Outdoor photography is a balance between brightness and focus.
The Kodak Z710 is a consumer point and shoot camera. While the automatic mode is an acceptable shooting mode for many situations, some photographers may want to increase the quality of a photo in a specific environment. Shooting outdoors can be a difficult situation due to the immense amount of light, varying brightness levels due to clouds and high f-stop requirements. Fortunately, there are a couple of helpful tools that you can control to take photos outdoors with your Z710 that are better than the "automatic" photos.
Shutter Speed
The shutter speed should try to limit the amount of light entering the camera, especially on a clear sunny day. A speed faster than 1/250 should be sufficient to stop motion blur, although you may need to increase it to its fastest possible speed depending on the location of the sun. On a darker day, or at night, you will need a much slower shutter speed to capture enough light to produce a worthwhile photo, such as 1/50.
Aperture Size
The appropriate aperture size depends on your artistic style. If you're shooting a subject up close, the aperture setting should be low, around f/3.5 or f/5. This causes the subject to be in focus, while blurring out the background. If you're shooting landscapes, however, your aperture setting should be high, around f/11 or f/15. This causes everything in the image to be in focus. The shutter speed and aperture size work together to control the amount of light in a photo, so you may need to compromise one setting over the other if the image is unsatisfactory.
Color Balance
You may need to adjust the camera's white balance depending on your location outdoors. Each light source has a dedicated color temperature along the blue and yellow spectrum. Setting the correct white balance will avoid those natural tints that our eye does not detect. The "auto" or "daylight" modes will work well for direct sunlight, whereas the "open shade" mode will bring the best results in the shade. You can access the white balance setting from the main menu.
Priority Shutter Modes
In addition to automatic and manual, this camera has two "priority" modes. In shutter priority, you set the shutter speed to be constant and the camera adjusts the other settings to create a quality exposure. This is useful if you want to keep motion blur to a minimum but don't have the time to adjust other settings between photos. In aperture priority, you set the f-stop to be constant and the camera takes care of the rest. This is useful when you want to keep a constant amount of background blur in each photo. Select the most desired mode by rotating the shooting dial.
Tags: shutter speed, amount light, white balance, aperture setting, aperture setting should, aperture size