I’m in a photo 1 class and talking about the program mode and flexible programming is confusing. If changing one setting changes the others to meet it, how is anything changing?
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To take a “good” photo, you need to strike a balance between 1) how much of a scene is in focus, 2) how long the sensor/film is exposed to the scene, and 3) how sensitive to light you want the sensor/film to be.
Say you want to photograph a pretty butterfly. To get a “good” photo, one where the butterfly isn’t too blurry or too dark/bright to see, these three settings need to be in a balance of sorts. When you’re picking a camera mode, you are essentially telling the camera what setting YOU want to control manually and what settings you want the CAMERA to adjust automatically to try to strike that balance:
Program Mode = I want to just point at something and take a photo. Camera, you automatically control EVERY setting and do your best to give me what you think is a good picture.
Aperture Mode = I want to control how much of my photo is in focus. Camera, you automatically control shutter speed and light sensitivity to give me the best picture you can.
Shutter Mode = I want to control how long I expose the camera sensor/film. Camera, you automatically control how much is in focus and light sensitivity to give me the best picture you can.
Manual Mode = I want to control EVERY setting about the photo. Camera, you’re benched; you control nothing, here have a Gatorade.
Let’s go back to our butterfly photo example (to simplify I’m going to use totally made up non-camera setting numbers here). Say you want to control how much of the butterfly is in focus, so you choose Aperture Mode. For your first photo, you want the whole butterfly in focus, so you choose the Aperture setting of 3. Based on this, the camera automatically adjusts the shutter speed to Medium and the sensor sensitivity to Normal. Voila, you have a great photo!
Now for your second photo, you want just the head of the butterfly in focus so you choose Aperture setting of 1. Based on this, the camera automatically adjusts the shutter speed to Slow and the sensor sensitivity to High. Snap! You have the photo you want, woo!
In both cases, what’s changing is the “behind the scenes” stuff that you told the camera you don’t care to control yourself in an attempt to give you a balanced and “good” photo. Under many circumstances, you probably won’t even notice the difference between the two photos aside from the one change you specifically made. I could go on about when you would notice the difference, but I believe that’s outside the scope of your question.
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