Understanding Camera Modes & Settings

Through the years, I’ve written extensively on camera modes and settings. Somehow, those posts have found themselves scattered here and there. To organize them, I decided to post them all in one place – right here. So, if you’re interested in learning photography and are wondering what camera modes are and how they work, please read on below. And like always, if you’ve got any questions, ask them in the comment section at the bottom of this page. I’ll answer just as fast as I can.

Understanding DSLR & Mirrorless Camera Modes & Settings

Understanding the modes on a DSLR or mirrorless camera is probably the greatest barrier to any amateur photographer who wants to move further in their photographic journey. Modes are those things that we all know are there and that we should probably should be using more, but that we just can’t find the time or patience to wrap our heads around. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not that tough. The whole ball of wax can be explained in one sitting and after some practice, using modes will seem like second nature. The key though, is what I just mentioned – learning and practice. Without those, it simply can’t happen.

In this post, I’m going to cover what those little letters on your camera dial stand for and what they make your camera do. Once you see that they really aren’t intimidating, you’ll be off to the races.

Camera Modes​

I should make one thing clear before I begin. In this section, I won’t be discussing any of the fully automatic settings, meaning the settings on the mode dial that use either an icon or a picture. Examples of these would be the auto-flash or non-flash automatic setting, the action setting or the landscape setting. The list can go on, depending on what brand of camera you own. I also won’t be discussing the “P” (program) setting, as that’s fully automatic as well. The primary difference between the P setting, or mode, is that when used, you have the choice of whether or not you’d like to use the built in flash, simply by clicking the flash button or by leaving it be. This is different than using the non-flash mode or the auto-flash mode. The auto-flash mode will decide the flash usage for you and the non-flash mode will restrict flash usage.

So, what will I be discussing? Well, if you take a look at the mode dial of a Canon Rebel, you’ll see a few additional available settings that I haven’t referred to yet. They are aperture priority, shutter priority, full manual mode, and ISO. While these may sound confusing, like I mentioned earlier, they aren’t. All that’s required to understand them is a bit of reading and patience.

Aperture Priority​

Out of all the camera modes I’m going to discuss in this post, aperture priority is the most challenging to grasp. It’s because, like many things in life, what you think means one thing actually means another. I’ll explain what I mean further down.

In order to put your camera in aperture priority mode, you’ll need to turn your mode dial to the “Av” on Canons or to the “A” on Nikons, Sonys and many others. Now, by changing your camera setting to aperture priority, it doesn’t mean that you just created a free for all. I remember back when I first began my journey into photography, I was a bit nervous about selecting anything other than full automatic mode. I thought, by taking photos in any other mode, I was going to have to start fiddling with more areas I was comfortable with.

Both aperture and shutter priorities are baby steps. By switching your camera mode to one of these two, you’re merely manually controlling that one aspect of your camera’s operation. All other aspects are still handled automatically by the camera, so there’s not much to worry about.

So, what is aperture priority? Well, it’s you telling the camera what you’d like the lens’s aperture to be, meaning how much light you’d like to allow to pass through the lens, into the camera. Aperture can be considered the adjustable light entry mechanism of your camera. The larger the hole, the more light is able to pass through and the smaller the hole, the less light.

If you’re shooting in aperture priority mode, your camera is going to compensate for the light you’re allowing through to the camera’s sensor. If you have the aperture wide open, allowing a lot of light through, your camera will compensate by adjusting to a faster shutter speed, inhibiting too much light and resulting in an over exposed photo. If you shrink the aperture, your camera will compensate by adjusting to a slower shutter speed, letting more light through.

So, why would you want to allow a lot of light through with a large aperture? Why would you want a fast shutter speed? Most likely action shots or pictures of things that have a lot of movement in them. If you’re after clarity of moving objects, you want a fast shutter speed and a large aperture. If you’d like to let less light through and have a slower shutter speed, you’re most likely attempting to take advantage of blur effects or are using a tripod for a subject that is very still.

If I stopped here and encouraged you to head outside to play with the aperture priority mode of your DSLR camera, I’d be doing you a disservice. This is because, while what I explained so far is rather simple to understand, there is more to it. And that more is called, depth of field.

In camera-speak, depth of field refers to the range of distance that appears acceptably sharp. I’m sure you’ve seen photographs that are extremely sharp in one area and blurry in another. A great example of this is portraits or close ups. Photographs like this would be considered to have a “shallow depth of field.” Photographs of landscapes and far away objects, with most everything in focus, would be considered to have a “large depth of field.”

Why does this matter? Well, depth of field is controlled by your camera’s aperture setting. If your camera lens is set to have a very large aperture, your photographs will have a shallow depth of field. If you have your lens set to a small aperture, your photos will have a large depth of field.

With cameras, aperture is measured with numbers called “f-stops.” Each number represents the particular size of the hole your lens is set to. The larger the number, the smaller the hole and the larger the depth of field will be. The smaller the number, the larger the hole and the shallower the depth of field will be. I know, this is the confusing part I was referring to back at the beginning of this section.

I have two ways to help my brain remember things when it comes to aperture and depth of field. If you’d like a shallow (small) depth of field in your photos, choose a small number. If you’d like a deep (large) depth of field, choose a large number.

The way I’ve been dealing with this idea is the think about using a big zoom lens on my camera. I know that when I zoom in on something all the way, the depth of field becomes very shallow. I also know that by zooming in all the way, my lens grows in length, letting in less light. In zoom lenses, the loss of light by the extension of the tube is compensated by the expanding of the aperture, thus allowing in more light and causing a shallow depth of field. Just think that by extending the lens length when zooming in, you’re reducing the distance between the lens and the subject. Smaller distance, smaller f-stop number, smaller depth of field.

The opposite is true when I zoom all the way out of something. By keeping the lens tube as short as possible, a lot of light is coming through. To compensate for this, the lens shrinks the aperture and allows as little light through as possible. This causes a deeper depth of field. Reducing the length of a lens is increasing the distance between it and the subject. Larger distance, larger f-stop number, larger depth of field.

So to remember:

Small number: Shallow depth of field and a lot of light is allowed to pass through.

Large number: Deep depth of field and not a lot of light is allowed to pass through.

Shutter Priority​

Fortunately, shutter priority is a bit easier to understand than aperture priority. Although, there are moving pieces with both priorities and that’s why it takes so much practice to become a great photographer.

To switch your camera to shutter priority, simply turn the mode dial to “Tv” on Canons and “S” on Nikons and Sonys. By making this change, you’ll be telling the camera that you’d like to control the speed of the shutter (the amount of light and movement into the camera). And similar to choosing aperture priority, when choosing shutter priority, the camera will automatically choose its aperture setting.

I think the big question here is why in the world would you want to choose either a fast shutter speed or a slow shutter speed. To answer this question, you’d have to think about what type of picture you’re after and what the conditions are.

Fast shutter speeds are great for action shots, when there is a lot of movement. By setting the shutter speed to just a fraction of a second, you’d be essentially very quickly capturing a specific moment in time. Think waves crashing on a shore or a race car zooming around a track. In these instances, you most likely don’t want blur. If you are after blur for special effects, you can always increase the shutter speed so the camera captures all the movement you’d like.

There are other times that you most likely want to control shutter speed as well. For instance, if you have your camera set up on a tripod and are attempting to take a picture of the stars or the moon at night, you most likely want to dencrease the shutter speed to allow as much light through as possible. Conversely, if you’re in a situation with an over abundance of light, you’d most likely want to increase the shutter speed, inhibiting light from coming through.

Manual Mode​

If you have a very controlled environment or would like to experiment with your camera, you most likely want to use full manual mode. To switch your camera to this setting, simply turn the mode dial to “M” for Canons, Nikons and Sonys. By doing this, you’ll be taking control of setting the aperture as well as the shutter speed.

As I mentioned above, the reasons you might want to use manual mode is if you are conducting a photo shoot where you are dictating the environment, such as one indoors or one outdoors where you have control over the lighting. Also, if you want to immerse yourself into the world of camera settings for practice, full manual mode is where it’s at. Just be sure to read your camera manual to learn how to actually set the aperture and shutter speed.

ISO​

Camera ISO can be best explained as the camera sensor’s sensitivity to light. ISO settings use numbers to display that sensitivity. The lower the number, the less sensitive the sensor is and the higher the number, the more sensitive the sensor is. ISO settings are of tremendous value to photographers and the longer you photograph, the more you’ll come to understand the setting’s place in the digital image world.

In order to change the ISO setting, most DSLR cameras will have a button marked as “ISO” and a small dial nearby. To actually change the setting, you’ll want to hit the button and turn the dial. Like I mentioned before, you can choose from a range of ISO values, so if you turn the dial one way, you’ll be lowering those values and if you turn it the other way, you’ll be raising them.

Before I continue on, I’m going to give you a word of warning regarding ISO values. While low values aren’t as sensitive to light as high values are, low values tend to offer the clearest, least “grainy” photographs. Because of the extra sensitivity of high ISO values, grain is introduced into the photo. And by grain, I mean speckled artifacts all over the image. If you’ve ever tried to take a picture at night, you may have seen what I’m talking about after looking at the finished product.

Camera manufacturers have come a long way with cleaning up the digital noise that can be found from using high ISO values. So by the time you read this post, much of this issue may not exist anymore. There are other factors to consider when dealing with ISO though, so please read on.

So, when would you want to use a low ISO setting? Well, if you have plenty of light or are using a tripod and want the best quality, low ISO is the way to go. If you have less light and aren’t using a tripod, you may want to raise the ISO up a bit. There are also tons of other reasons why you’d want to raise and lower your camera’s ISO value, but those are for more advanced posts to be written another day. For now, I’d suggest sticking with what I attempted to explain above.

Real World Photography Example​

I’m going to give you a scenario here and I want you to think about what you would do in this situation. I’ll offer some suggestions as to what I would do below.

Let’s say you are on a beach and would like to take a picture of the waves crashing on the sand. You want to capture as much detail as possible and you want your entire picture to be in focus. The time of day is dusk, so the sun may be setting, reducing your available light. How would you set your camera if it was in fully manual mode?

In the most general terms, this is what I would do. In order to capture the utmost detail of each droplet of water, I would set my shutter speed to move very quickly. In order to have the entire photograph in focus, from front to back, I would set the aperture to be very small (high number). To compensate for the lower light of the atmosphere, the fast shutter speed and the small aperture, I would increase the ISO setting.

Do you agree? Disagree? What would you do? Have you taken photographs like this? If so, what were your settings?

A Different Perspective On Camera Modes

I love discussing how to use basic shooting modes with newer photography enthusiasts. The reason behind this is that so few beginners actually know what to do with them. And after they try to learn by themselves, they oftentimes give up. I understand their dilemma. Learning the photography triangle, about aperture sizes, and shutter speeds can seem daunting and even counterintuitive. When something goes bigger, it seems as though it should have gone smaller. Left should go right and up should go down. Admittedly, the mechanics of photography can take a while to wrap one’s head around.

Have you ever considered the benefit of venturing away from Auto mode into one of the other modes? Auto is great for everyday shooting, but when you shoot with purpose and want specific results, you likely won’t get them by using Auto. The problem is, Auto is great. It takes wonderful shots. For many, there’s very little reason to change. I even use the mode frequently. But when push comes to shove and I need to get creative or meet a specification, I switch right over to what will give me the results I’m after. Using a basic mode, such as Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority takes the guesswork out of photography. It allows the photographer to choose his or her settings to dial into what’s needed during a specific situation. Below, I’ll explain exactly how each mode works and how it might help you with your craft.

Auto Mode

This mode operates exactly as it sounds. Everything the camera does is automatic, from setting the exposure, shutter speed, aperture, flash usage, ISO value, and more. It’s easy to use Auto mode and that’s why so many beginning photographers do. When taking advantage of this mode, the camera attempts to measure the scene’s lighting as best as possible and work its settings around that. It also attempts to interpret your motives be keeping the shutter speed at a rather fast pace. There’s little sense in measuring the lighting in a scene and then giving the end user an extremely slow shutter speed. The user won’t be able to take quality photos if this is the case. As such, you can be confident that this mode will suffice for most situations. It’s also great when letting someone borrow your camera to snap a quick photo. There’s no thinking involved.

Program Mode

When setting your camera to Program mode, you’ll find options that were once unavailable, available. These options may include ISO, flash, file type, and picture parameters (found in the menu settings). With Program mode, however, the camera will still take care of metering the scene and setting the aperture size and the shutter speed. And even then, you, as the photographer, can still set the ISO to auto and not even concern yourself with that. Essentially, Program mode is a great Auto mode, but with more flexibility. This is where many novice photographers find themselves.

By its very nature, this mode has certain tendencies. It’ll select the fastest shutter speed and the widest aperture available. This is to avoid any possibility of motion blur or camera shake in resulting images. There may be times, however, that this mode doesn’t work as well as it’s supposed to. These times usually revolve around lower lighting situations. In these situations, you should manually adjust your ISO values (make the sensor more sensitive – increase the ISO number) to compensate for any possible blur. If you’re shooting in very bright lighting, the camera will adjust by reducing the size of the lens’s aperture. Doing this will block the light to obtain the correct exposure. Personally, I like this mode over Auto because I can control the built-in flash myself. I don’t like it popping up all the time when I’m in lower light situations. I also like having full control over the ISO values.

Shutter Priority Mode

Now we’re getting into the fun stuff. When choosing Shutter Priority mode, you get to control your camera’s shutter speed and the camera will choose the aperture size. This is beneficial when you either want very sharp images (fast shutter speed) or the introduction of some blur (slower shutter speed). Whether that be blur coming from you moving the camera, objects in your scene moving, or both. If the clarity and sharpness of your resulting images aren’t important, you might want to choose another mode. This is a very purposeful one.

Now, there is a pitfall to concern yourself with when it comes to using this mode. When choosing very slow shutter speeds, a lot of light will likely touch your camera’s sensor, potentially over-exposing your images. Except, of course, when it’s dark outside. When lots of light comes through the lens, the camera will automatically reduce the size of its aperture. When it’s all the way reduced, too much light may still come through, if the shutter speed is slow enough. And if the ISO is all the way reduced to its least sensitive state as well (generally between 60 and 100, depending on your camera), you’ll need to turn to neutral density filters as a physical light reduction method. This is merely something to keep in mind. A limitation, if you will.

Aperture Priority Mode

As you may have guessed, your lens’s aperture size has a great impact on how much light travels through it and ultimately hits the camera’s sensor. When using this mode, you choose the aperture size and the camera sets the shutter speed, based on the scene’s lighting. Besides controlling exposure, many photographers use this mode to control the depth of field, or blur, in a shot. A larger aperture creates more blur in the foreground and background and a smaller aperture reduces the amount of blur in these areas. There are other factors that go into how shallow or deep a depth of field is, but for now, just know that aperture size has something to do with it. Like Shutter Priority and Program mode, you can still control the ISO values in Aperture Priority mode.

Full Manual Mode

For years, full Manual mode was the most intimidating part of photography for me. I had no idea how to take advantage of it because I had no idea what it controlled. Upon reflection, I shouldn’t have been as intimidated as I was because it really isn’t very intimidating at all. Basically, this mode allows the photographer to control the lens’s aperture size and the camera’s shutter speed. The camera will still meter the scene and make suggestions, but ultimately, it’s you who is in charge. When would someone want to use this mode? When they’re experimenting, desiring a very specific outcome, or inside a controlled environment. Oftentimes, when shooting in a studio or something similar where the lighting and distances are controlled, it’s best to use Manual mode to control exactly what occurs while taking a photo. Any other setting would insert unpredictability to the session.

When shooting in Manual, you can still leave your ISO value set to auto, so the camera chooses the sensor’s sensitivity. So let’s say that you’re on safari and you know you need a very fast shutter speed to capture any action as it occurs, but you also want a very shallow depth of field. In cases like these, you’d leave your ISO set to auto and then you’d choose a desirable shutter speed and keep it there. Then, you’d adjust your aperture size as necessary (as you move closer and farther away from your subject). This is a prime example of wanting a specific outcome while photographing. There are many examples of when you might want to use Manual mode and I invite you to share some of yours down below.

If you have any questions in regards to the basic camera modes available to you, please don’t hesitate to ask down below. I’d be more than happy to help.

Why Use Your Camera’s Full Manual Mode?​

Full manual mode means full control. When you shoot in manual, you’re essentially telling the camera what aperture and shutter speed to use. You’re dictating what kind of depth of field your photos will exhibit as well as how much motion blur they will include. You can either set your ISO to automatic or you can control that as well. The question is, when would you want to use manual mode on your DSLR? You need to remember, when dealing with manual mode, it’s your responsibility to obtain a proper exposure. If your ISO setting is set to auto, the camera can help out some, but it may not be able to offer a proper exposure every single time you take a picture. To do that (and not even then), you’ll need to set your camera to Auto mode.

For my Canon T7i, I flip into manual mode by turning the top dial to the “M” setting. It’s that simple. It’s the same setting for most cameras (Sony, Nikon), with the exception of Fuji. This company is a bit different when it comes to camera settings. If you own one of these, you’ll need to set each aspect of the exposure triangle (aperture, shutter speed, ISO) to manual individually.

Shooting in full manual mode is a whole ball of wax unto itself. You’ll really need to learn how to go about this for good results. What I want to discuss here is when you may want to use this mode.

Let’s say you have a lower or higher light situation and you’re going for a particular look. It’s always better to get most of the appearance you’re going for right out of the camera, so you won’t have to change things too much in post-processing. Your camera wants to properly expose your images. If you’d like to darken a scene or brighten a scene on purpose, you can force your camera to under or over expose a shot using this mode.

Studio photographers almost always use full manual mode. When using strobe lights, the camera can’t predict what the lighting will be a second from now, so you’ll need to tell it. This is why you see photographers using light meters and other tools. Think about it this way; if you were taking a photo in a studio and you meter the camera in Auto mode, the camera is taking in the information for what the scene lighting is at that moment. When the strobe goes off and the scene gets much brighter, the camera isn’t prepared for all that light. It’s then you’ll find that your exposure isn’t correct. Most likely over exposed – by a lot.

Here’s a question for you. When do you use manual mode on your camera? What are your reasons for doing so? Please let me know down below. Thanks!

What’s Camera Manual Mode? Do I Need to Learn How to Use It?​

This is actually a pretty awesome question. Many beginning photographers don’t quite understand all the power their cameras are capable of, so it’s best to explain some of it to help folks take the best photos they can.

Manual mode is one of those elusive settings that not a lot of photographers know what to do with. When I first began photographing about a decade ago, I avoided Manual mode as much as I could. Auto mode was my best friend and honestly, I think I took some pretty great photos with that setting. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered why Manual mode is so important and why photographers might want to use it.

If you look at the mode settings on your camera, you’ll likely find Auto, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Manual and a few presets, such as Sports (Action), Night (Low Light), Beauty (Bokeh) and a few others. Don’t worry about these presets right now. All they do is prioritize some settings, depending on which preset you’re using.

To keep a long story short, Manual mode allows the photographer to fix the ISO, aperture and shutter speed settings. You can also set your white balance under this mode for most cameras and perhaps always change that setting on other cameras, no matter the mode you’re in. Anyway, instead of keeping your camera in Auto mode and allowing the camera to make all the decisions for you, you’ll set everything. Instead of switching your camera to Aperture Priority mode where you would choose that setting and allow the camera to set everything else, again, you would make all the decisions for your camera’s settings. When you’re in Manual mode, you’ll tell the camera which ISO setting you’d like to use, which aperture setting you’d like to use, and which shutter speed you’d like to use.

I understand that to a beginner, this seems overwhelming. If you don’t know a lot about photography yet, it is overwhelming. But remember, that’s only because you don’t know a lot yet. Once you learn what each one of these aspects of your camera does, you’ll be flipping these settings around like crazy. It’s honestly not that difficult. All you need to do is wrap your head around a few concepts.

So here’s a question for you. When might a photographer want to use Manual mode? I mean, if Auto is so great, why not just use it all the time? The answer is, when you’re goal for the photograph is different than the camera’s. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re taking pictures of your son’s soccer game. You have your camera set to Auto and you snap away. Your goal is to have the resulting photos be crisp and clear because there’s lots of action and nobody really wants to see pictures full of motion blur. Since the camera has no way of knowing that you wanted crisp results of all the fast movement, it merely composed the photo for the proper exposure (lighting). It may have chosen to adjust the aperture setting to deal with the light in the scene as opposed to quickening up the shutter speed. If you were using Manual mode, you’d know that you would need to use a fast shutter speed because that would coincide with your goal of sharp photos of lots of action. You’d likely also set the aperture yourself to obtain the desirable background blur. While taking shots like this, it’s very common to set the ISO to Auto because it’s so much easier to let the camera meter the atmosphere for the proper exposure.

Another example might be when you’re taking photos at an indoor birthday party. It’s dark and the birthday girl or boy is blowing out the her or his candles on the cake. You want to take a photo and you use Auto mode. This is fatal mistake. During situations like these, you’ll need to manually hasten the shutter speed so you don’t get motion blur again and you’ll probably want to set the aperture nice and wide as well so it’ll let lots of light in.

Finally, another example of when photographers use Manual mode is when they’re in a fixed scene and when they want consistent photos. This is generally the situation when taking studio shots. The lighting in the studio is always the same and the subject of the shot is always sitting in the same chair. Senior photos are a good example of this. Once you meter the scene with the camera and choose the proper exposure settings, there’s no reason to change them. Manual mode is great for locking in camera settings so the camera doesn’t constantly try to choose them over and over again, which could sometimes cause varied results.

I hope this helped you understand what a camera’s Manual mode is and why someone might want to take advantage of it. If you have any questions, please ask. Thanks!

Using Camera Preset Modes

Both DSLR and mirrorless cameras have lots of features and modes to help the budding photographer take stellar photographs. Full Manual mode can be tricky to use for beginners, so Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, and the rest devised a way to help, as well as teach, the newer user how to operate a somewhat daunting looking piece of electronics. Some of these modes include presets such as Landscape, Sports, Portrait, and Program that can pretty much take almost all of the thinking out of picture taking. Other modes such as Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority help a lot, but require the user to understand more about what they’re doing. Many modes can be customized by adding or removing exposure. The nice thing is, there’s a button and dial combo that’s made specifically for this task. In this post, I’ll be discussing all of the above. What I’d like to focus on is giving descriptions of each of these modes and explaining when someone might want to use them.

Aperture Priority

This priority mode is more advanced than the presets. With this mode, you’ll need to understand what the aperture in a lens controls. There are two things photographers primarily focus on while using aperture priority mode; light and blur. The aperture in a lens is simply a hole that grows and shrinks, depending on the photographer’s desire. If he or she needs more light, he or she can open up the aperture. The same is true for less light. Simply close down the aperture. A byproduct of allowing more light to travel through the lens is foreground and background blur. The larger the aperture, the more blur. The smaller, less.

So really, when using Aperture Priority, light is the more straightforward of the two. When someone is attempting to get creative or to separate the subject from the rest of the scene, they take advantage of the blurring aspects of this feature. Essentially, all they’re doing is altering the amount of focus that contacts the camera’s sensor.

Shutter Priority

Like the above, this priority mode controls light and blur. By slowing down the shutter speed, a person can obtain a level of creativity by allowing motion blur into their image. Speeding up the shutter speed will allow for a sharper and crisper image. The primary reason for keeping a slower shutter speed is to allow more light into the camera to touch the sensor. And the primary reason for speeding the shutter speed up is to allow less light. The motion blur thing is merely a byproduct of that speed. When photographing, decide if you’re in a situation that may require a specific shutter speed, such as a sports game. If you’re shooting something that’s fast moving, you’d want to speed up that shutter speed.

Landscape Mode

If you look on your camera’s dial, you’ll likely see a preset mode that’s identified by an icon of a mountain or something like that. This is called Landscape mode. It’s basically a setting where the camera presets certain characteristics of the its options. This mode relies heavily on the camera’s aperture size. Oftentimes, beginning photographers won’t know which aperture size to use for which situation, so by clicking over to something that looks like a mountain when they’re shooting a landscape, the camera does the thinking for them. This mode reduces the size of the aperture as to increase the depth of field. Basically, this deepens the clarity of a photograph and reduces blur in the foreground and background. The camera may also slow down the shutter speed to compensate for the light reduction caused by the smaller aperture. It may or may not also alter the ISO, depending on the lighting in the scene.

Action/Sports Mode

Very similar to above, you may find a mode on your camera that looks like a running man. This mode alters the shutter speed, likely making it faster as to reduce any type of motion blur in an action event. To compensate for this reduction of light due to the faster shutter speed, the camera may open the aperture a bit wider and increase the value of the ISO.

Portrait Mode

This mode will be identified by a flower or a face. Or something like that. The goal of this mode is to soften the photograph and to add some creative blur to it. To do this, the camera will increase the size of the aperture in the lens to add some foreground and background blur. Because there will likely be more light coming through the lens, the camera may increase the shutter speed to compensate. It also may reduce the ISO value.

Program Mode

This is the mode that no one knows what to do with. What does Program Mode mean anyway? How is it different than Auto Mode? Well, when you set your camera to Program Mode, you allow your camera to choose the exposure (aperture, shutter speed, ISO), but you choose which type of focus you’d like to use, whether or not you use your flash, and whether or not you want to use the exposure compensation feature. More on that next.

Exposure Compensation

In every mode but Auto, you’ll have the ability to adjust your exposure via the Exposure Compensation feature on your camera. On the Canon T7i and pretty much every camera in the Rebel series, this feature can be accessed by pushing the +/- button to the right of the rear LCD screen and then rolling the top dial to the left and to the right. This is an extremely handy tool to have at your access, if you’re not familiar with how to operate full Manual Mode. For example, let’s say that you’re in Aperture Priority and have your depth of field perfectly situated for a flower shot in your garden. The only problem is, you would like to brighten the shot up a bit. It’s too dark for your taste. If you press the Exposure Compensation button and roll the top dial to the right, you’ll increase the exposure in your camera to your heart’s delight. The way the camera does this is to leave the aperture size alone, but either slow down the shutter speed, increase the ISO value, or both. Basically, when using this feature, the camera will change its settings to suit your needs. Obviously, the camera will change the settings depending on which mode you’re in and what you need, but you get the idea. You’re essentially overriding the camera’s chosen settings.

A piece of advice I have to beginner and even advanced photographers is this: when shooting in any mode I described above, keep an eye on what the camera chooses to use in regards to aperture size, shutter speed, and ISO. Cameras are great at metering scenes and setting themselves up for optimal exposure. At any time, you’re able to see those chosen exposure settings on your camera’s rear LCD screen. Take the time to note which ones have been chosen so you can set them by yourself when you venture into full Manual Mode in the future.

Canon Rebel Shooting Settings by Mode​

This is a very important point to understand. If you don’t learn this early on during your photography career, you’ll go a little nuts. Here it is. When you press the Menu button on the back of your T7i camera (or any Canon Rebel for that matter), what you see on the resulting LCD monitor will depend on what mode you’re in. I’ll give you examples below, but for right now, I’d like to offer a few bits of info for clarity.

On the rear of your camera, there are four areas that are heavily used and thus quite important to be aware of. First is the Menu button. That’s located in the upper left corner. Next is the big screen on the back of the camera. When I refer to the LCD monitor or screen, this is what I’m talking about. After that is the Set button. This is located in the center of the four other buttons located over to the right and finally, we have what’s referred to as the cross keys. These are the four buttons that surround the Set button. The reason I wanted to point these controls out is because I’ll be talking about them and referring to them ad nauseam on this site.

Remember, what you see on the screens after you press the Menu button will entirely depend on what mode you’ve got your camera set to. There are three sections that control the menu settings. First are referred to as the Basic Zone modes. These modes include Scene Intelligent Auto, Flash Off, Creative Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Close Up, Sports, Special Scene, and Creative Filters. Second are what’s referred to as Creative Zone modes. These are indicated by the M (Manual Exposure), Av (Aperture Priority), Tv (Shutter Priority), and P (Program AE). And finally, we’ve got Movie shooting mode. For the first two sections, you’ll use your top dial to choose your mode and to set your camera to Movie shooting mode, you’ll use the On/Off switch to make the setting. It’s one click past the On position.

I’ll now turn my camera on and set the top dial to one of the Creative Zone modes. Then I’ll press the Menu button and use the other dial to navigate to the first position in the red menu area. These are the Shooting Settings. I’ll list what I see as menu options.

Image Quality
Image Review
Shutter Release Without Card
Lens Aberration Correction
Lens Electronic MF

Next, I’ll set the camera to Basic Zone modes. Notice how a few of the options change.

Image Quality
Image Review
Release Shutter Without Card
Red-Eye Reduction
Live View Shoot

Finally, I’ll set the camera to Movie shooting mode. Again, notice how the options of the same section change.

Movie Recording Size
Digital Zoom
Sound Recording
Lens Aberration Correction
Lens Electronic MF

And even when I’m in Movie shooting mode, the options depend on what other mode I’m in according to the dial.

The reason I’m writing this section is because I was personally confused for a very long time. I never realized that the menu options changed depending on what setting I was in. I always thought that menu options were menu options, no matter what. In actuality, they’re fluid, which is pretty cool.