How to Set Up Your Point-and-Shoot Digital Camera, Volume 3: Beach/Snow and Night Portrait modes

Last week I covered the most basic 3 modes aside from "Auto" mode to use when taking pictures of people.  Chances are that your camera has a couple of other very specific modes for taking photos of people:

Night Portrait

Beach/Snow

"Beach/Snow" mode and "Night Portrait" (sometimes called "People at Night" mode depending on your camera's make and model); maybe you've wondered when exactly you should use them and why.  

First the "Beach/Snow" mode:  If you've ever tried to take pictures of people at the beach or in the snow you've probably had some disappointing results.  When it's sunny outside the sand, water, and snow reflect the light, making the scene extra bright.  By default your camera's sensor determines the exposure by evaluating the overall brightness of the scene, so the people in your photo, who are much darker than the snow or sand (even if, like me, they are so pale they practically glow) are likely to be underexposed, or even silhouetted.  Sometimes this is a cool effect, but typically it isn't what you were trying to capture.  Or your camera might "spot-meter" by taking the light reading off of the subject you are focusing on.  In this case, the person in your photo is properly exposed, but the background is completely washed out, or "blown out" in photography terms.  By using the "Beach/Snow" modes your camera will turn the flash on.  Why on earth would you need a flash when it's already too bright?  Isn't too much light the problem?  Actually the real problem is too much contrast in the scene.  In order to resolve the dilemna of exposing for either the bright surroundings or the person you are trying to take the photo of, the flash provides just enough additional light to your darker subject so that it will balance out the overall exposure.  This is called "fill-flash," and it solves the problem.  

without fill-flash

with fill-flash

Okay, so these photos weren't taken at the beach (although there was sand and water), or in the snow, but I always use fill-flash at the beach or snow when taking photos of people so I couldn't find an example, plus it illustrates another point I want to make, the "Beach/Snow" setting can come to your rescue when you find yourself in a very high contrast situation like I had, even when you aren't at the beach or in the snow, like at the pool for instance; the concrete and water produce the same sort of high contrast situation as the sand and surf.  Here in Vegas I find myself in high-contrast situations quite frequently, especially when shooting mid-day.  Another way to get fill-flash is to force the flash to fire rather than choosing a setting like "Beach/Snow," but I'll cover that and more about flash in a future post.

"Night Portrait" or "People at Night" mode.  This is an often overlooked but very useful setting.  Have you ever tried to take a photo of someone at night and you wanted a picture of the whole scene, but what you ended up with was a photo of your subject with the background so dark it could have been taken anywhere?  This is where "Night Portrait" mode comes in.  Your camera might have a few different settings to use at night, but the one with the icon that has the person in it is a special mode that combines both flash and a slower shutter speed.  In photographers' lingo it's a technique known as "dragging the shutter."  Your camera will take a longer exposure allowing the background not lit by your flash to show, and then will "freeze" your subject by firing a flash at the end of the exposure so that your subject isn't blurry, although moving people or objects in the background not primarily lit by the flash would be blurred.  The end result is that you can see the both your background and your subject.  See the below examples from Christmas Eve last year.  While I like that my son is isolated in the bottom of the two photos below, in the top photo too much would have been lost.  Without "dragging the shutter" all we would see is my brother wearing the shark towel on his head, and we wouldn't know why he was wearing that (to make my son laugh) or seen my clearly very amused husband in the background looking on. 

So these photos point out an additional point, that you can use the "Night Portrait" mode in any low-light situation indoors or out.  My sister's home was very pleasantly lit that evening, but as I'm sure you've experienced, well-lit to your eye and well-lit to your camera are two very different things.

Cameras vary and your camera may have even more specific options for photos of people indoors or outdoors.  "Indoor" modes will usually assume tungsten lighting which is yellow in color (yes light has color and temperature) and it adjusts your color balance accordingly.  If you if you are taking photos indoors where it is lit with overhead flourescents, say at your child's school for instance, the "Indoor" setting might result in a color cast since flourescent lights are typically more green.   Of course as we all change over to our more "Green" (pun intended) compact flourescent bulbs, that will increasingly be an issue, but chances are the camera manufactures will start making "Flourescent" settings more common on our cameras to compensate for this.  

So now you've added 2 more photography terms to your vocabulary, "fill-flash" and "dragging the shutter." So the next time you use your "People at Night" mode and get a nice photo, when someone tells you what a great picture you took be sure to impress them by telling them, "yea, I dragged the shutter on that one."  They won't have a clue what you're talking about, but they're sure to think that you are an expert.  You're welcome!

Before I move into the settings on your camera for photographing landscapes, and other specialty settings like Macro and fireworks, we'll be taking a break from details on settings and I'll be spending several weeks covering more general topics on how to take better pictures.  As always, it's great to read your comments and emails and find out what topics you would like to me to cover.