How to Set Up Your Point-and-Shoot Digital Camera, Volume 2: Kids&Pets, Action/Sports, and Portrait Modes

If you have ever pressed your "menu"  or "function set" button, and hopefully after my last blog post you did in order to properly set your resolution (you did do that, didn't you?), chances are you have noticed the icons for the different modes your camera can be set to shoot in, and you've probably wondered what the heck they were, and when you were supposed to use them. Your camera's "Auto" mode probably does a fairly decent job most of the time, but undoubtedly you've found yourself frustrated with your pictures from time to time and didn't know what went wrong. I'll be covering the most common modes for point-and-shoot cameras over the next couple of weeks. Models vary, so your particular camera may have more or fewer options and the modes may have slightly different names, but I'm going to cover the most common ones. This week I want to start with the 3 most basic modes for taking pictures of people.

Let's start with the number one complaint I hear from people: "My kids come out blurry in my pictures." This is one of the areas where "Auto" mode can let you down. Kids are usually on the move, and often when you are taking pictures outdoors your camera's auto mode will decide there is enough light to make a proper exposure and will not fire the flash to freeze the action, or will not bump up your ISO high enough to increase your shutter speed fast enough to capture quick movement. What is ISO anyway? I promise not to get overly technical here - basically it refers to light sensitivity. If you are old enough to remember buying actual film for your camera (if not, go ask your parents - why pass up a perfectly good opportunity to make them feel old?), you had to choose which speed of film you wanted to buy: 100, 200, 400, 800, etc..  If you were taking photos outside in bright sunlight you would use 100 film, it had a lower light sensitivity and gave the best looking photos with little grain (little dots), and great color saturation. If you were shooting in low light or action shots you would use 800 film, and 400 film was sort of a compromise, for when you would be shooting both indoors and out. Well the days of film are behind us (yes, I said it, film is dead except for artsy-stuff and die-hard hold-outs who haven't accepted that digital quality really has caught up to film), but your digital camera still uses the convention of ISO, changing the light sensitivity of your camera's sensor depending on what mode you choose and the overall light conditions as determined by your camera and choosing a correspondingly fast or slow shutter speed to make the proper exposure.

So what mode should you choose for taking photos of kids or people on the move? If your camera has the option, choose the "Kids&Pets" mode. Often with an icon that looks something like the image on the left.  Cameras vary as to what exactly this setting does, but generally speaking it will fire the flash, choose a higher ISO (but will still use the overall brightness to select it), choose a faster shutter speed to reduce blur, while using a smaller aperture  giving you a wide depth of field. "Depth of field" refers to how much of your image will be in focus. A "shallow depth of field" means that only a small amount of a scene is in focus, and the rest is blurred in proportion to it's proximity to the focus point.  A "wide depth of field" means that a large amount of the scene is in focus, whether close to or far away from your focus point.  Since kids are often moving around and might move away from where you initially focused by the time your camera makes the exposure, and especially if you are trying to take a picture with more than one person in it, you'll want that wider depth of field so that they are in focus.

shallow depth of field

portrait

Depth of field is the main difference between selecting "Portrait" mode on your camera and "Kids&Pets" mode. It's often very pleasing in a portrait to have your subject in sharp focus, while the background is softly blurred. It puts more focus on your subject and is generally softer.  That is where the "Portrait" mode comes in. Especially when the background is less than perfectly pleasing this can be a real lifesaver. You're on vacation in a picturesque spot, your adorable daughter is actually sitting still for you for a moment, but right behind her off in the distance is some tacky tourist sporting the keg belly with the dark socks and sandals. Lovely. "Portrait" mode to the rescue! You can have the photo of your daughter with a pleasantly blurred background and the tacky tourist becomes just an indistinguishable blur. "Portrait" mode assumes that your subject is relatively still and that all the subjects in the photo are on the same plane. If your subjects have too much variation in distance from you, some people will be in focus and others will be out of focus. "Portrait" is definitely not the setting you want to use for a larger group photo as only the people in the center of the photo and in the same row as the person the camera focused on will be  sharp, and the others will be progressively blurrier the further in distance in any direction they are from the point of focus.  "Portrait" mode can be used for a small group, like say your spouse and 3 kids, if you make sure that everyone in the photo has their heads on relatively the same plane and you make sure that you don't stand too close when taking the picture; you may need to use your optical zoom to accomplish this (please don't use your digital zoom for this situation - I'll cover that in another post, just trust me for now on this).  The closer you are to the subjects, the larger the perceived difference between the people or objects in the scene (more on this in a later article when I cover "Macro" mode and focusing).

So what about "Sports/Action" mode? Your camera may have a separate mode for this, and in some models there isn't a "Kids&Pets" mode, so this would be the mode you would need to select if "Auto" was resulting in blurry pictures of your moving kiddos.  Typically this mode turns the flash off, because it assumes that your are too far away from your subject for the flash to make a difference (like at your kid's soccer game), and compensates for the fast movement by choosing a higher ISO.  Why not just use this mode all the time instead of "Kids&Pets?"  Since you are probably not using a flash, unless your are in a very bright setting your camera is going to have to make up for the lack of flash by setting a very high ISO to have enough light to make the proper exposure at the fast shutter speed you need to freeze the action and prevent motion blur without the flash.  The higher the ISO the more "noise" (the little dots either light and dark or with color variation)you'll have in your photos.  Here's an example of a photo with both color and luminance noise:

Back in the film days the same problem existed and caused "graininess" in photos with high ISO film.  Manufacturers differ and  if your camera doesn't have both "Kids&Pets" and "Sports/Action" modes, I think it's worth a little investigation to see if yours defaults to firing the flash or not.  Since we already established that you aren't the manual reading type, the next time you choose the "Sports/Action" mode have someone watch for the flash as you take your photo, and voilà, you'll have your answer without ever cracking open that manual, and then you'll have a better idea when you can use that mode effectively.

Night Portrait

Beach/Snow

There are a couple of other really useful modes for photographing people that your camera probably has available: the "Snow/Beach" mode and the "Night Portrait" mod and I'll cover those next week.  I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions about the challenges you face when taking pictures, so keep the comments and emails coming.