit like a head which seems to make sense but of course you could use it for still life too. The camera may want you to use flash to put a bit of extra light on your main subject but you may be able to switch that off if you don't want it.

Secondly is 'Landscape' where you are probably wanting to get most (or all) of the image in focus. Here the camera is setting a wide depth of field and the shutter speed probably is less important because landscapes tend to have less movement in them and you may also be using the wider end of the zoom where you can get away with slower shutter speeds. The camera shouldn't select the flash as the effective distance of the flash is only a few feet however it may choose flash to add a bit of light to the nearest objects. Again you may need to refer to your camera manual if you want to enable or disable the flash. On my camera the icon on the dial looks a bit like some mountains and a cloud.

The next setting on my camera is 'Macro' which I must admit I wasn't too sure how this would be that different from 'Portrait'. Again you'll probably be wanting a fairly narrow depth of field and a fairly fast shutter speed to cut down on shake. I looked in my camera manual and it didn't really enlighten me any. I will do some investigation with this setting at the weekend and may update this post if I find out anything useful.

Next is the 'Moving Subjects' setting which has an icon that looks a bit like someone running. I think that this is one that maybe the automatic setting is likely to struggle with because it may not be able to identify that the subject you aiming capture is moving. You would typically use this setting for photographing sport or anywhere else where you want to freeze the movement of the subject. The main camera setting for this would be to have as fast a shutter speed as possible and have a reasonable depth of field. On my camera it also sets the auto focus to track the subject by refocussing between every shot in case the subject is moving towards or away from you. The sensors sensitivity may need to be increased and the camera may also tend to use the flash if there is a shortage of light.

The final picture style setting is 'Night Portrait' which on my camera has an icon that looks like a head and shoulders with a star in the background. This will also be similar the 'Portrait' setting but as it's for night portraits it will probably always use the flash. For a night portrait you should have the subject fairly close so that the flash will be able to reach and you will probably need to use a tripod to cut out camera shake.

I do have another setting on this end of the camera dial but this is purely for setting the flash to disabled without having to use the menus. Apart from that I believe it just acts the same as fully automatic. You would want to use this setting in museums or sports arenas where flash is either forbidden or wouldn't make any difference to the lighting.

So you can use these picture style setting when you want to either help the camera out or perhaps take more control of the camera. There's nothing to stop you using the portrait setting for landscapes if you only wanted the main subject in focus and wanted to make the foreground and background blurred. Or you could take a portrait using the landscape setting if you were wanting the background to stay in focus. However I suspect that if you were wanting to make these artistic decisions then you'd probably want to have a lot more control but we won't be getting to that stage for a while yet in this blog.

Next time we're going to get a little more technical and start talking about light and exposure. I'm not too sure at the moment how to start slowly in tackling this subject so the next post will be a surprise to all of us.