A-REC vs. M-REC

Two modes, A-REC and M-REC, are available on 990. If you do not want to tweak the camera settings, the A-REC mode plus Exposure Compensation could be sufficient for most shooting situations. The M-REC mode supports all capabilities available in the A-REC mode plus more. Moreover, you can change virtually every available setting. This is the major difference.

In the A-REC mode, the camera's computer selects everything for you. So, what a photographer must do is simply point-and-shoot. This means, the camera will

  1. automatically focuses
  2. selects an aperture value and shutter speed (i.e., the program mode)
  3. performs white balance
As a user, you only control the zoom (optical or digital), the internal flash, a focus setting (i.e., autofocus, infinity, and close-up), image quality and size, and exposure compensation.

In the M-REC mode, you can use all capabilities that are available in the A-REC mode, and the following:

  1. Autofocus area
  2. Manual Focus
  3. Sensitivity (ISO)
  4. Advance rate
  5. Best-shot selection
  6. White balance mode

As a snap shooter, the easiest way of using 990 is set the camera to the A-REC mode, select an image quality and size, and use exposure compensation wisely. The matrix metering system will not fail most of the time. However, under some extreme or difficult situations and/or when tweaking the setting is necessary, the M-REC mode will offer you an opportunity to use all the power available in your 990. It is hard to name each difficult situation; but, the following lists a few:

  1. Low light: In this case, manual focus is helpful especially that you know the approximate distance between the camera and the subject. Moreover, it may require to increase the sensitivity value.
  2. External Flash: Under the M-REC mode, you have finer and better control of one or more external flashes.
  3. Freezing/Blurring Action or Increasing/Reducing Depth of Field: Sometimes we may want to freeze or blur an action. The former permits us to stop the action at the best moment while the latter allows us to show an impression of movement. We can use faster shutter speed for stopping an action. Isolating the main subjects from the background is the main goal of reducing the depth of filed, whereas to make sure that the image is sharp from the very foreground to infinity we must increase the depth of field. This can only be done using aperture. More precisely, to increase (resp., reduce) depth of field, use a smaller (resp., larger) aperture. To control the aperture (resp., shutter speed), the camera has to be in the aperture-priority (resp., shutter-priority) mode. These two modes are only available in the M-REC mode. Furthermore, in the M-REC mode, we can change both shutter speed and aperture under the manual exposure mode.