Lessons

Lesson Info

2:30 pm - Camera Operation

How do we actually operate this camera? Okay, first off, basic camera check. Let's just things to make sure before you leave the house, make sure your batteries are charged and that you do have the batteries and it's in the camera. I like to format my memory cards before I got go out on any sort of new shoot. That way, I know that there's good clean communication between the camera and the car. I know that my image quality, whether it's raw or J peg, is set to what's appropriate to what I'm shooting and what I want to get. And then I've gone through just maybe a quill real quick perusal, scanning through some of the menu settings to make sure that I wasn't doing something weird where I had something changed on my camera. And so just make sure that your menu settings don't changing on you. They won't change unless you change him. But just make sure you haven't left him someplace unusual. And before I head out on a trip or in a really big shoot, I'm gonna shoot a test photo of a white sh...

eet of paper and I'm gonna look for dust on the sensor. I'd rather fix it. Then they try to fix hundreds or thousands of photographs later. So when it gets down to actually operating the camera, there's really only 10 things that I change and move around on a regular basis. And that is the 10 that you see on screen right now. And so let me talk about how I would set my camera for different types of scenarios, the 1st 1 being just a super super simple. In fact, I I personally would hardly ever used the camera quite like this. But if I was gonna hand the camera to somebody else, I would throw the Cameron the program mode, which means I don't have to worry about shutter speeds and apertures. I would put it in auto I s O. I rarely ever do that, but you could just throw it in the auto I A. So so the camera will figure that out for you. Make sure your exposure compensation is at zero. That way. Your pictures are not overly bright or dark, but you may want to change your exposure compensation. According to the photographs that you are shooting, I would leave the camera and evaluative metering. It's very, very valuable. And in fact, as we go through these, you'll see that I really don't change that. The same with white balance. I'm shooting raw images. He as I hope many of you are as well. And so if you do that, you don't need to worry too much about auto white balance. I would leave it in auto and adjust it as necessary for basic picture taking. One shot allows me to focus on a subject lock on it, readjust framing for better composition. The single point is nice, but for real, simple simplicity, you might just let all points just cause it quickly goes out there and grabs everything very, very simply, and then for the drive mode. Just taking one picture at a time is a nice, careful way of shooting, and so that's the super simple mode. But that's not probably what most of you are gonna be doing, So some of you might want to set your camera up in an old school retro mod, and one option here would be set your camera in full manual. You might set a shutter speed of 125th of a second. That's going to stop human motion pretty well. And maybe you go with the old traditional F eight and be their philosophy. And so shutter speeds and apertures air actually going to vary according toa light. Maybe you want to shoot with Ah, little bit higher speed I s O to allow you to get a little bit faster. Shutter speed. Good old try AC shooters shot 400. We don't shoot with exposure compensation when we're in manual so you won't see that come up is an option with metering older cameras used center weighted Metarie white Balance. I'm gonna leave that on auto. Keep things nice and simple. Focusing mode. If you want to put your camera in manual focusing, you will actually flip the switch on the lens to manual for focusing points. We don't need those because we're in manual focus and for the drive shooting you might be want to be in continuous so that you're ready for any sort of action. All right, let's do some real photography here. Some landscape photography. So if you want to take landscape type pictures where you have a lot in focus in front of you Depth of field is very important. Focusing is pretty critical in this. How would I set my camera for landscape? I tend to like to use manual. That way I can set very specific shutter speeds and apertures and they don't go changing on me. Shutter speed doesn't matter. So long as I'm on a tripod. So assuming you're on a tripod, you set whatever shutter speed is necessary. What's critical is your aperture. You typically are gonna want more depth of field. Now that could be F 11. That could be 16. 20 to 32. Depends on a lot of factors we don't have time to get into, but we'll just say F 16 for this case. The I s O is something you're definitely gonna want at I s 0 100 because that is the best quality possible. No exposure compensation. We're gonna leave me uttering at evaluative. We're gonna leave white balance at auto changes necessary with focusing. This is where we want to choose one shot. We want to be very particular about where we're focusing. You might also want to manually focus but one shot and single point in the middle, so that you could be very precise about what you're focusing on, and you can lock that in for the drive mode. There's actually a couple of options. You could use the single shot if you have a cable release. If you don't have the cable release, you could use the two seconds self timer and as a bonus, and everyone likes bonus points right, you could go into mere lock up shooting menu number two, or you might have. That is a shortcut. Undermine menu and lock the mirror up so that you don't have any vibration. If you were to shoot at a slow shutter speed like one second. So that's landscape photography. Let's do portrait photography. All right, so in this case, big change. You're no longer on a tripod. You want to shoot a picture of a subject. You want them in focus, so focusing is critical. Shutter speed is important important because they're probably moving around a little bit, whether or not they're relatively standing still in these situations, I'd like to be in manual. I like to specifically choose a shutter speed, usually 125th of a second or faster. This is where having those faster lenses, if you have a 1. lens, you're probably really gonna want to use it at 1.4. And so the faster the lens, often the better for portrait photography. You're definitely gonna wanna have this at the lowest eyes so you can possibly get not gonna worry about exposure compensation. We're gonna leave metering and evaluative and white balance at auto for focusing. We're gonna go one shot so we can focus on our subject, lock it and then move it off to the side potentially so that we have a slightly different framing. And in order to do this, we're going to focus with the single point in the middle on there. I because we want to see their I in focus and the drive mode, I'd put it into continuous people's facial expressions, their gestures, their smiles change, and you want to be ready for shooting a burst when it's the right time. Let's move on to action photography. So you're shooting subjects that are moving towards you and away from you, and there's a lot of different types of action you can shoot with this game. So this is where I would once again be in manual. You're gonna need a faster shutter speed, probably 500 or faster. It depends on the action. This is where it really pays off to have a lens that goes down to 2.8 sports photographers love lenses that go to 2.8 because that means they could get a faster shutter speed because the lenses letting in more light ideally, you would be at 100. But the reality is you're most likely going to need to bump that I s so up to 400 or so gonna go ahead and leave the meat green and white balance where they've been in previous sections, cause that hasn't changed. We are going to change the focusing ai servo. We need the camera to constantly adjust focus for where are subject is so that we can shoot pictures at any point in time while they're moving around. And this is where I would go from single points to all points. It would be nice if this camera had more than 11 focusing points, but I'll take the overall as a total group. They do a pretty good job and for the drive mode. You can bet we're gonna be in the continuous mode so that we can get lots and lots of pictures. Okay, let's do maximum sharpness. Now. This is kind of related to the landscape mode. But if you were going to take a picture of, say, a painting on a wall, some wall arts product photography, anything that's not moving around, I'm gonna once again be in manual. It doesn't really matter the shutter speed if it's not moving in my cameras, on the shutters and on a tripod. Excuse me. An aperture in the middle of the range is where your care your camera is going to give you the sharpest pictures. It's not the most up the field, but it's the sharpest setting, the middle of the aperture rage. You'll definitely want to have your eyes so as low as it can go. We're gonna leave evaluative metering turned on and just good old auto white balance. We're going to switch back to one shot, focus so that our focus locks in wherever we wanted to focus, and we're gonna be very careful about where we point that single focusing point so that we could be very precise about what we focus on. We are a deliberate photographer were not an accidental photographer and for the drive mode, going back to the single shot with the cable release using the two seconds self timer as an option and possibly using mere lock up as the final one. In this class, we will do just good old basic photography. This is where you don't know what your next picture is going to be. And so you're just walking down the street, you're got camera, you're going to work, and you just want to be ready for whatever might happen. I would probably leave the camera with a little bit of automation turned on. And this is where I like aperture priority. Leave my camera and aperture priority, and I'm gonna leave the aperture reasonably wide open. So maybe F four would be a good compromise. I'm going to keep my camera and I s 0 100 which is the best quality, and I will bump the I s o up as and necessary. I'll be looking at shutter speeds, and if they're not a fast enough shutter speed, I'll bump the I s so up a little bit. Exposure compensation. I'm gonna leave that said it. Zero. But I'll be ready to adjust it as necessary. A little brighter or a little darker. Has you figured out I'm a big fan of a value to evaluative metering and auto white balance? I'm going to stick with those for basic photography. I'm going to stay with one shot. This is where the camera focuses and stop so that I can recompose the photograph for better composition. And that single point is just so darn good in this camera. I'm definitely gonna leave it on the single focusing point for most photography. And I'm just gonna leave it in the single mode because I can pump my finger up and down in that shutter release pretty quickly, if necessary. But normally I just want to take one picture at a time. And folks, if you have stuck it out all the way till now, Congratulations. You survived this class and you are now a six d expert. So thanks a lot for tuning in. Glad you made it this far. It would be a great chance to catch up on any of the final questions that may be lingering at this point. We, um we have a few Let's see here. Can you use the WiFi feature on an airplane? Just stay mount this on the front of the airplane. Use my WiFi to fly the plane. Um boggy. 406 to ask Why worry about Otto lighting settings when you're in manual mode? Auto lighting. Well, there's the auto lightning optimizer, which will, actually, it's not adjusting shutter speeds and apertures, and I don't know if this is what they're asking, but the auto lightning optimizer is not adjusting shutter speeds and apertures. It's adjusting the brightness of shadowed areas, so it's kind of like going into a photo shop and adjusting curves air going into light room and adjusting the fill light. And so I don't know if that's exactly what they were getting Teoh. But that's sounded like where they were going. Cool and, Yamamoto asked, Is it essential to do the micro adjustments in daylight, or is it possible to do this an artificial light? I heard that auto focus differs in different lighting scenarios should be able to do it in any type of lighting. Otherwise your camera is going to be miss focusing in different types of lighting, and I have not heard that