Subject Navigation

• ictWeb home
• General Topics Home
• Digital Cameras(2)
• Digital Cameras(3)

This is the first page of Digital Cameras

This page is about the settings on your camera.

Lets start with some definitions:

• Digital Camera - The piece of equipment which allows you to record digitally an image. The main reason for doing this is that you can then use this image and manipulate it using software.
• Mega Pixels: This refers to the 'maximum' size of an image that the camera can record.
• Media : This is where the image is stored in the camera. If you prefer the media can be thought of as memory and also as the length of the film in traditional photography such as 24 or 36 exposures. Most digital cameras will have removable media while others will have 'built in' memory or there may be a mixture of both fixed and removable. All media is limited in size (i.e. 8mb,16mb, 32mb, 64mb etc). When this is full the camera will tell you there is no more memory.
• Media types: There are many forms of removable media but they all do the same basic job which is to record an image. The types are Compact Flash, Secure Digital (SD and now XD), Memory Stick, Smart Media and MultiMedia Card (MMC). The Memory Stick is a Sony product and is common throughout the Sony range of equipment. The SD and XD cards have a small switch, as on a floppy disk, which can prevent accidental deletion of the stored images.

Your camera operates in one of three ways.

• Fully automatic where all functions except pressing the shutter are performed by the camera.
• Fully Manual where all functions are performed by you.
• Everything in between where you choose to manually set certain of the functions.

Why would you want to change from fully automatic?

If you use your camera outdoors in bright sunny conditions and are taking pictures of objects that are more than a metre away from the camera then the camera will probably cope adequately and produce a decent image. Even indoors under normal lighting conditions the camera should cope and produce a good image. However if you want a close up or indoors has several light sources ( e.g. daylight from a window and lights on) then the camera will need help.

What are these functions and how do you change them?

Many cameras will display the settings of the various functions when switched on. This display will go off after a short time, or it may not appear at all. In all cases though you should be able to find the settings. I can't tell you how for all cameras but your instruction manual will tell you how to get to the 'menu' where settings can be found.

Information displayed in the LCD Monitor at start up and/or available through your cameras menu.

• Shooting Mode (Auto, Manual or Stitch).
• Exposure Compensation.
• White Balance.
• Resolution.
• Compression.
• Flash.
• Shooting Method (Single, Multiple, Timer).
• Macro/Infinity.

Shooting Mode

• Auto mode - the camera will make most of the settings automatically.
• Manual mode - you set the exposure, and various other functions depending on your camera model.
• Stitch (if available) - aids you in taking shots that you want to join or stitch together to form a panorama.

Important note: bear in mind that if you change a setting in any of the above shooting modes that setting will be retained even when the camera is switched off.

back to settings menu.

Exposure Compensation

This allows you to compensate for a bright background, for example shooting against the sky where the foreground might appear dark due to the brightness of the sky.

back to settings menu.

White Balance

This setting is about matching the shot to the dominant light source. The choices you have depend on the camera but probably include:

• Auto - the camera sets white balance automatically.
• Daylight - Outdoors, clear and sunny.
• Cloudy - Outdoors, cloudy sky, in the shade or at dusk.
• Tungsten - Shooting under tungsten lighting.
• Fluorescent - Shooting under Fluorescent lighting.

There could also be a setting here to shoot in black and white or in sepia.

back to settings menu.

Resolution

Here's where it starts to get tricky. You have a digital camera and lets say it's 3 megapixels. This means that at it's best your camera can record an image which is made up of 3,000,000 pixels which represents the digitized format images are stored in. Like the dots which make up a newspaper image, digital cameras record squares (pixels) instead of dots. If you enlarge an image you can see these pixels. The example below shows on the left a normal image. The area within the red square is enlarged on the right where you can see the individual pixels. Do also notice the number of colours and shades that make up the enlarged image.

Returning to the example of a 3 megaPixel camera at it's best the camera records an image and stores this in the media card which will use about 1600kb of that media card. The size will vary depending on the camera manufacturer and model. However most, if not all, digital cameras allow you to choose the resolution and therefore the size of the image recorded as Small, Medium or Large where large is the maximum and small is the minimum.

From the table it can be seen that the size in pixels has a significant affect on the size used in memory, therefore many more images can be recorded onto a card by reducing the resolution.

You have to decide whether this is worth while. If you are not going to print and will only view the images on your pc them storing them in a size of more than 1.3megaPixels may not be worthwhile as this resolution is the maximum resolution of the pc screen. If you are e-mailing an image then 0.3 megaPixels is an ideal size to use as this will transfer more quickly.

Do bear in mind however that while it's relatively easy to make an image smaller using software which has no detrimental effect on quality, image quality is reduced when you make an image larger than the original. So it may be better to take the best quality image your camera is capable of and reduce the resolution using software as necessary.

You have the choice whether you change resolution settings, but it is worth experimenting and looking critically at your results to make a judgment.

back to settings menu.

Compression

Compression like resolution reduces the memory size, but unlike resolution it has a noticeable effect on quality. Basically compression works by reducing the number of pixels which record their part of the image. If you look at the enlarged image of the deer above you will notice there is a large area of green, but most of them are different shades of green. Each of these pixels is recorded in memory and therefore use space in memory. Compression, in varying degrees, says that if the adjacent pixel is the same colour as the next pixel only record one of the two. This means that as only the detail of 1 of the two pixels is recorded less memory is used, and clever software in the compression can do a reasonable job of reconstructing the whole image.

Cameras vary over what terms are used. Canon models have a normal, fine and super fine compression settings where superfine is the best.

Repeating the table above there is an extra column to show the storage size difference.

Once again only you can decide whether or not to use the compression settings, but it is also worth experimenting.

back to settings menu.

Flash

Your choices here are:

• Auto - where the camera decides when to fire.
• On - where the flash will fire with each shot.
• Off - where the flash will not fire.
• Red eye reduction - where the flash will attempt to compensate for red eye by firing a small flash before the main flash.

back to settings menu.

Shooting Method

Your choices here will probably be:

• Single - where the camera will take a single image.
• Multiple - where it is possible to take several images for as long as you keep the shutter fully depressed.
• Timer - where the self timer is set.

back to settings menu.

Macro / Infinity

• Macro - is the setting should you wish to take close up images. It allows the camera to focus 'right in' on a subject.
• Infinity - is the more usual setting where everything form near to far distance will be in focus (lighting conditions permitting).

next page

Copyright © ictWeb.org 2004