Lessons

Lesson Info

Setup Menu

All right, time to move on to the Set Up Menu, and so in these four tabs of information we're gonna be looking at a lot of, a lot of things that we're gonna setup one time, and we're probably not gonna come back to it very often. There's a few exceptions of some things that we will come back to on a regular basis, but most of these things, we're gonna leave setup, and it's just kind of a background setup for how our camera is operating. First up is the recording function, card and folder selection, and so this is what card are we recording to, and how is it recording to it? So one of the options here under Recording function is the Standard option, which means it goes to one memory card. You can choose which memory card, but it goes to one memory card, and even though there may be two memory cards in the camera, it fills up the first memory card and then it stops. All right, the next option, which is preferred in my mind, is Auto Switch. You send everything to one card. When it fills u...

p, it starts sending things over to the second card. The next option is you record separately, and so if you want, you can have RAWs going to one card and JPEGs going to the other card, separately. And then finally when I'm on a more serious shoot, I will record to multiple, which means both cards, I put in two cards of exactly the same size, same number of gigabytes, and I record RAW or JPEGs to both of them simultaneously. And that way if there's a corruption problem, if I lose one of the cards, hasn't happened so far but just in case, if any of that happens, I've got a complete backup copy at the moment of creation, and so for the serious professionals out there, that's gonna be your safety protocol, is having two cards and recording to both of them. Record to multiple. Record and play, here is where you get to choose, which card do you want to record from, or playback from? Either the CF card or the CFast card. And, if you are using the new CFast card, it's gonna be a faster card that should probably be your primary card I would think in most cases. On each of the cards you can create and store images, and read images from different folders on that card, and you can give those folders different numbers and names on the cards. And so if you were trying to separate images from different groups, that is one way to organize the information. For instance, if you only have one memory card and you're shooting this for personal and business reasons, you could have all your personal photos in one folder, and your business photos in another so that if you do a slideshow, one doesn't get mixed up with the other. The camera issues its own file numbering system for each of the images. If you would like to go in and change that numbering system and reset it, or have it reset automatically on you, you can. Normally this isn't something that you want to do. It counts up to 10,000 and then resets itself back down to zero. So, once you take more than 10,000 images, you will be getting the same file names. Which is why when you work with your images in your computer, you should be renumbering them so that you don't end up with files, lots of files that have the same numbering system to it. If you want to change the name on the file name system, you don't have too much to work with but you can go in and change a few letters and numbers on the file name. So if you wanted to go in and add your initials to the actual filename of the camera, you could do that. Auto rotate, this is an important change in my mind. And so, On computer is the one that I would recommend, because what it does is it won't rotate your images in the camera, and this will allow you to see the image as large as possible when you shoot a vertical image. It's a little inconvenient if you are doing slideshows from your camera, or from your camera hooked up to a computer or TV, but if you just want to get the best view of your vertical images, change this to On computer and drop the camera portion of the rotation. Here is one feature that you should be coming back to on a regular basis, and this is where you format the card, and what this does is it deletes all the photos, the folders, the file directory, and any other miscellaneous information that may be on that card, and so this is something that most photographers will do before going out on a new assignment or new shoot. It clears up the communication between the card and the camera, and this is oftentimes something that will clear up any sort of communication problem as I say between the camera and the card. And so when you buy a new camera, or excuse me when you buy a new card, you want to format it in your camera. If somebody who had say a Nikon camera gave you an old memory card, and you said, hey all right I'll use that in my camera, well you're gonna want to format that in your camera so that it knows how to communicate with your Canon camera. All right next up, second page Set Up Menu. Auto power off, how quickly do you want your camera to power down? This is gonna be an issue of how much battery life you want versus convenience. The brightness of the screen can be adjusted. Normally you would want to leave this in the middle, but sometimes I have raised the brightness to the maximum level if I'm trying to show people photos outside in fairly bright light conditions. Your time and date can be adjusted in here, changing your time zone as well. Obviously choosing the language of the menu system within the camera right here. And in the Viewfinder display there's a number of options, so there's a little bit of a submenu in here of things that you can turn on and off. The Electronic level was the little indicator up above that you'll see in the viewfinder whether you're tilting the camera forward, backward, side to side. Some people like to have that available. Grid, once again used for compositional reasons. Level horizons can be nice to have from time to time. And there is a variety of other information at the bottom of the screen, and you can use those checkboxes to include or not include all the items that you might want to have in there. Now these items only come up I think in all these cases when that particular feature has been activated and you're making a change in them, and so not all of them are up all the time, and so these are things that I would typically leave on because they allow me to make those changes in the camera a little bit more quickly. As I mentioned before, it's a bit like some of the mirrorless cameras that have lots of information right there in the eye-level viewfinder. What options do you want to see when you press the Info button on the back of the camera? And so we have four different screens in here. I like being able to cycle through all of this information, so I leave these all checked on, but if you find that you just don't use one, two, or whatever ones that you don't want in there, you can uncheck that box so that you don't have to cycle through and even see those options. Okay, Custom Quick Dial. This is gonna get a little interesting here. Okay, so we now can customize the Quick Menu on our camera, and so we can go in and we can edit this layout, and so let me see if I got a little bit more in here before I do my demo for you. And so if you mess up you can revert it back to the default settings. And, you can clear all the items if you want to. And let's go ahead and do a little demo here on my camera right here, and so, let's dive into the menu. Where are we? Customize the Quick Control. All right so the Quick Control of course is the quick button right here. What does that look like? Right now, this is what it looks like, and so with our information button we can see over here that we have a couple of different options of what this looks like. And so, we have a particular setup here. We have our exposure, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focusing, and then it looks like we have our time and day over here, which is kind of unusual. So we're gonna go in here and we're gonna customize this, and we're gonna start the editing layout, and we're gonna hit Q to add an item. We're gonna hit garbage to remove, and we're gonna hit Set to select and confirm. Okay, so I like the exposure mode up there in the top left. Let's see, I'm gonna hit, I'm gonna hit Q, and I like the mode there. I would like to see if I can change the size of it. And so maybe I have to select something different, and so I put something else up there, but I'm gonna go back. I want to see if I can put the mode there right now. And so, I'm gonna hit Q. Okay I want the mode there, but I want the mode two by two, so I'm gonna make it bigger because I want to be able to read that really quickly and easily. And so now it's up there really large. Okay, I like that. All right so now I'm gonna go, I want to go beside this. I'm gonna go up here and I'm gonna program something to put into this box right here. And I am gonna say, let's see, what else do I want in here? Some things are not available because they're being used someplace else. And so I'm just gonna put in my AF operation right here, and I can make this small or big. I'm gonna make this one small, and so now I can see my AF operation, and I can actually move this around now and choose different places. Maybe I would prefer to have it down here. And so now let's go back in, I'm gonna go back up here, and I'm gonna choose something else to put in here, and I'm just gonna put in white balance just to have some fun here, and I'm gonna make this one by two, or one by one. I'm gonna go one by two, make this a little bit bigger, so I've got that filled up there. I'm gonna set it there. Then over here I got the clock, I don't need the clock up there, and so actually, oh here's a remove option, so let's just hit the garbage can. Forgot about that, let's just get rid of everything here, okay except for the things we've added. Now we have more of a blank slate, so let's go choose something to put in this corner down here, and what options do I want? Let's do the exposure compensation and bracketing, and let's put this in there. Oh, I have one by one, one by two, and one by three. I like that big one, so that big one is right there. I'm just gonna leave that set right there, and I'm not gonna go any further, but you get the idea. It's a big old checkerboard, and you get to fill what's there, how big it is, what it looks like. And so now, okay that doesn't look great, we're not gonna finish it up right now, but when we hit the Q button, this is what we're going to see. And so if you just want to have a few quick things like my shooting mode, my shutter speed, and my aperture, and that's all I want there, that's all you're gonna have there. And so this is something I encourage you to go in, customize, make it the way that you like, and figure out what works for you. I love being able to customize things like that on a camera, and I don't know of any other camera that can customize it to that degree, so I really like that and appreciate that in that particular camera. So, great customization tool there. All right, third tab in the Set Up Menu, the Video system. Depending on where you live, you use either the NTS or the PAL system, and your camera will probably come set right if you buy it in the right country, but you can adjust it if necessary. Battery information will give you some specific information about how good that battery is, how many images you've taken, how much life is on it, and the overall performance level of it and its lifespan. Sensor cleaning goes into a little submenu here. First off is Auto cleaning, and this is where the camera shakes that filter in front of the sensor to knock off any dust. In case you're wondering, where does that dust go? They have I believe, I don't want the fancy term is for it, but double sided sticky tape, so that dust gets stuck someplace else other than on the sensor. If that doesn't clean it off, you may need to tell it to clean now, which seems kind of unnecessary because in most cases you can simply turn the camera on and off, and it would go through that same cycle again. It'll make a very, very subtle little noise that you might be able to hear. You can also go in and clean it manually, and if you want to clean it manually, there's a couple steps. Most everyone's gonna be qualified for step one, which is the rocket air blower. Put the camera in the cleaning manual mode, and hold the camera upside down so that the sensor is pointed downward, and blow a bunch of puffs of air up in there. Hopefully knocking off the dust. If that doesn't do it because there is something a little sticky on there, some of you who are a little bit more careful of hand movement can try step two, which would be using a swab and liquid type system. There is a few different cleaning systems out there where you actually sweep the sensor clean of its dust spots. And so as I say, not everyone feels comfortable doing that, but it is something that you can do yourself. Next up is communication setting and this is for tethering your computer or hooking it up wirelessly to other devices. And this is where a lot of people as I say tether their computer in the studio or in different environments where they're downloading images as they're shooting them. And, this folks is where I hit a roadblock in this class. I took a look in here because I wanted to try to explain everything that this camera does, but I looked in here, and I thought to myself, you know what? There is an entire camera class in here on this communication setting. And if you don't believe me, let me show you what is inside this one setting on the camera. So, once you get into the Communication setting, you're gonna have a number of different options, and within each of those options are gonna be many, many more options about how this camera hooks up to computers, and how they are communicating back and forth, what type of server they're using, and what type of software you're using. Whether you're using Macs and PCs, and there is a whole science and art to hooking this up, and I just wanted to give you a preview of all the stuff that is in here. Now, if you would like to know how to tether your camera and have full control, and what every one of these little settings mean, what I would suggest is that you write me a letter. Not an email, I want a written letter on a standard sheet of paper. Mail it to my home address, good luck finding that. Mail it to my home address, I will put it in a three-ring binder. When that binder fills up, then I will do a class on communication setting. This is not something that everyone uses. And so it is something that just takes up much more time than we have for in this class unfortunately. But it can be done, and it's one of the reasons why a lot of people have this camera, and why we have an ethernet connection on the side of the camera, so that it can communicate very, very quickly with those computers. All of that is done there in the communication settings. The camera can also work with GPS systems, so there is a little submenu for that. And so normally this is gonna be disabled. We do have different modes that we can put it in. And we can have different ways of the way that it sets the time, because it can look at the GPS clocks, and it can set the internal clock with that information. You can adjust when it achieves its positioning, how frequently, and that's gonna wear on your battery if you have it more frequently. You can actually show your location with that GPS information. It also has a logger submenu which goes in so we can include more information about how it's logging this data. And, I don't have the GPS unit hooked up to it now, so I can't show you all this good stuff. You can transfer this information to a memory card. And then you can delete all the stuff that's on your camera, so that nobody knows where you've been when they have your camera. And so that's all the GPS settings on the camera. The HDMI frame rate is if you are using an external monitor, and you may need to be able to, you may need to change it to different frame rates depending on what you're shooting, or what type of monitor you're using. And that would be for external recording through the HDMI as well. Last tab in the Set Up Menu, Save and load camera settings. If you were to have multiple 1D X Mark IIs, congratulations on having multiple cameras, you can transfer all the data and settings from one camera to the other by saving that information to a memory card, and then putting that card in the other camera and loading that up. That way you don't have to go through the same button pressing over and over and over again, and this is something that I would think that is done in some Hollywood situations where they're using multiple cameras, and they want all the cameras to be setup and acting in the exact same way. The custom shooting modes, the C1, two, and three. This is where you get to customize the camera to work the way that you want it to work, and the way that you do this is that you will set the camera up exactly as you want it to work, and then you will come in to the custom shooting mode and you will register that setting. So there's a little submenu in here, and this is where you register the settings. So let's just say, you want to have custom setting one set for really simple basic stuff. So you set your camera on Program, you have it on evaluative metering, you have it on focusing on auto area, the whole 61 point area. And you have the motor drive turned on, the low motor drive. Well as soon as you flip it to C1, all of those features will be instantly engaged. When you go to C2, well it could be something else that you have setup for that. And so you can clear all these settings, and then what else can we do in here? Auto update, all right so this is kind of an interesting dilemma that I've had with the custom settings, because I've used custom settings in the past. Now if you have a custom setting, let's say you're a nature photographer, and you have your camera setup so that you can quickly go to birds in flight photography. So you go to Servo focusing, wide focusing brackets. Maybe a particular ISO, maybe a particular shooting mode. Well you're in that mode, and then you find that one setting is not quite right, and you want to adjust it. Well that little adjustment that you made, do you want that to be a one-time adjustment that the camera soon forgets about? Or do you want that to be a new permanent part about that custom setting? And so that's what the Auto update is about. Do you want the camera to automatically update the fact that you've changed from ISO 400 to 800? And so now that custom setting always goes to ISO 800. If you don't, what's gonna happen is you'll adjust the ISO, shoot your photo, and then when you come back, it's gonna be back at its original position. And so this is a dilemma that I have not totally worked out with my use of custom functions but hopefully you'll be able to work it out with yours. All right so if you haven't been paying attention in class, or you've been goofing around with your camera for the last couple hours, and you just want to reset all the basic camera settings, you can clear everything by selecting this function in the camera. Copyright information is kind of nice. We can get in here and we can add a bunch of information to the secret metadata behind the photographs. And so one option is adding your author's name and copyright information. Maybe it's your website, or location information, or something else that you want to add in there. You can use the little keyboard and enter in all that information. Right here under the author's name. And then you can add in other information, and this gets added to the metadata of all the images that you shoot, and this is also kind of nice for security reasons. Not that somebody couldn't write over it. I'm just guessing that most thugs who might steal a camera might not be smart enough or just aware that you might have your name in the camera. So if it gets lost or stolen you have your name as part of that camera. And then of course you can delete all that information. This is kind of unusual, I don't know of any other camera that has this. This is the System status display. It'll show you the serial number, the firmware version, how many shutter firings that camera has had. You press Info, it'll go in and it will show you any errors or problems that has arisen. This is kind of the type of stuff that the repair technicians only have access to. But they give you access to it here. And notice that you can press Info again and see details, and so on this camera that I was using, there was a communication problem between the camera and the lens. I don't know, maybe I didn't attach the lens properly or there was a little bit of dust in there, and something wasn't able to communicate. And so if there's something happening on a regular basis, it's gonna log it in here, and you will be able to see it, and that might be able to help you when you're working with CPS Canon Professional Services about what the problem is on that particular camera if you should happen to have one. Certification Logo Display is showing you some stuff that people have done for the camera. Not really necessary, not really that interesting either. Firmware version is the software that runs the operation of this camera. And for some reason every camera that I seem to have put my hands on recently does not have the current software update, so I had to do it on this camera last night. They made a few changes since the camera originally came out. And so what you'll need to do to update this is get online. You can do a little search for the Canon 1DX II firmware. You should get to Canon's website pretty quickly and easily. Download that firmware, put it on a memory card, and then put the memory card in the camera. Come here to firmware version, the camera will see that information, and then ask you if you want to update the firmware, which will take maybe five minutes to update the firmware on the camera. Now in order to do this, you should have a formatted memory card formatted in this camera, and then use that card plugged into a computer with a card reader, or if it plugs directly into the computer, that would be fine as well. And so, the current version as of the recording of this class is 1.1.2, and is likely to change at some point in the future. They have made a few minor changes in the camera, and if you want to know which changes they've made, you can go to Canon's website, and they will keep a list of the items that they've corrected. They've often made changes to spelling mistakes with different foreign language menus. They've added features, they've tweaked little things to make them a little bit more versatile. I know they made some changes in the communication settings with this most recent firmware update. And so, it's a free download, and so there's no reason why your camera shouldn't have the latest update available.