Modes are the different selections you have available to you on that top dial of your camera. Some cameras have more options than others, but they basically cover the same thing.

Mike Smith using his Sony A7iv Camera — The mode dial is the one just by my index finger …

The best mode to use with your camera is aperture priority. This lets you control the aperture and the camera works out the rest. Aperture priority gives you the control over how much of your photograph is in focus from the furthest to the nearest point. And if the conditions change, in this mode the camera does all of the hard work and all you have to do is focus on getting a great composition.

Camera Modes are predetermined settings that help you take a photograph

The mode dial is basically the first and most important dial on your camera. It determines how the camera is going to act when you point it at a scene.

It is important to understand what each of these settings does and how it can affect how you take the photograph and how it gives you more or less control over your camera.

Auto Mode

Auto camera mode — Auto Mode is normally a green box, camera or text

If you are in auto mode, the camera will do all of the work. It will choose the settings it thinks is right for that scene that is currently in the frame of the camera.

If that scene gets darker, it will brighten up the frame by automatically changing any one, or all of your three principle settings, aperture, shutter speed and ISO. You only have to point the camera in the right direction and work on what is going to be in your photograph.

If you are new to photography, think of this as your safety net … if the settings get really out of control or you are getting really confused, this is where you can come back to and gather your thoughts before heading back out into the modes that give you more control.

Creative modes

You might also have creative modes, where you turn the mode dial to whatever you are photographing. If it is sports, you switch it to the sports guy, if it is landscapes, you switch it to the landscape creative mode. If you are photographing a person, switch it to portrait and if you are photographing in low light, switch it to the low light mode.

Creative camera modes — Creative modes are normally a picture of what the scene is …

Now all of this might sound great. You switch it to the creative mode that the scene you have in front of you and the camera does the rest. However, this really takes a way the creative freedom a camera can give you when you know how to use it right.

Also it takes away a lot of the image quality and detail in your shots as these auto modes do disable a lot of the modes that give you a lot more dynamic range and a lot more detail in the shadows and highlights.

P, S, A and M

These are the modes that give you more control over your camera … although I think it would be much better if they were in the following order; SPAM. However the search engines, and most of us, don’t really like that kind of thing!

But in all seriousness, these modes give you progressively more control over the camera.

Program Mode, P Mode

Program mode is the mode that is almost still like auto, but you can change where the camera sits the two principle settings, aperture and shutter speed.

When you change your settings, it will adjust both aperture and shutter speed to suit the scene that you are pointing the camera at.

If you have your camera with you now, switch it on and turn the mode dial to P and see what happens to your settings.

With the ISO set to about 400 (just so it is not in auto iso) you can see when you point it at darker scenes, the f number will drop and the shutter speed will slow down.

If you point it at brighter scenes, the f number will rise and the shutter speed will get faster. So program mode is almost like auto mode, but you have the chance to control the settings a little more.

When you turn the dial, both aperture and shutter speed will change, but the brightness of the shot will not change. So you can dial in the aperture and shutter speed to suit.

If you want more in focus, you get the f number higher (Smaller Aperture) and if you want that shallow, blurry background look, you get the f number lower (Bigger aperture).

In program mode, you can also shoot in RAW, giving you the most amount of data coming off your sensor into your files … this means that you will have a lot of data to work with when editing your photographs.

If you want to learn more about editing, click here to see my complete workflow.

Shutter Priority (S or Tv)

Shutter priority is where you have control over shutter speed with the main dial on your camera and then the camera chooses the appropriate aperture for the given scene your camera is pointing at.

Shutter speed is the time that the shutter is open for. The longer the shutter speed, the more light will get into your camera.

Shutter speed also controls how much motion blur you have in your photographs. If you are shooting a moving object like a sports person, a bird or moving water, a longer shutter speed will blur this movement.

Shutter priority is great for sports and wildlife photography. where having the right shutter speed is imperative.

Tadeusz Błażusiak Romaniacs 2019 - By Mike SMith — 1/2000 second shutter speed to freeze the motion of the Enduro rider - Tadeusz Błażusiak

With a sports people, most of the time you will want to get the car perfectly sharp, so a a higher shutter speed is preferable as with shooting wildlife. In the shot above, Tadeusz Błażusiak was coming over this boarded Bank in the Romaniacs Hard Enduro race, so I had to use a really fast shutter speed to freeze his movement. This was shot with a shutter speed of 1/2000 second

Whereas with water moving through your frame, you might want to blur that movement so a slower shutter speed would be preferable.

Blurring water with 0.8 second shutter speed — 0.8 seconds shutter speed

This shot of the waterfall was taken from a tripod and I was using a shutter speed of 0.8 seconds. The water has been blurred and this was a creative choice of mine. If I used a shorter shutter speed, I could have gotten more texture in the water, and if I had used a longer shutter speed, it would have been more blurry.

So in changing your shutter speed, you can really change how your photograph looks.

Shutter priority gives you this control over your shutter speed and then the camera works out the rest.

I use shutter priority when I am shooting sports or wildlife and all I am thinking about is getting a sharp photograph of the subject in mind.

Aperture Priority (A, Av)

Aperture priority is where you have control over the aperture with the main dial on your camera. The camera then chooses the appropriate shutter speed for that scene you are pointing the camera at.

If the brightness in your frame changes, the shutter speed will change to suit.

The aperture will only ever change when you turn that dial.

Manual Mode

Manual mode is where you have control over both aperture and shutter speed. Most cameras have at least two dials on them and in manual mode, one dial will be for aperture and the other will be for shutter speed. This gives you complete control over your two settings, but it can be a slow process to dial in those settings … and if the scene is changing quickly in front of you you can quite easily miss the shot.

ISO

I haven’t talked about ISO much yet, because this can confuse the situation when introduced too early.

ISO used to refer to the sensitivity of the film you were shooting with and was a fixed entity for a given roll of film. To change your ISO with film cameras, you would have to change the roll of film.

Nowadays with digital cameras, the ISO refers to how sensitive the sensor is to the light you are shining on it through your lens. This is a very simplified explanation of what is actually happening in your camera, but just think of the ISO as a way of brightening or darkening your photograph.

If you are a bit of a geek and love the technical side of things, ISO actually changes the voltage of that runs across the sensor, amplifying the signal from the sensor … so it isn’t actually bringing any more light into the camera, it is just boosting the signal that is already there.

If you are a beginner don’t worry too much about this, just know that you can shoot with higher ISO levels and get a good exposure. Just be wary of shooting with really high iso levels as this will degrade your photographs. If you want to learn about this, click here for another of my articles.

Manual Mode is Not a Professional Mode

Some people seem to think that manual mode is a right of passage to becoming a pro photographer. In fact I have seen people incorrectly teach manual mode to a handful of beginners giving them such bad advice and sending them on a path to failure …

Now manual mode is a great tool when it is used correctly and it also is a great mode to hone in your settings in challenging conditions, but it can really take away from your photography. It can also make the process a lot slower and cause you to miss certain photographs.

SO it is a good mode for certain scenarios like astrophotography or long exposures where you really want to control every single one of your principle settings, but for general photography, it is not the best setting to use.

My Prefered Mode for 95% of scenarios

The mode I use for most of my landscape photography is aperture priority. This is because in landscape photography, the most important thing is how much of the photograph is in focus.

If I want everything to be in focus from front to back, I use a smaller aperture of f11 to f16.

Durdle Door with an aperture of f16 — Aperture f16 - Everything is in focus in this photograph

If I want just a portion of my photograph to be in focus, I’ll use a much wider aperture of f1.4 to f4.

Ogwen Valley - Lady Hiking — At f5.6, the background is slightly blurry, making the lady more in focus and more emphasised

With aperture priority I can set this straight away with a roll of the dial, and then the camera chooses the correct shutter speed for the scene.

Now you might be thinking that I am still giving a lot of control over to the camera … and what about if I don’t like what the camera is giving me … and this is where exposure compensation comes in.

Click here to learn about exposure compensation and how it drastically improves aperture priority and makes it such a quick way to dial in your settings.

Thanks

Mike Smith