How to set up any camera within ten minutes

How often have you been handed a cam­era and asked to click pic­tures – at birth­day par­ties, at wed­dings, at pic­nics or on hol­i­days?. How often have you had to use some­one elses camera?

Using a cam­era you are not famil­iar with can be frus­trat­ing. But it is eas­ier and a lot more fun if you under­stand the set­tings on the cam­era and repro­gram them to suit your pho­tog­ra­phy. To set up any cam­era for basic oper­a­tion you don’t need to wade through its 100 page user manual.

The fol­low­ing steps will help you set up any cam­era to shoot any­thing within 10 minutes.

1. Check how much space is avail­able on the mem­ory card

2. Set the Shoot­ing mode to PROGRAM ( P ) or AUTO if PROGRAM is  not available

3. Set the Image qual­ity to the high­est level (or the sec­ond level if you have less free mem­ory on the card)

4. Set the ISO to AUTO if AUTO is unavail­able set it to 200

5. Set the White bal­ance to AUTO or AWB

6. Set the Meter­ing mode to MATRIX, EVALUATIVE or MULTI (Depend­ing on the cam­era model, they all mean the same)

7. Set the Auto Focus to SINGLE AF

8. Set the Drive mode to SINGLE. Set it to CONTINUOUS if you are shoot action

9. Turn on IMAGE STABILIZATION (IS), VIBRATION REDUCTION (VR) or ANTI-SHAKE (Depend­ing on the cam­era model, they all mean the same)

10. Turn on RED-EYE REDUCTION or RED-EYE CORRECTION for the flash­light if you are shoot­ing people

Note: This tuto­r­ial assumes what you own a com­pact dig­i­tal cam­era and are famil­iar with its fea­tures and func­tion­ing. If you are not then you should start by read­ing the cam­era manual.

As usual, if you have any queries feel free to write to me. Your com­ments can come below.