Fine-tuning your camera settings often times helps to make an average photo great. By learning the capabilities of your camera and when to use certain settings and fine-tune adjustments, finding the right setting will become familiar and easy.
Two essential things to do at some point are to refer to your camera’s user manual to see what your camera is capable of. The terms used on this website are common between camera manufacturers so hopefully searching through your camera manual will be quick once learning the right terms.
The second thing to do is familiarize yourself with your camera’s display panels and what the numbers and symbols mean. The example to the left illustrates a display panel. It might not make much sense to first-rime users, but familiarizing with these displays will go a long way to speaking the language of photography, and learning when you need to adjust what.
The image below is an example of the display panel on a camera that show the user what the current settings are. The charts below the back panel display show the typical ranges of a the most common settings displayed. It is extremely helpful to familiarize yourself with your cameras SETTINGS, RANGES, and what each setting controls.
The *ADJUSTMENTS* Section on this website goes through the most common adjustments not already covered in the Camera Modes section.