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Shooting Menu: Page 1

Okay, it is now time to dive into the menu functions of the camera. So this is where you wanna grab the PDF outline that is part of the class and this has the entire outline. The reason I do it like this is because I'm a visual person and I like to scan page to look for a feature. So if something deals with image quality, I can think quality and my eyes can find quality scanning the page very quickly and so this is the entire menu on one sheet. And what we're gonna be doing is going through this and getting the camera set up. So let's dive into the menu. So you will obviously press the menu button and then everything in menu is pretty logically broken up into different tabs. I work with a lotta different cameras and as confusing as this may seem, this is one of the best on the block. And one of the quick little tips I'll give you is if you wanna jump quickly from one tab to the next, you can press the Q button. And so if you're trying to go all the way from the left, all the way to the...

right, you can just press that Q button and it jumps from the shooting tab to the play tab to the setup tab to the custom tab. So just remember that that is a quick little shortcut. Now a key thing is where is the mode dial. Because if you are in one of the basic settings on the mode dial, you are only gonna have access to the basic controls within the menu system. If you have your camera in the more manual settings you'll be having access to the absolute full manual in the camera. Now before we get into the menu, there is couple things to think about or at least one main idea to think about. As we go through the menu system, we're gonna encounter probably two or three different types of items that you're gonna encounter. The first is something that you are never going to use and has no difference and no bearing on how you shoot photography and that's probably half the items in here. Now there's another bit of 'em, and I'd say, I don't know, maybe 30, 40% that you're gonna want to have set for the way that you like to work with the camera and once you've set 'em, you will never, ever come back to them. And then there's a final little third category, which is about 10 or maybe 20% of the features in here, that you're gonna want to come back to and change, depending on what you're doing, 'cause you have different types of things that you do with your photography. And so those are the really important ones you wanna remember, because you're gonna be going back to them. And it's important to remember which ones they are, 'cause the very last item that we're gonna deal with is something called My Menu and it's where you get to choose, a short collection of items, I think it's about seven or so items, that you can have on your short list of things that you do on a regular basis, and those are items that you'll have very, very quick access to. So if anything seems kinda buried in the menu system, we can unbury it and put it on the top of the pile, so you can easily find it. All right, let's dive into the menu systems. So we're gonna start very logically with the very first menu setting on the far left, which is the shooting menu in tab number one. And so for navigating throughout the menu system, obviously using the four way controller on the back of the camera is a great way to do that. You can also use the dials to go up, down, and left and right, and it's pretty easy to navigate. So the first one is image quality and this is number one for a reason. This is where you're gonna select either JPEG or RAW settings. The more serious photographers are gonna want RAW, because they get the full image quality out of the sensor. JPEGs are very, very convenient, and if you have the right software you can make JPEGs as often as you want, as long as you have the RAW images. And so you should either be shooting in RAW, you should plan to be shooting RAW perhaps in the future if you wanna get the most out of the camera. And if you are gonna be shooting JPEGs, they do have some small, medium, and large sizes in there, which are different resolutions. And, you know, I've shot some small JPEGs in my time, only because I knew exactly what I was doing with the photos, and I knew that they were just really small basic photos that I needed, and I never would want anything larger from that. But generally you're gonna wanna choose the largest possible option. So if you are choosing JPEG, you will have two options on large JPEGs. You'll have a higher quality and a lower quality that has more compression, which will allow you to get more pictures on the card. And it's quality we're after, not quantity. So choose the highest quality setting that you can and want to work with. And so as we go through this, I'm gonna be making recommendations on screen and in the handout. The ones in gray are my general recommendations for an average user. The red ones are advanced recommendations for the more advanced users. And so in this case, RAW for the advanced and large JPEG for the general grouping. When you shoot a photo, do you wanna see the photo on the back of the screen? And with the digital SLR that has an optical viewfinder, it's hard to tell exactly how bright your image is gonna be and what the white balance looks like and so most photographers want to see that show up on the back of the camera. If you wanna save battery power, you could turn it off or you could change it to something that works better for what you're doing. And all right, do you want your camera to beep every time it focuses and in the self-timer mode? And so it's kind of helpful to understanding that the camera has focused and it's done, but it's also a little distracting to your subjects, to other photographers, to other people that you're around and so I'm a big fan of being discreet and so this is something I would encourage you to turn off. Next up, if you forget to put a memory card in the camera, do you wanna be able to shoot pictures or not? And so this is mainly designed for people who work in camera stores that wanna show what the camera sounds like and feels like when it's taking a picture, even though there's no memory card in there. But for the rest of us, who wanna make sure that we are not taking pictures without film in our camera, I would say that you wanna have this disabled so that it will not fire without a card in there. Kind of some awkward wording on it, but trust me. Lens aberration correction. So there's a number of problems that lenses can have and Canon will know which lenses are on it, provided it's a Canon lens, and this is one of the small benefits of having a Canon lens on your Canon camera. This will not work with Tamaron, Sigma, and other brands of lenses for instance. So the first problem that we might have is peripheral illumination, which is a darkening of the corners, or vignetting. And so this picture suffers from that problem. And so if the camera knew how bad this problem was on the lens it would automatically go in and just lighten up those edges. And so that might be something that you wanna have engaged. Now it's only gonna be able to do this first off in JPEG images. Secondly, this isn't something that everybody wants. There's a lot of times that I'm taking people photographs that I would prefer a darkening of the corner to bring your eyes to the middle of the photograph or closer to the inside of the photograph rather than the outside. And so it works as a natural framing option. And it's only gonna happen on lenses that are very wide aperture, like a 50 millimeter 1. would be a good example of a lens that probably has a lot of vignetting. And so this is something a lot of photographers, they just kinda like the natural look of the lenses. And so this is really up to you as to whether you want to change this. The next one is chromatic aberration. And this is kind of a little defect of lenses, in that as bright light comes from behind a solid object, the wavelengths change a little bit and you'll get this teal or bluish color or a reddish color on the other side. Now this can be pretty easily fixed in post-production with most images. But it's something that nobody really likes. Nobody like chromatic aberration and so you might as well turn this on. Now it will only work on JPEGs, so if you do shoot JPEGs, it'll fix the problems. And on RAWs you'll still have to fix it in post-production. Next up is distortion correction. And take a look at these two pictures, this one, and this one. And let me go back a couple a times. Do you notice the barrel distortion on these lenses? Well the camera has a built-in distortion correction that will automatically fix this. And while Canon does make a couple of fish eye lenses, most people don't want that in there normal look of an image and so this is something that you're probably gonna wanna turn off as well. And so turn off the things that we know we don't want, chromatic aberration and distortion, and when it comes to peripheral illumination, I can see leaving that turned on. And so it's gonna be a personal choice for you. Next up, okay. So we're just walking along, we're going through the menu system and we're getting to what's called a rabbit hole. An so it looks like it's just one item here, but this thing opens up into a whole cavern of different areas that we can go into. So when we enter flash control, we're going into a submenu. The first item is do you want the flash to be able to fire at all? And I would say most people are gonna wanna have it fire and it's only gonna fire when it's in the up position. So I think that's a handy thing to have turned on. Not sure why you'd wanna turn it off, but it's there if you need it. The type of mirroring system that it uses when the flash is firing. Evaluative is gonna be probably the best in most situations. Pretty rare that I would see most people changing it, but it is possible. The sync speed. What sort of shutter speed is your camera going to give you when you are in the aperture value mode? Now you could choose a specific number like one two fiftieth of a second. If you want to choose a sixtieth of a second you could. I think for most people, auto is gonna be fine, where it will work with the natural light to figure out what's the most appropriate shutter speed. Next up is built-in flash settings. And so here we're gonna have our next entry into the next rabbit hole. And so this is a menu within a menu, so a double submenu. And the first option in here is how the flash fires. There's either an automatic system or you can have it fire manually. So for those of you who are really adventurous with your flash and you wanna really get in and manually control it, you can set the manual powering rate, full power, half power, quarter power, which might be very nice for triggering other flash units. Or if you just had very specific amount of power that you wanted out the flash, and you didn't want it to vary from shot to shot. And so, for anyone who's good with strobes, manual option is gonna be a smart option to use from time to time. But for the average user, you're probably gonna want to have this in E-TTL and this is an electronic through the lens system that is automatically taking care of the flash for you. You get to choose, whether you're synchronizing the flash with the first curtain, which is the normal system, or the second curtain, which can be very interesting for certain types of action photography. Exposure compensation. This is controlling the power of the flash. And as I mentioned before, I think in most cases, it would be wise to power the flash down about a stop. Different people will have different taste levels when it comes to this. I know some people like it at minus two-thirds. I like it about one and I know other like it at minus one and a third or one and two-thirds. It's really up to you. You might wanna do your own test to see how it looks for you. All right, then there is the wireless function and this opens up another little door into another option. So you can have this flash fire external flashes. And the relationship of the built-in flash versus the external flash can be controlled here. Normally you would have this system disabled 'cause you're not gonna be doing this on a normal basis. But you can have it as a power ratio of one to one or two to one, or three to one, between the two different flashes. You could have both them flash at the same time or have the built-in flash simply trigger the other flash, but the camera's flash doesn't fire 'cause you don't want light coming from that particular area. And so there's a lot of fun areas for anyone who wants to get fully in flash photography. I apologize if we're going through this rather quickly. There is probably a entire five hour class, in getting in and working with the flash system on its own. Now if you do add on an external flash, you can actually access the functions of that flash through this part of the menu system, external flash function settings. And so if you wanna go in and change those parameters you can do it there on the camera just because the buttons might be easier to hold onto when you have the camera and flash mounted together. And then there is also custom functions of the flash that you can get in and control and that's gonna depend on which flash you have attached. So all of this, remember, was in that little flash control at the bottom of page one. And so anything doing with flash, or almost everything, 'cause there's still one other thing I think we're gonna see, is gonna be buried in that flash control submenu system. One other thing that's not in there, but is quickly available, is the red eye reduction. What happens here, is the camera fires the built-in flash multiple times, somewhat reminiscent of a disco strobe light and it is trying to illuminate your subject for focusing. From a technology standpoint of view, this is cool. This is really cool. From a portrait perspective, a subject perspective, this is annoying as all get out. And so my guess is, is that this is something that you probably wanna turn off. I would turn it off. And if you are good at focusing your camera, either manually or using the focus points to really find the strongest area of contrast, this is something that you're not likely to need. And so it's something that I think is very, very disruptive for your subject, it's very annoying, and it's very hard on their eyes, if it's a person that's at close range.