Intermediate Photography Lesson 8 Quiz | Test Your Knowledge

In aperture priority you set the aperture, which controls depth of field, and the camera chooses the shutter speed for correct exposure. As you move between sun and shade, it changes the shutter speed while your depth of field stays the same. Shutter priority would fix the shutter speed and let the aperture change.

In aperture priority with auto ISO, the camera first lowers the shutter speed as the light drops, but only down to the minimum you set, 1/125 second. Past that point it raises ISO instead to hold 1/125 second, up to the 6400 limit. It never changes the aperture you chose.

In manual mode with auto ISO, you set the aperture for depth of field and the shutter speed for motion, and the camera adjusts ISO to keep exposure correct as the light changes. It combines control over the creative settings with automatic exposure.

Raw files keep the full sensor data, usually 12 or 14 bits per channel, before any processing. That gives far more room to recover highlights and shadows and to set white balance and color afterward without losing quality. A JPEG is 8 bits with processing baked in, so heavy edits break down sooner.

Shutter priority lets you fix a fast shutter speed, such as 1/2000 second, so wing beats are frozen while the camera adjusts the aperture as the background changes from bright sky to dark trees. Program mode might choose a speed too slow for wings, and fixed manual settings cannot follow the changing light. Pair it with continuous autofocus for tracking.

You may need to switch between single and continuous autofocus several times in a session, often the instant a subject starts moving. Putting that on a button avoids digging through menus and missing the moment. Formatting, file numbering and screen brightness are set once and rarely need speed.

The electronic level shows on screen when the camera is tilted, so you can keep horizons and verticals straight while shooting. That saves straightening later, which crops away pixels. It has nothing to do with metering, focus or stabilization.

A preset stores a complete set of settings, such as aperture, focus mode and metering, together. Switching presets changes all of them at once, so you can move from portraits to group shots in seconds instead of changing settings one by one and risking a missed one. Image quality is the same either way.

sRGB is the standard color space for the web, browsers and most screens. Adobe RGB covers a wider range, but when software or a screen does not handle it, the image looks dull and desaturated. For sharing online, sRGB gives the most predictable color.

The camera's buffer holds a fixed amount of image data in fast temporary memory. When continuous shooting fills the buffer faster than the memory card can drain it, the camera slows or stops accepting new frames until enough data has been written. A faster card reduces the drain time, and shorter bursts prevent the buffer from filling completely.