Here we are again, on Camera modes. I’ve covered several of the different modes so far: portrait, sports, and night. Today I’m going to give you a brief overview of another one you’ll find on your camera – Landscape mode.
Landscape mode is the one with the photo of a mountain and cloud on your dial. This mode is essentially the opposite of Portrait mode. Where portrait mode takes the background and blurs it out [using a large aperture [small number], Landscape mode gets everything in focus, so you can have a great shot of a wide scene.
In the photo below, I wanted to be able to capture the whole scene, rather than just have the bushes in focus, so I made my aperture smaller [larger number], and basically put my camera on landscape mode, even though I was using manual mode on my camera. Once you understand what these modes can do, you can do them with manual as well.
This second photo is one where I wanted the cactus to stand out, so I took it off the small aperture and put it on a large aperture [small number – 2.5] and got the background blurred and the catus in focus. [This would be like Portrait Mode.]
What landscape mode is ultimately doing is making your depth of field really large. [In case you’re unfamiliar with the term depth of field, it just means how much of your photo will be in focus. In this case, since you’ll have a large depth of field, the entire photo will be in focus.
When to use landscape mode:
- When you want to take a photo of a scene, and you want everything in focus
- When you’re outdoors and want to take a photo of a landscape
- When you want to take a shot of scenery to show off the entire area
When NOT to use this mode:
- When you are taking photos of people – this will just cause a lot of distractions in the background, and the person won’t stand out nearly as much
- When you’re taking close up photos of any subject where you want the subject to be the main focus of the photo
Happy Tuesday!
Susie
