Like modern film cameras, digital cameras offer a series of picture-taking modes for situations such as candid portraits, scenes, night shots, action shots, and so on. Although all of these are useful in exploring creativity, there are some digital features that can make you a better photographer before you snap that first photo.

White balance

All types of whites are not the same. The human brain adjusts the color of light for you so you perceive sunlight, fluorescent light, incandescent light, and other types of illumination in a similar manner. In reality, incandescent lights are redder and fluorescent lights are greener than true daylight.

Many digital cameras enable you to set a custom white balance. Basically, your camera evaluates an object, such as a piece of white paper, and then saves the values as your standard white. Check your camera's user guide to find out how to do this for your specific camera model.

If you've used a camcorder, you're familiar with the white balance control used to adjust how white light records on video. White balance control works exactly the same way on digital cameras and offers most of the following settings:

• Sunny Daylight: Sometimes called simply daylight, this setting balances white light to the approximate value of 5500 K (K = Kelvin scale). This is the lighting level found under normal outdoor conditions more than an hour or two after sunrise or before sunset.
• Cloudy Daylight: Under cloudy or shaded conditions, photos can pick up excessive blue tones. This setting balances white light to the 7000 to 9000 K values, thereby warming up light to more acceptable values.
• Tungsten: Under incandescent lights, photos can appear reddish. This setting balances white light to approximately 2800 to 3200 K and renders indoor settings in a natural manner. This setting can be useful when shooting outdoors in the minutes just after sunrise or before sunset. Depending on your digital camera, Tungsten lighting is also referred to as either incandescent or indoor lighting.
• Fluorescent: Under fluorescent lights, photos can appear greenish. The exact color depends on the type of light tubes used (cool white, warm white, daylight, etc.). Digital cameras have one or more fluorescent settings that reduce the amount of green light according to the type of fluorescent lights. Some cameras refer to this setting as indoor lighting.
• Auto: Using the auto setting, your camera automatically selects its settings. All digital cameras have an automatic white balance setting that attempts to place the lightest tone as white. Although this setting is useful for most common shooting, it can be fooled in cases where no true white tones exist in the scene being photographed.
• Snow: Special scene options on some digital cameras allow for a snow setting. You can shoot images without a blue tinge and avoid making people or objects appear dark against a snowy white background.
• Beach: Reflected sunlight is strongest off sand and water. With this setting, you avoid people and objects appearing darker in contrast to the water and sand.

By experimenting with the white balance control, you'll be able to take pictures that look more representative of reality in every lighting situation.

Color saturation, tone, and contrast

Most digital cameras feature one or more controls to alter color saturation in an image -- in other words, how vivid the color appears. Some subjects call for vivid colors -- autumn foliage, for example -- but others can look garish if the color is too saturated. Following are typical settings for color saturation, tone, and contrast:

• Vivid: Renders bold, highly saturated colors. This setting may cause loss of detail; you can use image-editing software later to increase color saturation, if needed. Some cameras refer to this setting as the foliage setting.
• Neutral: Renders soft, less-intense colors. This setting is suitable for portraits and other such situations in which strong color isn't desired.

ISO

Short for International Standards Organization, ISO refers to the sensitivity of a digital camera's sensor to light. You may be familiar with the term ISO from buying film for your traditional camera.

With a digital camera, you can control the ISO setting within a range of settings. Lower settings, such as 100 or 200, mean the sensor is less sensitive to light than higher settings, like 400 or 800. A higher setting allows you to take sharper pictures in low light or action situations. Use the lowest ISO setting possible for optimal photo shooting. An ISO setting of 200 is recommended for most daylight shooting conditions.

Keep in mind that the higher the ISO setting, the greater the level of digital noise, which is an undesirable dot pattern in an image. This is comparable to high ISO film settings which result in grainy photos.

A great way to learn about ISO settings is through the auto setting on your camera. Most digital cameras indicate which ISO is automatically set depending on the available conditions for each photo. Many settings appear in your viewfinder for review prior to shooting the image or on your LCD screen. Notice which setting your camera selects when in auto mode, and then experiment using different ISO settings with the exact same image, taking multiple shots, so you can better learn this feature.

Sharpening

The sharpening control works by increasing the contrast between adjacent pixels when a sharp boundary exists. Turning off sharpness (or on some cameras, using a low-sharpening or soft setting) enables you to soften harsh edges and smooth the wrinkles on a person's face, producing more flattering portrait images.

Excessive sharpening can lead to noise in low-contrast portions of a photo, such as the sky, or to halos or borders around objects similar to those seen on a poorly adjusted TV set.

Histogram

On some digital cameras, you can view a histogram of a photo you've just taken. This is a graph displaying the pixel count as a function of brightness. By reviewing the histogram, you can determine whether the photo is properly exposed, and take another shot if necessary.

Properly exposed photos have the largest number of pixels toward the center of the histogram without an overabundance at either end. Underexposed photos have too many pixels at the dark end, whereas overexposed photos have too many pixels at the light end.

Now that you understand what all those settings are for, grab your camera and start experimenting!