ISO Speed and Shutter Speed Complex digital cameras have additional settings such as ISO speed, shutter speed and back light that allow the advanced amateur and professional photographer to dramatically affect the outcome of their pictures. As with film, ISO speed represents the sensitivity of the digital camera's light receptors. A combination of ISO speed and shutter speed allow the photographer to affect the brightness and focal length in the picture, perhaps causing the background to be slightly or even greatly out of focus. The focal length is the range of distance from the camera, such as 5 feet to 20 feet, that the picture is in sharp focus. Setting a long shutter speed allows for the taking of night or low light pictures, even those of fireworks. By setting a faster shutter speed you force the camera to open the aperture of the lens to provide the needed amount of light. The larger aperture reduces the focal length for the picture which can cause the background to go out of focus. Even some simple digital cameras have an adjustment for the sensitivity of the light receptors, similar to the ISO speed. “Exposure Compensation” settings are generally much less detailed but do allow adjusting for extremely bright or somewhat low light situations. Another feature generally found on complex digital cameras is the ability to adjust for light coming from behind your subject, or back light. If you find the subject of your picture is too dark because of the light coming from behind it, use the back light setting on your camera. This will cause the camera to concentrate on your subject (the center of the picture) when measuring the light for choosing the appropriate shutter speed and lens aperture settings. The results will be the background being brighter in the picture, along with the subject. Complex digital cameras also allow you to set the number of pixels to be used for each picture. This allows you to store more pictures in the camera when you are just taking snapshots, or pictures that you know you won't be cropping or enlarging. However, advances in storage media have rendered this somewhat meaningless. It was important when you could only store 50 or 75 pictures on your card, but not so important when the card will hold 750 pictures.
Panorama stitch software technology allows you to take two or three individual pictures and put them together in a single panoramic picture. It is best, perhaps even necessary, to use a tripod when using panorama stitch mode on your digital camera. After taking the first picture of your set and reviewing it on the camera's display, the display shows the live view and an “overlay” section from the first picture, allowing alignment of the second picture with the first. The process is repeated with an overlay of the second picture and the live view of the third in the set as shown in the example below. The overlay area is the “shadowed” area on the left side of the camera's display. The KODAK EASYSHARE M753 Zoom Digital Camera / Sterling ![]() |
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