This genre of photography needs rapid action on part of the photographer to capture what many call the “decisive” moment. You will probably not have time to choose the AF point or carefully compose (Picture 1). You should be ready to execute a grab shot. For this, it is best to have set AF Area mode to automatic selection and a moderate aperture (like f/5.6 or f/8) for adequate DOF to compensate for any focusing errors. Once again, a continuous release with about 3 FPS and a fast-enough shutter speed of around 1/250 to freeze action is recommended. For street portraits, see next section.
In a portrait, the subject must be sharp, and the background must be blurry (less sharp) compared to the subject. To achieve this, it is necessary you use an aperture of f/4 or wider to get a shallow
This photograph was taken with a macro lens. Though an aperture of f/14 was used you can see that the DOF is still very shallow.
Examples of fast action are birds-inflight, speeding animals, cars moving at high speeds, sports, etc. In all these cases you need a fast shutter speed of at least 1/2000 (in fact 1/4000 if light permits) to freeze action (Picture 3). Since you will be probably using a telephoto lens of a focal length of 300 mm or more, this fast shutter speed will have the double benefit of preventing handshake. In fact, it is better if you switch off stabilization in your camera or lens as this reduces the camera reaction time. Also, use a fast enough frame rate, with a minimum of at least 8 FPS.
The best way to handle this is to select aperture priority mode and choose f/5.6 or f/8 to give a little more DOF. The minimum shutter speed you need can be achieved with the help of Auto ISO options explained earlier. You can also use Manual exposure mode with Auto ISO if you are confident of setting the correct shutter speed yourself. If very high frame rates are needed you can opt for JPEG files but be aware of the limitations it has.
A photograph when viewed on a monitor or as a print is “flat”, having only two dimensions – width and height. However, our eyes see the world in three dimensions – width, height as well as depth. Hence, in landscape photography, it is important that you create an illusion of depth. This is done with the help of a property called “perspective”. Due to perspective, objects that are close to our eyes appear larger compared to objects that are far away (Picture 4). Hence, perspective can be used to create a sense of depth by keeping a close by foreground object in the composition. Since you now have objects that are near and far and since all of them have to be in sharp focus, you need a large DOF. So, use Aperture Priority and set a narrow aperture (f/11 or f/16). If the ambient light is not high enough, this will force you to use a slow shutter speed which may not be handholdable. You may have to resort to using Auto ISO setting or set ISO manually high enough to overcome this. The best solution is really not a camera setting but
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to use a tripod as this will allow a slow shutter speed and hence a lower ISO to get the highest image quality. Lower ISO values also give a wider dynamic range which is important as landscapes often have a very high brightness range. You may even have to use high dynamic range (HDR) imaging if the latter is too high. Raw format is also essential.
This genre of photography involves high magnification (Picture 5). In these cases, the shutter speed as suggested by the thumb rule does not suffice. It is better to use as high a shutter speed as possible (around 1/500 or higher). Also, at high magnifications (viz., equal to greater than 1:4 or 25% of life-size), DOF will be minuscule (only a few millimeters).
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Hence, you need to use narrow apertures like f/11 or f/16. These two requirements– high shutter speed and narrow aperture – demand that ambient light is very high. If this is not the case you need to use a high enough ISO or better, a tripod.
First disable your flash, if your camera has one! A flash is good only for about 10 to 15 feet and will work great if the subject is within that distance (like a person in a room). However, if you are photographing a monument at night or in general a nightscape (Picture 6), the subject is bound to be more than 10 feet away and flash is just useless! Use Aperture Priority and set the widest possible aperture (lowest f/ number) available on your lens to allow maximum light. Switch on any type of stabilization your camera and/or lens may have. Even then you are likely to get a shutter speed that would be too slow to handhold. The best “setting” is to use a tripod. If you don’t have access to one, the only solution is to use a high enough ISO to get a reasonable hand-holdable shutter speed. This may force you to use a very high ISO (much higher than what you would use for landscape or macro photography) thus degrading the image. Night and low light images often have very high brightness range (pools of bright light with several dark areas) and it is a must to use the Raw format. Often HDR may be required to get all the shadow and highlight details.
An ISO of 2800 was used to get an adequate handholdable shutter speed. Due to the extreme brightness range, HDR imaging was also used to record both highlights and shadows.
Let us assume your favorite genres are wildlife, landscapes, and street. As you can see from Table 1, the settings are very different for these two. If would be very difficult for you to switch from one configuration to another quickly as this will need changes in many settings. To overcome this, manufacturers usually provide on the mode dial itself userdefinable settings called U1, U2 and U3 or something similar to that. With this you can program wildlife settings to say, U1 and landscape settings to U2 and street photography to U3. Once this is done, you can instantly switch all the settings from, say wildlife to landscape by just turning the mode dial from U1 to U2.
We have made this article as generic as possible and hence your camera may have some differences compared to what we have written. Hence, please do not treat this as a substitute for your manual. Reading fully and understanding your manual is very important and please do not skip that.
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