Lessons

Lesson Info

Button Layout: Top Deck

It's time to actually get into the real start of the class here, so we're going to get into the buttons on the camera and before we do anything too specific just of course obvious stuff you're going to have the camera turned on and the basic controls that were going to be doing a lot of times people are trying to do something on their camera in america that doesn't work at all and it's because the camera goes to sleep and toe wake it up, you need to press halfway down on the shutter release the main dialled right behind the shutter release is kind of the go to what we call soft control it doesn't have a specific thing that it does it does a lot of things so that's kind of the first to go to button on the camera on the back of the camera is what's known as thie quick control dial and that's kind of a secondary go to dial and within that is what's called a multi controller and I sometimes forget the name of this because it's kind of an awkward name and I'll just call it the mouse or the ...

up down or the left right controller and this can be pushed in eight different directions so realized as you're navigating through the menu system that you can use one or the other of these systems whichever your fingers like to use the most and then a lot of times, you'll need to press the set button when you want to enter something now, there's a number of these controls that can be locked, so I would make sure that this lock mechanism is to the left, where it is unlocked. It doesn't you don't want it to be locked because it's going toe lock you out of using the dial on the back, we'll get in towards the end of class, and we'll be able to customize how that lock works on the camera. So officially, on the beginning of the camera, the on off switch one of the nice things about turning the camera on or off is that it sends the camera through an automatic censor cleaning system, and so dust on the sensor is a major problem because it causes these little black specks that you look at on your image and there's a number of ways to deal with it, and one of the best ways is just simply turning a camera on and off automatically does this for you. All right, right next to that is the mode I'll, which has a lock button so that it doesn't. Accidentally get turned, which I think it's a really nice thing, and so you do kind of have to press this with two buttons to turn this and there's a lot going on in the mode buttons, so let's, talk a little bit more in depth about the mod dial. This is controlling how the shutter speeds and apertures air set on the camera and potentially a lot of other things being set as well. The a plus mode is thie basic auto mode and what a plus stands for us the auto intelligent mode, which means the camera is looking at what you're photographing and it's using data to try to figure out whether you shooting a landscape or sports or portrait and it's trying to adjust shutter speeds and apertures the way it thinks you should do this. And I don't think anyone who has purchased this camera and has purchased this class or is watching this class that's not what you've come here to learn, how to use is the auto mode on your camera. This is a great mode for giving your camera to a friend so that they can shoot pictures because one of the things about this putting it in this mode is it turns on what I call child safety locks in the camera. And you can't get into certain menu settings. You can't do a lot of the things a lot of serious photographers would like to be able to do on the camera, and so if you're gonna give the camera to somebody else, they're not gonna be able to mess up your settings, and they're going to get a reasonably decent picture it's going, as I say, adjust shutter speeds in apertures but that's not where serious photographers they're going to want to use this camera. Now canon has a mod called c a, which stands for creative auto, and I'm not going to go into this too much but it's kind of cannons way of providing a learning mode in the camera for somebody who's used to using it in the a plus mode but would like to use it in a more manual mode with some guidance, and it does give you some very, very crude control over depth of field and a little bit of its ambience, you know? Do you want it lighter? Do you want it dark her? Do you want softer? Do you want warmer and there's some very subtle adjustments that you can make it here, but it's hard to really get good control over the camera, so I'm sorry to say that we're not going to be discussing that option muchmore either. The next one down the list is the scene mode and this is what a lot of cameras have on it and what they do is they allow you to choose a particular scene and the camera will be set up a little bit better than it would in the a plus mode because it knows a little bit more about what you're trying to shoot whether it's a portrait or landscape it's going to just the shutter speeds apertures the problem with the cia and the scene mode is that it's got thes child safety locks which are locking you out a lot of the features on the camera and so this is not where somebody who really wants to take control of this camera is going to have their camera but if you wanted to give it to somebody else you could let him play in the scene mode and they could go in and do that in the way that they would gain access to the scene modes is by pressing the cube button on the back of the camera and then they select which one of those seen modes they want to work in all right so let's get into the good stuff on the camera starting with the p for program now the programme mode is essentially the same as thie intelligent auto mode with the couple of exceptions number one it's not going to be changing shutter speeds and apertures on you according to what it thinks you're taking a picture of, you have a little bit more control over that as you'll see in just a moment the other thing and probably the most important thing is that it doesn't lock you out any of the men you settings if you have it in the a plus, the cia or the scene mode, there are certain menu items that you will not have as an option to get to and so if you want to have full control of the camera, this is the simplest mode to being in the program. So in the programme mode, the camera's going to set a basic shutter speed and basic aperture and the primary thing that it's looking at is it doesn't want you to have to slow a shutter speed and so if you're shooting a shot on a tripod it's going to be probably it's going to be okay for getting a decent picture but probably not the right combination, so one of the things that you could do is you can go to the main dial on the camera and you can do what's called program shift and what you're doing by turning that dial when it's in the programme mode is your adjusting the shutter speeds and the apertures at exactly the same time and so in the programme mode the camera is setting shutter speeds and temperatures as hopefully weaken see here and if I want to I can just turn the fun dial and it's changing shutter speeds and apertures at exactly the same time and so you can kind of work stress free here that you're going to get a decent exposure now as faras choosing shutter speeds and apertures that kind of depends on what you're doing and this class is not the class that goes in and explains why you would use one over the other but it does allow you to quickly make those adjustments and so if you do know what you're doing you can throw it in the programme mode and quickly used the program shift to kind of gear it more for one type of photography say portrait or landscape now that's secondary dial on the back of the camera controls what's called exposure compensation it's basically how light or how dark your pictures the camera assumes that everything is kind of middle tone grey and in some cases you may want you may want lighter picture or you may want a darker picture and so you could do that just directly by turning the back dial on the camera and this will be useful in this programme mode it will also be useful in the upcoming time value mode and aperture value mode we'll talk about those in just a second now you do have to be careful about bumping that back dial which is why there is a lock feature on the back of the camera will go into this a little bit more but if you quickly want to make it lighter or darker, just spin that back wheel a couple of clicks one direction or the other and you can do this exposure compensation in third stop increments five stops over or five stops under that's pretty rare normally most people would either go minus one or plus one or something somewhere in that race so that's what the two main dials on the camera for and you will see when you do this exposure compensation in the viewfinder the light meter also known as thie exposure level indicator and if you dial it to the right it's going to go up to the plus which is a bright, brighter picture you could go down to the minus side, which means it's going to be a darker than average pick picture. But most often you're going to want to leave that in the centre to start with but that's not where it should be for all pictures but that's a good starting point. The next mode on the camera is tv no it's not for taking pictures of the tv although you could use it for that. This is time value where you get to choose a very specific shutter speeds, so if you want to shoot at a sixteenth of a second for whatever reason you could set a sixteenth of a second and the camera will figure out the aperture not my favorite mode problem with this mode is that there's a lot of shutter speeds that are just not available in here and it depends on the lighting conditions that you're in there are certain situations where it does work is a nice tool sometimes working with auto eso for getting a specific shutter speed in the leading the esso adjust but that's a little bit more advanced technique that on ly a few people use so I would recommend moving right on past that upto a v which is aperture value and this is where ah lot of serious photographers we'll shoot as they're easy mod aperture value allows you to adjust the aperture and the camera will figure out the shutter speed and this is really handy because there are so many different shutter speeds no matter what aperture you choose there is except in the most extreme scenarios there's going to be a shutter speed that you can use to get your picture and so this is the mode that I have my camera and when it's just kind of hanging around my neck and I don't know what my next picture is going to be it's a good quick access milk now you'll notice that you're changing the aperture with the main dial of the camera and you're doing exposure compensation once again with the back tire now in time value it was kind of the same set up but the aperture that main dial keep switching back and forth between the aperture and the shutter speed so let's get into the most serious mode here, which is the full on manual mode and if you're really serious about photography, this is where you're going probably spending a lot of her time in full manual so the main dial on the top of the camera is controlling your shutter speed. The back dial is controlling the aperture and what you're going to be looking at is the light meter in the viewfinder and there's a good chance that if you throw your camera and manual and I'm gonna do it right here on my camera the exposure level is going to be way to the minus side and you're going to need to adjust your center speeds and apertures let's see is I had just mining here turning the dials to get the indicator towards the middle which is a good starting point for any type of exposure now for most exposures, I should say and so that's kind of the system that you'll use and you'll be needing to make those adjustments with the main dial or the back dial if you're in manual mode now beyond this is a bulb mode which is also a manual mode but this is where the shutter speed will be as long as you leave your finger on the shutter release now that's. Not a great technique, because I'll go ahead and do it right here. So if I pressed my finger down, it stays open as long as my finger is on the button. But obviously that's causing some vibrations and so it's. Best to hook up cable release to the camera and there is a port on the side of the camera that you could hook up a cable released for it and that's going to be really good system for anyone who wants to do longer than a thirty second picture because thirty seconds is the longest shutter speed in the camera. Finally, we have c one and c two, and these are custom moz, so if you have a particular set up, it might be ten different settings that you need to make on the camera in order to get into that custom set up mode. And this is a great shortcut. Meth. A good example for something like this is let's, say, a nature photographer who also likes to take bird photographs, birds in flight and there's. A lot of little things that you want to change from the motor drive to the autofocus system to maybe the meter ring system, and it might take you. Fifteen twenty, thirty seconds to make all those changes in the camera. And so you could just have one programmed into see one and they just flip it over to see two and everything is totally customized to the way you like it to work. Now, the way that you're going to be able to do this is by going into the menu system. And this is kind of a new feature in my classes is I have a shortcut this, especially for people who have purchased and downloaded the class and just want to jump to another section real quickly. If you're watching it live or if you're not sure what's going on, just hang around. We'll get to this eventually, but if you want to, you can go into your setup menu and you can see the shortcut right here on where you would go. You set the camera up exactly the way that you want it to work. You go into the setup menu and you memorize that into either see one or c to and then when you go to that mode, all those settings are pre selected and ready for you write that in there. All right. Working our way back onto the top of the camera. We have our hot shoe on top. The camera, which actually has kind of a cool weather ceiling around the edge of it. So if you do use a cannon flash, it is a fairly good water tight connection between the flash and the hot shoe on the camera. So let's, just talk for a quick moment about kanan flashes. Now, this camera does not have a built in flash cannon has to very small speed lights for people that might want just the smallest possible little phil flash. I would probably go with the two. Seventy e x. They they may they came out with a new ninety, which was designed for their dios m muralist camera. But I would probably look at the two seventy e x two, which is going to retail for a little under two hundred bucks. They have kind of another slightly larger one. Be very good for people shooting video because it's got a hot light that stays on for shooting video. Now, it's not very powerful and it's not going to have very much reach, but for people right in front of the camera, it might help out a little bit. One of the main flash is one of the more popular ones I think for this camera is going to be the four thirty e x two this one's going to sell for a little under three hundred bucks and is a good intermediate level flash for your typical average user of the sixty there is the top of the line flash, which is the six hundred e x rt now this one is a little bit more expensive this one's a little under six hundred dollars, and the big benefit to the six hundred is it is more powerful, so if you want to reach subjects that are further away, it'll do a better job but that if you want to bounce off of ceilings or walls, it's got more power to do that it has special effects modes in it where you can get into all sorts of tricky things that we're not going to get into in this class, and it also has radio triggering. Now you will need two of these or you'll need another trigger device in order to trigger via radio signal. But the radio signal is really nice because you can get the flash really far from the camera, so one of the things that cannon would love you to do is to go by like three or four of these flashes and you could outfit your own studio with ease automated remote flashes I think for the average photographer the four thirty e x two is going to be probably the best buy the best bang for the buck with any of the larger flashes, I would strongly recommend looking at getting the offshoot cam record because this allows you to mount the camera on a flash bracket or to hold the flash at least an arm's distance from the camera so that you can get the flash away from the camera that's one of the best tips for getting good flash photographer flash photography is getting the flash off the camera and so if you are you're going to be using the flash. The maximum shutter speed on the cameron is one one eightieth of a second now the actual top shutter speed the cameras one a thousandth of a but with flashed you want to be at one one eightieth of a second or slower anything slower is totally fine when using the camera in the flash directly on the camera or using it on the off camera cord. However, if you are going to hook this camera up to studio strobes and one of the minor little complaints I have and well as others on this camera is that it doesn't have a pc socket if you're working in a studio but if you're going to hook it up to a radio trigger like a pocket wizard or you're going to hook up a little sink adaptor on the top of the camera so that you can hook it up to studio strobes. You want to be a hundredth of a second while technically, you can see that it sinks at one one sixteenth of a second. There is a little bit of dark banding at the bottom of that image, and I can even see some at one hundred twenty fifth of a second, and that what the problem is is that the second shutter curtain is starting to close, while the strobe lights are still emitting some of their light. And this is why you want to go down to a hundredth of it one one hundredth of a second. If you're going to be working in the studio with this camera, I don't imagine a lot of people are going to do it. It's not the best studio camera. One of the main reasons. The main reason simply being that it lacks a pc socket, but it is fairly slow on its sink speed. All right, back on the top. The camera we obviously have r shutter release here, getting very particular about this it's kind of about three different pieces in there. When you press down on the top button halfway it's gonna wake the camera, it's, goingto engage the auto focus and it's going to engage the mita ring system in the camera you want to get very comfortable pressing halfway down because that's, how you keep your camera at the ready when you press all the way down, of course you're going to be taking the picture so long as the camera can achieve focus, and now there gets to be some particulars that we'll get into the auto focus about this because you can turn that auto focusing aspect of this on and off, but you want to get very comfortable pressing down on the shutter release halfway on the camera right behind that we have the main dial. We've already kind of talked about that we have a little button over to the right hand side of a whole series of buttons, which is a light, which lights up the top lcd, I'm not going to go through the lcd in particular it's got a lot of the most important information that you were going to see as we go through the next. A few slides here on the top deck right along that top we have those four main buttons. The first one is dealing with auto focus, and the autofocus options we have on the camera is one shot, eh? I focus and I serve up, and this is really important to choose this properly for the type of photography that you're going to do. Okay, so you press halfway down on your camera and your camera's gonna auto focus. If you have your camera in the one shop mode, it's going to look for a good, solid object with contrast directly in front of you, which is really nice for what I would call basic photography. However, if you want to photograph somebody or something that is moving towards you or away from you, you need to have it in the servant. No, this is for moving subjects. The camera will then continue to track that subject forward and backward and absolutely critical that you do this. If you do want to get into sports photography for most photography, I would leave it in one shot for sports definitely go into the I serve a mode, and you have to be very careful about pressing halfway down, because that's, how you're going to be tracking that focus now. Cannon also includes an artificial, intelligent focus where the camera is trying to determine if the subject is stationary or moving, and this is just opening yourselves up two problems right here. I would recommend not using the eye focus mode. The problem with the a I focus mode is simple, it's unpredictable about what it's going to do if you're photographing sports, put it in the eye, I serve omar out if you're not, then I would probably leave it in the one shop mode now the problem with the eye focuses that sometimes it'll do one and sometimes it'll do that the others uh and so be very careful about that selection, so for myself, I shoot a lot of different things most of the times, though one shot is where I'm at because it allows me to focus on a subject, and once it focuses on that subject, it stops focusing so I could move it off to the side. It's called a focus lock technique and it's really good for portrait photographer fee because then you can put your subject a little bit off to the side of the frame without having them directly in the middle where you might be focusing. So that is how you set up the main part of the focusing system we'll talk about focusing points in a little bit. Next up is the drive mode, and so this is what happens when you press all the way down on the shutter release do you take one picture? Doesn't take continuous pictures. I'm gonna take my camera here and I'm going to throw it into the continuous mode and you can hear if I hold it close to the microphone let's see actually so that's four and a half frames a second, which is reasonably fast it's if I recall it's a little bit faster than the five demark too but you could hear the sound of the shutter and one of the cool things and what I'm going to do here is go into the silent mode so here's the silent mode actually I'm going to turn off the focusing so we don't hear the beat and let me go back to the regular mode and the silent mode and then the silent continuous mode so if you are a wedding photographer if you're an event photographer potentially even a wildlife photographer the silent mode is a little bit quieter but it is slower this the silent continuous shooting is three frames per second they're normal continuous is four and a half frames per second we also have a couple of modes if you want to get in the picture yourself for the self timer the ten second self timer you can also hook up a remote and that little remote is right here it's the wireless remote control rc six this sells for about twenty dollars and that gives you as much time as you need to take the pictures so if you have the camera maybe by hummingbird feeder you can use this you could also use the new wifi feature but we'll get into that a little bit later there's also a two second remote which is a really nice shortcut for anybody who has their camera on a tripod they don't want to cause any vibrations with the camera movie, so they put it into a two second self timer mode and then they don't need a cable. Really. So they just press the shutter, they wait for the vibrations to settle out, and then the shutter fires okay, moving across our buttons, the next one is thie. So now this is the sensitivity of the sensor and the standard setting. If you could call it the standard it's, the native sensitivity is s o one hundred. That is where you're going to get the best quality light on the sensor. And so, if you can, ideally it's best to have is a one hundred as you go up to two hundred, you are, in essence, doubling the sensitivity of the sensor, which means if you made no other changes on your camera, the image would be twice as bright, well, often, and most usually raise the so so that we can get a faster shutter speed. The problem is, is that we don't have a shutter speed fast enough, so we raised the cell makes our sensor more sensitive to light so we can use a a faster shutter speed. Now the camera has a low setting where you can go down to fifty, but I kind of put a little orange mark by this big because you have to turn a special feature on in the camera that we will get to and the same thing with the fifty one thousand and one hundred two thousand setting, you can only get to that by opening up the esso range to allow for that you don't get very good quality in there is I'll show you in just a moment and then finally we have an auto mode and this is where the camera is going to choose thie so for you and this is not something a serious photographer would want to do in most cases it's I kind of draw similarity with cars and a stick drive a race car driver does not want an automatic drive car shifting gears willy nilly whenever it thinks that should shift you want to maintain control of your camera you should be using manual is so in most all situations I also one hundred is going to be the best quality, so let's just take a look at a quick little test that I did in the studio wanted to see how good the camera is and so in case you can't see the screen very well, let me just tell you what I think about this everything from one hundred sixteen hundred really looks fantastic thirty two hundred I'm starting to notice some of that grain or noise problem sixty four hundred it's becoming more apparent not really liking it a twelve thousand eight hundred but for smaller size uses it's still pretty pretty good anything over twenty five thousand is very, very low in quality and it's not something that you would choose to use if you had any other options available to you but I think everything up through sixty four hundred looks pretty darn clean and twelve thousand eight hundred is surprising is how good it can look on this is for anyone who wants to get technical these air shot in raw and they're completely unprocessed nothing's done to him at all. And so this is the worst they look if you wanted to get in with some noise reduction software, you could improve the quality of all of these. And so, while I find sixteen, four hundred and twelve thousand eight hundred pretty good, the fact of the matter is is that one hundred is better than all of them one hundred's better than four hundred, four hundred better than eight hundred the lower the number, the better the quality of the cell but feel free to tow tow bump that up to eight hundred or even sixteen hundred depending on what your needs are and if you want to get in and open up the parameters so that you can get down to the esso fifty or up to one hundred thousand, you need to go into the shooting menu and go into the speed settings and you can have more control in there and what you'll be able to dio in that menu setting, which we will talk about later so you don't need to rush off and try to figure this out right now you khun set your eyes so setting there you khun set the range that you can go in you can also put a little bit of controls on the range for instance, you don't want theis so to go up to twenty five thousand yuk unlimited and you can also adjust you consent minimum shutter speeds that the camera will use in the auto so there's a lot of customizing that we're going talk more about as we get into that part of the menu system. Next up is the meat oring button on the camera and this controls how the camera reads light coming in the camera traditionally a lot of photographers well traditionally there is on ly center waited on cameras, which was just a kind of a big fat circle right in the middle and then we got some more specific one spot is a really tight circle partial is kind of a medium sized circle right in the middle, but the one that I used on my candid camera most all the time is evaluated me eatery, which is looking at pretty much the entire scene and kind of really measuring out bright areas and dark areas and it does an extremely good job under a wide variety of conditions and so that's the one that I recommend for most situations the partial meter it uses a percent of the viewfinder the spot uses three point five percent good for some specialty scenarios where you want to get a specific light reading and you know what? I think this might be a good time to see if we got some questions before we go to our first break. Excellent. So go on top to bottom these kind of random about all the stuff you asked about today sam cox welcome back, sam's I think sam's here every day I think now sam, is there a menu choice for disabling the focus mode so that I can't accidentally make that choice? Sam that's a wonderful idea I think we should submit that to canada is not an option and I would be right there with you if we could turn it off and just for anyone who's kind of on the lower like, well, why does he even want to turn it off? I mean what's what's what's the option with it? I was kind of interesting because cannons one d x camera they're top of the line camera doesn't even have a I focus as an option and so that's how professional for that's how seriously professional photographers think about that that particular mode on the camera, but no, you can't do that. Sorry, all right, sam, email cannon, uh, panty ass. What focus mode with the use of panning a moving subject for panning a moving subject, I would probably use the one shot mode, although I typically when I do panning subjects, which I do fare fairly often, as I will manually focus, I will figure out where it is that they're going to be or where I want them to be, and I will just manually focus on that spot ahead of time. And if you want to do panting, we're getting into bill, but more of my photography technique class, but it's better to be a little bit further away with a longer lens than right next to them, although there's a different look with a wide angle lens right next to it, but I think that would be better done manually. It could be done in any one of the three months you could focus on that spot that they're going to, because typically with a good panning shot, you're only gonna have them in the right position for just a moment or two. But with the continuous mode you're, you're able to track their movement because they are getting closer to you and then they're getting further away from you. But that prime spot it's a very small area that they're in and you can generally the consistent ways to manually focus that ahead of craig it's cool so sam also asked about the physical size the sixty compared to the seventy the sixty is and I don't know technically, but I was just holding both of them in my hands last night feel's smaller than the seventy and so it is a smaller, lighter weight camera it's somewhere I think between the seventy and the sixty d in size but it's a thing it said twenty three percent less weight than the five mark three and for anyone who is used to a five day mark three, it is an instantly noticeable difference in the weight and the size I mean, just grabbing the camera, it feels like five mark three has gotten a little chubby around the waist line on this one is just nice and trim it feels really good in the hand and so for anyone who's shooting I personally for a serious camera, I wouldn't want anything smaller than this. I mean, it feels pretty much perfect in the hand, maybe it's all that good food photography? Yeah, so it's keeping with its new years resolution but uh, well, I don't know if you'll be covering this up this afternoon when you cover wifi, but law two seven zero eight s my question is based on the sixties wifi system is it possible or even in the works for cannon to enable this wireless communication for their new six hundred model flashes as a to have wireless functionality? Yeah, the wireless function in the six hundred is using a radio system and so it needs a radio signal from the camera. And right now to the best of my knowledge the phones aren't sending out a radio signal and the camera does not have the ability to send out a radio signal. You need a six hundred flash or I forget the model number they cannon has another transmitter, radio transmitter and so the radio and the wifi are different systems and I don't see them combining them in the near term future long term that would make sense so there they're totally on the right track of where things should go but that's not where they are now and I don't see any adjustments being made real quickly with firm where adjustments to make that happen so new visto asks, is there a noticeable difference in quality at fifty? There is a difference in quality at s o fifty because what's technically happiness is too much light is coming in the camera and the camera is kind ofjust scaling it back and so the camera is best at s o one hundred now what is notably better and worse gets to be very small increments, and we get into pixel peepers and pixel papers in case you don't know, spend a lot of time peeping really closely at pixels, arguing whether this is better than that, and the reason that you would want to go down to fifty is let's say, you're shooting a waterfall and you're at one half of a second, the slowest shutter speed that you can get to you and you're like, wow, I'd really like to shoot this waterfall at one second. Well, you could dial it down to fifty that would allow you to go down to one full seconds if you want to check on the quality yourself, shoot one in either one, and my guess is that you're going to prefer that one second shot so much more over the other because of the shutter speed difference is going to be more noticeable than the slight loss of quality, and so I wouldn't hesitate going to fifty if you need it, but I wouldn't go there unless you need it.