Once you're comfortable with the first two steps in taking better pictures respective and composition, it’s time to stop using the other mode.

Every camera has a manual mode. With pocket point shoot cameras, this mode allows you to set the wide balance and ISO but everything else is still automated. With more advance point shoot cameras and DSLR cameras, you can control the cameras aperture size and shutter speed as well as wide balance and ISO.

All of these settings will change the picture is some way, and they all have to do with one thing like. Think of wide balance as the color of light. In this picture, the light is coming from the tungsten street lights in the scene. Tungsten lights or any regular household light bulb is very yellow and when the camera is set to auto, I just can't compensate. Simply changing the cameras wide balance setting to match the scenes light, greatly improve the color quality of this picture. Wide balance is different from the other three settings and that; it has nothing to do with the pictures’ exposure only its color.

For pocket camera users, you like to keep it as simple as possible; I would recommend setting the wide balance and leaving everything else up to the camera. As I mentioned before, ISO, shutter speed, and the Aperture, all I have to do with the pictures exposure meaning, they can affect the brightness of the image. ISO is the cameras sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive camera will be. Unfortunately, that the higher ISO, the picture will have more noise or grain.

The shutter speed is the amount of time it takes to capture the image. The longer the shutter speed is open the more light enters the camera and the brighter the image. The Aperture is the size of the whole in the lens. Every lens has a hole in it to allow light to pass through. By changing the aperture setting you’re changing the size of that hole. And by doing so, you're also changing the depth of the field which I’ll get back to in a bit.

So anytime you take a picture, only as certain amount of light is available. The camera conceives this, and sets the ISO, shutter speed and aperture for the picture is not to bright, and not to dark. But what if the camera doesn’t know what your taking the picture of, Or how the picture to look? This is why the automated settings may not always be the best. So understanding these three settings and how each plays its part is important even if you're not controlling each one.

It’s perfectly okay to look at the camera help out with one or more of the settings so you can focus more on having fun, so let’s see how do these settings work together? Let’s say this is our scene. Right now, the ISO is set to 100, the shutter speed is set to 160 for the second, and the Aperture is set to F2.8. Increase the ISO to make the camera more sensitive to light. If the other two settings don’t change, the picture becomes brighter.

Now I can make the shutter speed faster to cut the amount of light and turn in the camera. This will also help stop fast moving targets, or instead, I can choose the smaller aperture opening to reduce the amount of light and turn in the camera. This will also increase the depth of the field making everything from the foreground to the background and focus.

Depth of the field refers to the amount of the scene that’s in focus. A wide aperture is also a shallow depth of field, and a narrow aperture will get you more of the scene in focus.

So for example is a sports picture needs a fast shutter speed to stop the action, if portrait needs a wide aperture to blur the background. Landscape needs a narrow aperture to get everything from near to far in focus. And for sun sets, the low ISO setting is recommended to get the cleanest image with the best color as possible.

Now that you understand these settings, you can choose to set one or more to get the results you want and have the camera automatically set the others. If you're happy with the results from the auto mode, that’s fine. I would just recommend setting at least a wide balance especially if you're not in daylight and keep the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture settings in mind and next time the auto mode isn't producing the picture you thought it would.

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