Tips in a Glance For Beginner Photographers

Today I m gonna talk about few important camera settings & what they actually do with your photos.
Let's start finding out what settings you should know as a beginner & how will it effect on your very first photos. 

• Image Quality

Select RAW+Large

• White Balance

Decide the WB without setting it to Auto
Take the same picture with different WB options and see the color change of your image.

If you use approx. less than 5000K you will get more blue color in your image.

If you use more than 6000K you will get more yellow color in your image.

• Shutter Speed

Duration of time for the light to enter from your shutter and hit your sensor.
Duration of the time shutter is open.


Low shutter speed causes motion blur/Camera shake.
Higher shutter speed freezes action.

• Aperture - AV Mode for Cannon

Its opening of your lens.
Smaller F number is a large opening of the lens.
More light is coming to your camera.
Larger F number is a small opening of the lens.
Less light is coming to your camera.

F/2 - Large Aperture
F/8 - Medium Aperture
F/22 - Small Aperture

This controls the amount of light coming into your camera.

Responsible for Depth of Feel - Sharpness

• ISO

The sensitivity of your sensor.
How fast your sensor can react to the light.

Do not use Auto settings
If you increase the ISO you will get more noise in your image.(Gray pixels)

Low ISO is always preferable.

• Intelligent Auto Mode

Camera decides all the 3 parameters
Shutter speed /Aperture/ ISO

• Program Mode

For a given ISO camera decides the Aperture and the Shutter speed.

• TV mode - Shutter Priority

You decide the Shutter speed for a given ISO
Then Camera will show the Aperture.
If it is blinking, that means it is not suitable for a quality image so you need to adjust the Shutter speed appropriately.

• Av Mode - Aperture Priority

You decide the Aperture for a given ISO where camera will give u a corresponding Shutter speed.
Recommended for landscape photography.

• M - Manual Mode

You have to decide all the 3 parameters.
Not recommended for beginners.

• Focusing modes and Focusing Points

One Shot- For totally static subjects
In this mode, if you half press the shutter button, you will hear a beep sound which means the focus is locked for the image. .
Good for Landscape, Portrait & close ups

AI Servo - For continuously moving subjects

AI Focus - With this mode, If the subject is stationary it will automatically move to One shot and if the subject is continuously moving it will move to AI Servo mode.

Not recommended for beginners.

Focusing Points - Do not enable all the focusing points.
If so the camera decides how to focus.
Go with the centre focusing point for faster focus even in low light conditions.

• Metering

It is the amount of light which reflects from the subject and the camera calculate how much of light from the subject and give you a very basic exposure which is not very dark or very bright but a medium exposure.

Centre weighted metering- If set with centre focusing point it will calculate how much of light reflects from the subject and will give you a decent exposure.

Evaluative Metering - Camera will calculate how much light coming into the camera from the entire scene and will give u a medium exposure.

Partial Metering - It takes about 12% to 13% from the centre point and evaluate the scene.

Recommended to go with Evaluative Metering for the beginners.
You can adjust the darker or Brighter settings from Exposure Composition settings.
Minus is darker and Plus is Brighter.
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If the whole scene is dark, you have to under expose.
If you shooting a bright scene, you have to over expose.

Experiment on the same scene using various exposures.

• Picture Style

Go with Standard.


(Be a better photographer in 45 Mins by Sudhir Shivaram - Youtube - Published on September 22nd 2017)

Click for the Youtube Video