Digital camera manufacturers work hard to create a good "out of box" experience - that is, to make your first encounter with your camera fun, easy, and rewarding. To that end, cameras leave the factory in automatic picture-taking mode, using default settings that are likely to produce a good picture the first time you press the shutter button.
Somewhere on the back of your camera, you should find a button that displays a setup menu in the camera's LCD monitor, as shown in Figure 1. In addition to standard photographic options such as exposure and flash, many cameras offer the following basic operational settings:
Figure 1: Scroll through camera menus to discover what options are available.
- Date/Time: This setting is perhaps the most critical of the basic operation controls. Your camera records the current date and time in the image file, along with details about what other camera settings were in force when you shot the picture. In many photo editors and image browsers, you can view this information, known as EXIF metadata.
- Auto shut-off: To conserve battery power, many cameras turn off automatically after a few minutes of inactivity. The drawback is that you can miss fleeting photographic opportunities; by the time you restart the camera, your subject may be gone.
- Instant review: After you take a picture, your camera may display it automatically for a few seconds. You may want to turn this function off when you're trying to capture fast-paced subjects because the camera won't take another picture until the review period is passed. And because monitors consume power, also turn off instant review if you're worried about running out of battery juice.
- Monitor brightness: Adjusting the monitor brightness can make pictures easier to view in bright light. But be careful: The monitor may then give you a false impression of your image exposure. Before you put your camera away, double-check your pictures in a setting where you can use the default brightness level.
- Auto-rotate: This feature automatically rotates pictures that you take with a vertical orientation so that they display properly in the camera monitor.
- TV/video format (NTSC, PAL, or SECAM): If your camera has a video-out feature, which enables you to hook your camera to a TV, VCR, or DVD player, you may get the choice of these three video-signal formats. Most North American countries go with NTSC, as does Japan. In Europe, PAL is the standard. You can find the proper format for other countries by doing a quick Web search.
- Sound effects: Digital cameras are big on sounds: Some play a little ditty when the camera is turned on. Some beep to let you know that the camera's autofocus or autoexposure mechanism has done its thing, and others emit a little "shutter" sound as you take the picture. Before heading to a wedding or any other event where your camera's bells and whistles won't be appreciated, check your camera menu to see whether you can silence them or at least turn down the volume.
