Using Auto assist settings
How the camera can support you when you shoot manually
There’s a lot to think about when you move across to the Creative Zone modes, but you don’t have to take every decision away from the camera. Even if you switch to Manual shooting mode, you can take advantage of a range of automatic options until you feel confident enough to start changing things up. Besides, there are some automated shooting options that are pretty useful whatever your skill level.
Take ISO, for example. In Scene Intelligent Auto, the camera sets an ISO that it calculates is suitable for the scene. With a Creative Zone mode, you can set the ISO to Auto and let the camera raise or lower the ISO sensitivity as the lighting changes. One big difference is that you can limit the ISO range, so you can avoid very high, image-degrading settings if you want to.
White balance is another option that you can leave set to ‘Auto’ in a large number of cases. That way, the camera will automatically try to ensure the colours are captured accurately under different lighting conditions. Sometimes it gets it wrong, but if you shoot Raw files rather than JPEGS, you can easily correct this in Raw software.
You can manually choose a Picture Style to give your images a different look and feel, but there’s also an Auto option where the camera will try to work out what you’re shooting and choose colour, contrast and sharpness. Again, if you’re saving your pictures as Raw files, you can make these decisions at your computer.
Your camera also has ‘bracketing’ features to take three pictures at different settings. Try this with exposure (using the ‘AEB’ function), or white balance (look for ‘WB Shift/bkt’ in the menu) when you’re shooting JPEGS.