Figure 6-82: “Macro” means “taking pictures of things up close”. A special Macro lens will produce the best results, and Macro Mode will set the camera’s parameters to help get a striking shot.

Macro mode (Figure 6-82.) is almost identical to Portrait mode, in that it tends to favor shallow depth-of-field. “Macro” is photographer-ese for “taking pictures of things up close” like insects and flowers. It is best used with a special-purpose Macro lens, such as the outstanding FE 90 mm F2.8 Macro G OSS lens.

Macro mode sets the camera to AF-S (single shot) mode.

 

6.38.4 Landscape

Although the instruction manual is kind of vague when describing what Landscape mode does, my own tests reveal that it increases the contrast a little bit and also increases the intensity of the colors mildly – not as vivid as the “Vivid” creative style (described in Section 6.26), but it’s there. (See example in Figure 6-83). The effects are subtle when shrunk down in this example. In fact, you might prefer the “out-of-the-box” look if all images were shot using Landscape mode.

One would think that landscape mode would emphasize small f/stops to get everything in focus, but in my tests it behaved rather similarly to Program mode in bright light.

 

Figure 6-83: A boring urban scenic taken in Program mode (left) and in Landscape mode (right). Landscape mode increases the contrast and the color saturation, and just might be your preferred shooting mode for all of your photos.

6.38.5 Sunset

Figure 6-84: Sunset Mode Examples, without (left) and with (right). Sunset Mode enhances the yellows and reds in an image. (I still can't decide which one I like better.)

Now, here’s a feature that never could appear on a film camera. Sunset Mode (Figure 6-84) is designed to make your sunsets look a little more spectacular. When in Sunset mode, the reds and yellows of the image – the very colors that are responsible for the beauty of a sunset – are enhanced a little to make the image just that much more pleasing. A foolproof sunset!!

6.38.6 Night Scene

Figure 6-85: Handheld twilight allows you to take a sharper low-light picture without needing a tripod. It takes 4 consecutive exposures, aligns them, and then merges them in-camera, providing you with a lower-noise image than you could otherwise attain. The left image was taken in program mode, the right using HHT.

Seriously, I have no idea what this feature does. It’s supposed to “shoot night scenes clearly”; however test shots I took at night compared to Auto and P mode with no flash yield visually indistinguishable results.

6.38.7 Handheld Twilight

An impressive feature is the Handheld Twilight Mode (which is extremely similar to the Multi-Frame Noise Reduction (MFNR) and Anti-Motion Blur features described previously. Both use a similar technique to HDR, in that the camera takes multiple sequential images at high ISOs and then merges them in the camera. Even a shaky hand can now take high-quality nighttime shots without a problem!

6.38.8 Night Portrait

Night Portrait mode (Figure 6-86) is the same thing as using the flash in Manual mode with a long shutter speed. Also known as “Slow Sync” in the rest of the photographic world, Night Portrait Mode uses the flash to illuminate your subject properly, but then leaves the shutter open a little longer so the sensor can “absorb” the light from the background. The result is a nicely balanced picture, with both foreground and background equally represented. Figure 6-86 shows an example of a normal flash picture in “P” mode, and a flash picture using Night Portrait Mode which brings out the background lights.

One caveat of this mode is that you must instruct your subjects to remain still even after the flash has gone off – because the shutter will remain open for several seconds after the flash has fired, and moving subjects can cause an eerie and undesirable ghost effect.

Figure 6-86: Night Portrait Mode Example. The left image was taken in “P” (Program) mode with flash. The right was taken in Night Portrait / Night View mode with flash, which enables you to “burn in” the background, providing a picture a little closer to the way you remember it being.