Photo How To

Followers on YouTube are always asking photographer Pierre T. Lambert what his favorite camera settings are so in the below video he decided to share his "secrets." But first, he has a caveat.

"Settings is something I brush over fairly quickly because, in my opinion, this is not so important," Lambert says. "What matters is are you able to achieve your creative vision? Are you able to actually get the results that you want? So, if you can get them in Auto, don't bother about a million settings. But if you're trying to tweak, if you're trying to do something very specific, that's when camera settings will come in handy. That's where they will shine, and they will help you in your creative process."

Setting #1: Aperture Priority

"I probably still shoot 70 percent of the time in Aperture Priority," Lambert says. "Aperture Priority is a semi-auto mode. It's amazing. It helps you do a bunch of things."

Setting #2: ISO Auto

"I am usually in ISO Auto but there are circumstances where the camera will have problems understanding the light. So that's when I will go in manual ISO and set it myself. "

Setting #3: Manual Mode

"Manual is a great mode to experiment with. But like I said in the video about all the problems that I'm trying to work on over time is that if you get stuck in manual, sometimes you might miss the shot because you were shooting a panic shot and you didn't switch back and change your settings fast enough. So, I shoot in Manual a lot but then I switch back to Aperture Priority when I'm moving a location."

Setting #4: Focus Points

"The most important mode for me is Spot focus. Why Spot focus? It just allows me to know where I'm going to put my focus and it avoids having a wide zone of focus area that the camera will control. I want to control where my focus goes."

Setting #5: Burst Mode

"Burst mode or not burst mode? Ah, good question. Well, especially with the Sony A1, I stopped shooting burst. But you might think, but the A1 has great burst. Yes, exactly, it has such an amazing burst that I actually want to shoot single shot now. Single shot is great because it allows me to be a little more thought out when I'm shooting vs bursting."

Setting #6: Focusing

"When it comes to focusing, I'm still in back button focus. Back button focus saves your life; it saves you time. It's much easier more intuitive."

Setting #8: Exposure Compensation

"Exposure Compensation is a tool I use every day just to make sure if I'm shooting in semi-auto or in Aperture Priority mode or ISO Auto. "

Setting #9: White Balance

"White Balance is important. You see my face right now. It looks cool, the colors are nice. Why is that? Because I set my White Balance to Manual, and I went in Cloudy mode. If I had left it in Auto, I would be a lot more blue and I didn't want that."

Setting #10: Face Detection

"I always have Face Detection on, and Face Detection linked to one of the buttons on my lens lenses. It allows me to really quickly go from Point focus to a Face focus."