Why It's Important

Of course, you don't need to check all 10 of these every time you pick up the camera, and your own camera might not even support all of these features. But if you fiddle with any of these settings, there's a good chance you'll forget to set one or more of them back to the normal or default position when you're done. That can have disastrous effects on your next shooting session. Worse, it's not always immediately obvious what went wrong with a photo if you're not thinking about some obscure setting you changed two weeks earlier. That's why I tend to give all of my camera's most important settings a rapid "once over" when I take the camera out of its bag.

10 Camera Settings to Check

1. Exposure mode. Even though I frequently shoot in , I spin the dial back to Program every time. That way, if I'm surprised by an awesome photo opp and quickly capture a shot without thinking too hard about the camera settings, I know the camera will give me a decent exposure. If the camera's still stuck in Manual mode, though, the result will almost certainly be junk.

2. ISO. I recommend that you rather than relying on the camera's flash. But when you're done, set it back to the lowest setting, or you'll end up with noisy or even overexposed photos if you accidentally take high ISO photos in daylight.