Exposure Modes

C
anon has introduced
a variety of Special
Scene modes over
recent models to
help overcome tricky lighting
conditions, namely Night
Portrait, Handheld Night
Scene and HDR Backlight
Control. In fact, with so many
options the Mode dial was
starting to look a little
cluttered, and so these have
been lumped together under
the SCN setting on more
recent cameras. Heres what
they are and what they do
Special
Scene
Special Scene modes vary by camera too, but commonly include
HDR Backlight Control, Night Portrait, and Handheld Night Scene.
Where these are found under the SCN setting, scroll the Main dial
left or right to choose between the available Scene modes. On
some D-SLRs, all the Basic Zone modes are found under SCN.
01 SCN MODE
Ideal for those situations where you dont have a tripod but
want to capture a scene in low light, rather than using a lengthy
exposure which would result in camera shake, the camera takes
four shots in rapid succession, then merges them together to
create a shake-free image.
04 HANDHELD NIGHT SCENE
Night Portrait is for taking photos of people under low-light
conditions where you still want to capture the ambience of the
scene. The ash is red to light your main subject, but a longer
exposure is used so that the background is well exposed too, and
for this reason its best to use a tripod to prevent camera shake.
For high-contrast scenes that would result in areas of over- or
underexposure, this takes three consecutive shots at different
exposure settings then merges them in-camera to produce a
high dynamic range image that captures information both in
the dark shadows and in bright highlights.
05 HDR BACKLIGHT CONTROL
03 NIGHT PORTRAIT
02 SELECT THE MODE
The Special Scene modes are accessed differently, depending in
which camera model you are using. More recent cameras (such
as the 700D), group them together under SCN, whereas older
models (such as the 650D) give them each their own separate
space on the Mode dial.
Your Canon has a host of Special
Scene modes hidden away