Scene Modes Revisited

In Chapter 2, “Getting to Know Your Camera,” you were introduced to Scene modes, special modes that bias your camera’s decision-making process so that it’s more appropriate to specific types of scenes. If you’re shooting with a high-end SLR, then your camera might not offer any Scene modes. Most mid-range cameras, though, offer Scene modes, and smaller point-and-shoots typically offer lots of them, in lieu of more advanced manual controls. Now that you’ve had some study of shutter speed and aperture, let’s revisit some of the most basic Scene modes and take a more technical look at what they’re doing.

• Portrait mode. This mode attempts to blur out the background of an image, in order to bring more focus to the subject. As you’ve learned, this can be achieved by using a wide aperture (which has a low f number). A wider aperture yields an image with shallower depth of field. Your Portrait mode might also activate face detection automatically and possibly smile and blink detection.

• Landscape mode. When shooting a landscape, you usually want everything in the scene to be in focus, which means a very deep depth of field. Deep depth of field means a very small aperture. Landscape modes will also often lock focus on infinity.

• Sand and Snow mode. As you’ve learned, white colors sometimes need to be overexposed so that they don’t end up gray in your final image. Sand and Snow mode will calculate overexposures that will render whites as they should be.