Canon T4i Help and How-to series – Covering the Basic Modes on your Dial – Macro, Portrait, Creative Auto etc
A brief description of each item on the Basic side of the dial
A+ – Camera does ALL the thinking – easy to get decent photos but hard to get GREAT photos, meaning camera has average sized brain and you with a little work have an above average brain for photography and can use your camera to the best of it’s ability AND yours.
No-Flash – Auto mode that disables flash. Useful for places where the flash is prohibited i.e. small concerts, art galleries, aquariums etc. Downside camera may make poor decisions about shutter speed and ISO.
CA – Auto mode with ambiance settings that includes monochrome, vivid etc and background blur – adjusts aperture based on your background blur setting. Mildly useful for learning how aperture controls background blur or bokeh as it shows you aperture value as you change the background blur.
Portrait – Sets a small f-stop to create background blur and adjusts color settings to be pleasing for skin tones
Landscape – Opposite of portrait – sets large f-stop to keep all in focus and adjusts color settings to be more pleasing for greens and blues.
Macro Mode – complete crap. Does nothing other than set an f-stop that should provide a medium depth of field. note that when you are focusing very close your depth of field can be VERY narrow.
Sports Mode – Tries to prioritize shutter speed in such a way to keep it fast enough to freeze faster moving action
Night portrait mode – fires the flash but also keeps the shutter open longer than normally, really need a tripod but benefit is to allow more ambient light into the image. When flash fires alone at normal shutter speeds 1/60 only subject lit by flash is exposed- background is often VERY dark.
Handheld Night Scene – takes 4 images and sandwiches into one. In my experience the results are not great – very noisy. Once you learn some basics of photography you can achieve much better results in other modes.
HDR mode – Mildly useful but you give up lots of control – All about HDR mode on the Canon T4i
-
- Part of a few more images coming soon.
-
- CA mode with blur set to Maximum which set f-stop to small number
-
- M Mode- 1 Image, I slowed shutter speed, shot RAW and edited in Lightroom
-
- Handheld Night Scene – 4 Images – Really cranks the ISO up – Resulting file is always a JPEG
-
- AV Mode – f-stop = f/7.1
-
- Landscape Mode On – f-stop = f/10
-
- P mode, no difference from Macro Mode
-
- Macro Mode – Wins award for most crap mode on the dial
-
- Manual mode used, High ISO, no flash
-
- P Mode – No flash so camera was forced to pick LONG shutter which, when handheld, ends up blurry
-
- Night portrait mode – flash fired but longer exposure captures background better
-
- Standard Auto Mode with Flash
-
- Basic Modes on the Canon T4i Dial
Please subscribe and like my Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/Digital.Photo.Recommendations) to stay informed of giveaways and more.
Shop Amazon http://goo.gl/weCit and help keep these videos Ad free
Shop Amazon UK: http://goo.gl/nQDvY
| Amazon UK
| Amazon CA
- Buy anything at all through the link and I earn a small percentage
Or Donate via PayPal. Thank you!
Have a question not answered by this post? Email me or send me a message on Facebook.
Digital Photo Recommendations
I have been promising this one for several weeks – finally up. Please let me know if you have any questions. If I could sum up the video and the article in one sentence – spend time learning your camera so you can move to the other side of the dial as soon as possible, you will generally get better results.
Michael Chu
My cousin has the T3i and seems to enjoy it.
Lori Killian
Thank you! Brand new at this and this was so much better than reading the manual! Look forward to reading more of your website and watching videos. We chatted a few weeks ago and on your recommendation got the Cannon 4Ti w/ the 18-135mm lens.
toby
Lore – you are very welcome. Feel free to let me know other video topics you would like to see covered.
–T