Raising your game

How to elevate your photography from the Basic Zone to the Creative Zone

An EOS camera has a variety of shooting modes, but they are all designed to do the same thing: make a technically well-exposed

image. Each mode achieves this in a slightly different way, and understanding which mode to use in different situations, realising when they might get things wrong and knowing how to override the settings is the key to getting the results you want.

Canon separates shooting modes into two sets: one for beginners and one that offers more creative control.

The Basic Zone modes are perfect if you’re stepping up from a smartphone or compact camera, as the camera handles every aspect of shooting until you’re ready to move on from point-and-shoot photography. Scene Intelligent Auto is the only Basic Zone mode used on some cameras (look for the ‘A+’ icon). This automatically analyses the scene and sets the exposure and picture preferences that it determines will give the best results.

Other beginner-friendly EOS cameras feature extra Basic Zone modes, such as Special Scene (where you pick the subject you’re shooting and the camera chooses the settings) and Creative Auto (where you get to adjust some aspects of the picture, such as the background blur).

Basic Zone modes offer limited control. You may be able to override a few settings, such as the drive mode and whether you record your images as JPEGS or Raw files, but other aspects such as focusing, brightness, ISO and flash will be automatically set. Automatic modes are useful as they take care of some of the technical side of photography while you develop your eye for that great picture.