Confessions of a Compact Camera Shooter: Get Professional Quality Photos with Your Compact Camera

Chapter X. Setting the Mode

Like professional-grade cameras, many compact cameras offer a range of settings and adjustment options for photographers to use in different situations.

There's always the trusty automatic mode, but when you want to get more creative—and show some real shooting know-how—here are some things to consider. In this chapter, we explore the auto modes as well as tips for using the exposure, metering, focus and drive modes. C'mon. This will be fun.

Fully Automatic Picture/Exposure Modes

As photographers, we like to take portraits, landscapes, cityscapes and close-ups—serious shots and fun ones. We like still life photography and we like to capture sports and wildlife action. We shoot day and night.

Sometimes, we take our time and make careful camera adjustments. But sometimes, we simply want to point and shoot. That's when it's really nice to use fully automatic picture/exposure modes.

In this section we'll look at automatic picture/exposure modes that are available on most compact cameras. By doing some of the "thinking" for us, these modes help photographers get good shots at a moment's notice by, in most cases, simply pointing and shooting. What could be easier and more fun?

Let's go.

Full Auto Mode

Designed for fast point-and-shoot photography, the Full Auto mode is ...