Canon A610/A620: Set for Beach/Snow Scene

Taking pictures at the beach or in the snow is very, very similar to taking pictures just about anywhere. There is really just one very, very minor detail that you may want to look out for. With this camera, we can set it up a couple of ways.

First thing they give you a scene mode that allows you to do it and I’ll show you what that’s like. It’s going to move the mode dial to the SCN mode or the scene mode and let’s go ahead and turn that on. On the back here, you’ll see at the top right that my scene icon is indicated currently minus set to all edge. I’ll just go and press the right or left navigation buttons to change that until I get. There is snow, and there is beach so both are really very, very similar and you can use the one that fits the scene you’re taking a picture of and basically what the snow does is increase the exposure just by a little bit.

You may not want to use the flash. It really depends on what you’re taking a picture of a person or if you’re just taking an over all picture of the beach scene. If you’re taking a picture of the beach scene, don’t use the flash. Mind, you can see right is set to auto flash so I’ll just go ahead and press up navigation button to get that to the no flash icon.

Now, I can just go ahead and take the picture as I would on any other picture. Remember just like any other picture, press the shutter button halfway. Focus on your subject that fits the horizon or anything. Press the button halfway focus and then you can keep that button pressed halfway, reposition, and press on the rest of the way to take a picture.

Now the problem with these scenes is that they don’t give you any kind of control of your ISO or your wide balance so if you really want the best quality and it is a very bright day out, so you should be using 50 ISO. What I would recommend is very simple. Turn the mode dial to the program mode. The key on your mode dial is program and this gives you access. Let’s just go ahead and press the function button to access the function menu. Here you have access to ISO and wide balance and anything else you may need.

We’ll then set the ISO to 50, go ahead and set to wide balance to daylight and this is going to definitely optimize the picture just a little bit more. Let’s get out of the function menu, just press the function button. Notice my flash is turned off and this is good.

Again, I'm assuming we’re just taking a general picture of the scene and not any people in the shot so press the flash button as I mention before to cycle through the different flash options so you get to that no flash icon.

Now, as I mentioned before, the difference between those scenes, what their advantage is, is at they increase slightly the exposure so what you can do is very, very simply, just press the exposure compensation button right here to access exposure compensation. You can see right now, I'm set to zero. I’ll just press the right navigation button to get it up to 1/3 or even 2/3. We can test either or and see what turn you prefer.

The reason why we need to increase the brightness is because with a nice, white, sandy beach or a bright white snow the camera is going to assume there’s too much light. It doesn’t know that the snow needs to be white. It just sees a lot of light and it’s going to have a slower shutter speed or it’s going to slightly under expose the pictures.

So you might end up with a little bit grayish snow and you don’t want that. You want the snow to be white so increase the exposure just a little bit and that will take you of that problem.

At this point, just like any other picture and just as I mentioned before, when I press the shutter button halfway, focus on your subject, reposition, and then press the button the rest of the way. I can’t emphasize this enough this is very, very important.