Using your camera without reading the manual part 1

Hello! I'm so excited about doing this series and so glad to hear that some of you are too. I hope you'll learn something about your camera and have some fun along the way.

Let's get started.

Getting to know your shooting mode dial.

We're going to begin with something easy. But I hate to assume what anyone knows how to do, so I'll just begin with the basics.

Here's how the shooting mode dial looks on the Kodak EasyShare.


This is the Canon Powershot.

Your camera may look slightly different, but just about any model has the dial with various choices, one of them being auto. If you've been shooting primarily on auto, it's time to make a change!

Shooting with digital makes it so easy to experiment. If it doesn't work out you can always delete it. So don't be afraid, try those other options and change things up.

On your dial you might find options such as these:

Landscape mode represented by a mountain

Night mode represented by the dark square with a star in it

Portrait mode (the face)

Action (the running man)

And something called scene (scn).

(Your camera may even have a lightening bolt with a line through it. This setting will keep your flash from coming on).

These modes are considered automatic because the camera automatically selects the settings based on the image composition you choose. But they can still dramatically change the way your image looks even without moving to the creative settings.

You will also find on many models the creative zone choices: P, TV, AV and M. We will discuss each of those later.

Most of the modes are self-explanatory. If you are shooting people, choose the face, if you are shooting landscape, choose the mountain. But the feature I found most useful on my Canon was the scene option.

Using the SCN mode:

When you choose scn, you can then scroll through options (using your buttons on the back of the camera) like snow, fireworks, beach, indoors and maybe others. Each camera is slightly different.

Choose this setting on your camera and take a picture of the same subject using each choice. See what difference it makes with each shot. I found that the indoor setting really made a big difference when I was shooting inside.

Yes, you have to change the setting for each situation you are in, rather than just pick up the camera and shoot, but it's time to get used to making proper adjustments for each individual picture situation.

DSLR users

The digital SLR doesn't have the scn mode. But it has many of the same automatic choices as the point and shoot.

If you choose any of these options that fits the specific circumstances you are shooting in it will make your picture better and still keep your camera safely on full automatic mode (you can't mess anything up!). So go ahead and try it.


On Monday

For our first show and tell let's move out of the green zone. Try one or all the other settings in the automatic part of the dial and post one or as many pictures as you want.

Tell us what kind of camera you're using. It would be helpful (to you too) to tell us what mode you shot in. The more you can remember about what you did to get that great picture, the better chance you'll be able to do it again.

Practice, practice, practice then post your best results here Monday so we can all take a look at what you learned.

edited: I wrote this up last night and this morning practiced with my dslr. I could not tell much difference between the portrait mode and the auto mode. However, when using the scn feature on my Canon Powershot I could see a big difference. So, this may not help dslr users, but try anyway. I've heard that the action setting on the dslr does make a difference.

So I panicked a bit that I'm starting out too easy. But I keep thinking about my aunt who has no idea how to even move from the green mode and it's better to begin at the beginning than somewhere in the middle and lose folks, right?