Pewari’s recent series of articles on Mastering Modes was great if you have a mid-range or DSLR camera, but what if you have a cheap compact digital?

My Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX33, for instance, doesn’t have shutter priority or aperture priority modes, never mind manual mode.

But one thing it does have is plenty of “Scene Modes”. 22 of them, to be precise.

Scene Modes change multiple settings at once in an attempt to set your camera up for a particular type of photo. For instance, you might have a landscape mode, portrait mode, party mode or action shot mode on your camera.

But the interesting thing about Scene Modes is that they will often set up your camera in ways that are otherwise quite hard to achieve on a compact digital. The trick is to experiment with all the different modes your camera has to offer and look at what they actually do, as opposed to what they’re called. There are no rules that say you can only use “Party Mode” at parties or that you have to take pictures of footballers in “Sports Mode”.

Some of the most useful modes I’ve found on my camera are the “Night Shot” and “Sunset” modes. As you’d expect, these set the camera up for longer exposures. But use them with a tripod in the day time and you can get some wonderful motion blur effects. I also particularly like “Beach Mode” on my camera, which is meant to prevent parts of your image being underexposed in strong sunlight, but also produces a rather pleasing glow when used under normal lighting conditions.

Your camera’s manual will probably explain each of the Scene Modes briefly, but there’s no substitute for experimentation. Be creative. Try the same photo with different modes, and you might surprise yourself.

So what are you waiting for? Go out and try a new Scene Mode today. In fact, try all of them!

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