Take Control of Your Digital Camera
… Or, what all those little icons mean, and how to use them
by Steve Meltzer
ometimes in the middle of a shoot I find myself staring at the icons on my digital camera and for the life of me I can’t remember what they stand for. Does that moon icon mean night shot or slow shutter speed? I don’t think it has anything to do with age but rather with the proliferation of digital equipment and manufacturers’ “turf” wars, there’s been a population boom in icons. With the professional gear I use, I end up wishing that I had my own personal tech guy to give me the 411 on what’s what with the little pictures.
But there’s no magic tech whiz, so I’ve had to learn the icons and I’d like to pass on the arcane language to you.
Let’s start by turning the camera on. Put it in front of you. I find that it helps to say things like “nice camera, good camera.” Touch it and check that the memory card is in place and if you have a lens cap on the lens, take it off. Gently.
 |
Find the main control dial and set it to the green camera icon (on some cameras you might have the word “AUTO” instead, so use that). Then — still smiling and cooing — turn the camera on. In a second or two the screen should light up, say “welcome” and probably play you a little tune. If it doesn’t turn on, turn the switch to off and check the battery. Digital camera batteries come out of the box uncharged and need to be charged in the battery charger you got with the camera. Batteries also die of loneliness if you haven’t used your camera in a long time or get exhausted if you use them too much. We all know those feelings, so first thing to do if the camera won’t go on, charge or recharge the battery. Once charged, your camera should turn on and play its music.
The “AUTO” position is the “point and shoot” setting that allows you to just pick up the camera, point it at the cat and take a reasonably good feline photo.
Near the AUTO position you’ll see several other icons on the dial. For instance, typically there’s a movie camera icon that sets the camera to take short digital movies. For crafts purposes you can ignore this setting.
There is a woman icon on my digitals that is the “portrait” setting. This sets the camera lens to use large apertures, for narrow depth of sharpness, to isolate a person in the photo and soften the background. The icon varies from camera to camera — on one, she may have a hat on, and on another, long hair, etc. But the icon means portrait. For a craftsperson making things like tall ceramic or glass vases, this setting is an easy way to set up to shoot your work. Turn the dial to this portrait setting and extend the lens to a telephoto setting — like 100-150mm — and you are ready to shoot.
On most cameras there is an icon of a flower that stands for the camera’s “close-up” setting, which allows the lens to be focused close up to a subject and sets the aperture and shutter speed to get the sharpest pictures. Obviously if you are a jeweler, this is your starting place. On some cameras, the icon may be something different. On one of my cameras it’s a lizard. But it’s always something small.
Another common icon is a line of mountains. This is naturally the “landscape” setting. It’s designed to take into consideration the effect of a bright sky in a scene and a distant focal point. I use this setting with my zoom lens at its widest for shooting interior scenes. The compensation for the sky usually works to keep white walls from washing out. If you are shooting installed art or a gallery setting, I’d use this setting.
On most main control dials there are also several letters: M, S, P, A. These stand for different settings of the exposure system. When set to “P” the camera makes all the decisions, choosing the settings of the aperture and shutter speed (and sometimes even the film speed ISO). In many ways it is similar to the “AUTO” setting.
But don’t confuse the “AUTO” setting with the “A” setting. “A” stands for “Aperture Preferred.” This means that the photographer selects the aperture setting and the camera selects and sets the appropriate shutter speed to get the correct exposure. When photographing three-dimensional work, you generally want as much of your work in focus as possible. To do this you need to use apertures like f/11 or f/16. When the camera is set to “A” you can set the aperture and let the camera do the rest. If you photograph your work with tungsten floodlights, this is the setting that will produce accurate exposure most easily.
“S” is the Shutter speed preferred setting. It’s the opposite of the “A” setting. You choose the shutter speed and the camera finds the right aperture. This is a great setting for sports photography but hasn’t much use for crafts photography.
The “M” setting is manual exposure. Here the photographer chooses both the aperture and shutter speed setting. It’s the setting you use a lot in the studio especially if you are using electronic strobes.
Besides the main control dial, for crafts work several other controls are important. For example, if you are shooting images for Internet use, go into the camera MENU and open the IMAGE SIZE screen and set the size to 640x480 Pixels and then on the IMAGE QUALITY screen select a medium quality. These settings produce digital files that can pretty much directly be uploaded onto the Web without any need to manipulate them.
When you want to shoot to produce big prints, reset the Image Size to the highest pixel setting you have and the Image Quality to its finest setting. This will produce the biggest files at the lowest compression for the best big prints.
You generally don’t want to shoot at these high settings all the time. At these settings you create very big files that will quickly fill up your memory card. If you shoot at these big files settings you’ll need memory cards of at least 256 MB or bigger.
For general snap-shooting, when you just want something like a 4x6-inch print, use a midsize setting on the Image Size screen and a medium level of compression.
I’m suggesting changing the Image Size and Quality settings for picture taking rather than resizing the image in a photo manipulation program because every time you make a change in an image file, you risk corrupting the file. Corrupting a file is a lot easier to do than you might imagine. A bit of resizing here, a contrast adjustment there, a tweak of color, etc., and pretty soon you have lots of funny wiggles in your picture.
And remember before anything else ALWAYS burn (or load) your images onto a CD or DVD before you do any photo manipulation. Don’t put image files on your hard drive. That’s like throwing photos in a shoebox. Soon the boxes are full and you can’t find anything. When computers fail or when you buy a new computer you may lose your photographs. Loading images onto CDs or DVDs and then working with them is the best way to make sure you’ll have your pictures in the future.
And remember when you are all done using your camera, say good night to it and turn it off to save its batteries. If the camera’s happy, it might even play you another little tune as it goes to sleep.
Steve Meltzer is a Washington-based photographer. He can be reached via e-mail at: stevefoto@compuserve.com.