Camera modes and their purposes

We can broadly divide the camera modes into following categories:

• Automatic Modes : Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Night, Sports, Snow, Panoramic/stitch, Beach, etc
  
• Semi Automatic Modes : Aperture Priority (Av), Shutter Speed Priority (Tv), Program
  
• Full Manual Modes : Manual

These modes help you control one or more of the camera controls like Aperture, Shutter Speed, Exposure, Flash and Focus. Apart from these modes, today's cameras have extra mechanisms like ISO speed and While balance.


Auto: Camera automatically chooses all the controls like shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, focus and flash so as to help you get better picture. You may have option to control flash, etc in some cameras. This mode may give good results most of the time. Camera does guess work and sets the control based on it's analysis. You may get better results if you change the controls based on what type of snap you are looking for.



Portrait: Small aperture (Large f-number). Keeps the background out of focus. Focus only the object. Works best if you are close enough to the object either by zoom or standing closely.

Landscape: Large aperture. Ideal for capturing wide scenes. Objects of interest are at different distances from camera.

Sports: Increased shutter speed. Ideal for capture moving objects.

Night: Low shutter speed so that camera gets more time to capture the details. Also uses flash.

Macro: You can shoot small objects like flowers, insects, etc. Since you need to keep the camera at shorter distance from your subject, camera focus is restricted to small area. If you want make the background blurred, keep the background away from the object and just keep the focus object.

Super Macro: You can use 'Super Macro' if you can get close to the object. You may find the 'Super Macro' mode as difficult to use as it lacks the ability to zoom so you need to struggle to lock and focus. Best way is to use Macro mode and then zoom-in.

Aperture Priority: You have the choices of controlling aperture. Camera adjusts all the other controls like shutter speed, white balance, ISO etc., to help you get better image.

Shutter Priority: You have the choice of controlling shutter speed. Camera adjusts all other controls to help you get better image.

Program: This is nothing but Auto Mode with some extra controls like ISO speed, Flash, While balance, etc.

Manual: Gives you full control. You can control everything including and not limited to shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, focus and flash.