Photography for Beginners: Camera Shooting Modes

So you're new to photography, and you just bought your first digital camera. And you may have noticed that there's a dial, on your camera with a bunch of letters on it, without any explanation. Those letters designate your shooting modes. I'm gonna spend the next few minutes, explaining what those modes are, and why you might use them. The first mode that you're likely to see, is usually labeled P. Now, P doesn't stand for professional, P stands for program mode. And in program mode, your camera makes all the decisions for you. You're not making any creative decision, other than your choice of what you point the camera at, and when you trigger the shutter. Your camera makes your decisions for you regarding shutter speed and aperture, it tries to make a best guess for it, if that's all you're interested in doing, is taking some fun snapshots, and never thinking about it, program mode is the mode for you. But if you're interested in learning more about photography, and taking more creative control, over the photographic process, then you're gonna wanna move on to some of the next modes. Depending on what camera model you have, you may have a mode that's designated as S, or as the case may be with my Canon camera, it's designated as TV, this is shutter priority mode. And in this mode, you choose your shutter speed. So if you're shooting action, let's say you're shooting wildlife that's moving fast or sports, you may need a fast shutter speed to free the action, shutter priority mode, is the mode for you. The next mode that you're likely to encounter, is typically labeled as A, or as the case may be with my Canon camera AV, this stands for aperture priority mode. And in aperture priority mode, you choose what aperture that you're shooting at, like F11 or F8. And this is useful mostly for landscape photography. Aperture controls what is known as depth of field, which is the range of sharp focus from near to far, and, with aperture priority mode, you can set your aperture, and determine how much of the subject is in focus. Another mode is labeled as M, and this stands for manual mode, and in manual mode, you choose both the shutter speed, and the aperture. I don't really shoot in manual mode all that often myself, usually I might use it, if I'm in a tricky lighting situation, where the camera meter, is having difficulty coming up with the proper exposure, or maybe if I'm doing long exposure effects, and I know I'm gonna have exposures that are 20 or 30 seconds long, I might shoot in manual mode then. Many cameras will have a final mode, which is labeled as B, and B stands for bulb. In bulb mode, basically, as long as you are pressing the shutter, the exposure will keep running. So bulb mode is useful, if you're doing really long exposure effects. Longer than 30 seconds, one example of when you would use bulb mode would be if you're doing night photography, let's say you're photographing stars, as they streak across the night sky, your exposure times might be 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour or even longer, you would use bulb mode, you press the shutter, keep pressing the shutter button down, until your exposure is done, and then you release, and the exposure is over. Some camera models may have some additional custom, or proprietary modes, but program, aperture priority, shutter priority, manual and bulb, are the five key ones that you need to understand, and hopefully as you learn more, and get better with photography, you'll stop shooting program mode, and just use the remaining four.