Get Down Grandpa!
You’re shooting at a family party and suddenly you see a
perfect shot of Grandpa dancing on the dinner table and
Grandma standing on the floor behind him with her hand over
her mouth. Being a well-trained photographer, you glance
down at your camera and realize that the f/4 aperture showing
on the Control panel won’t give you enough depth of field to
focus on Grandpa and still have a sharp image of Grandma,
who by this time is tugging at Grandpa’s pant leg.
With only seconds to spare, you turn your Main command
dial to the left. The D300(S) realizes that it is being called
upon to leave snapshot mode and give you some control. It
throws an asterisk up next to the P on the Control panel (P*)
to let you know it realizes that you are taking over. And since
you are turning the dial to the left, it obligingly starts cranking
down the aperture. Six clicks to the left and your aperture is
now at f/8. As soon as the camera detected that you were
turning the Main command dial, it started adjusting the
shutter speed to match the new aperture.
With only milliseconds before Grandma starts dragging
Grandpa off the dinner table, you get the camera to your eye,
compose the image and press the Shutter-release button, and
the D300(S) starts grabbing frames. You get several frames
off in the few seconds it takes Grandma to get Grandpa down
from the table.
Does that make sense? What you did in my imaginary
scenario was invoke Flexible program mode in your D300(S).
How? As soon as you turned the Main command dial, the
camera left normal P mode and switched to P* mode,
otherwise known as Flexible program.
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