Lessons
Class Overview
09:24 2Photo Basics
07:09 3Top Deck: Mode Dial
27:26 4Top Deck: ISO
09:59 5Top Deck: Autofocus
09:32 6Top Deck: Flash & Focal Plane
05:42 7Back Side: Viewfinder Display
11:13 8Back Side: Live View & Movie Mode
19:52Back Side: Auto Focus and Quick Menu
18:28 10Left & Right Sides
05:43 11Bottom & Front of Camera
23:38 12Shooting Menu: Page 1
14:38 13Shooting Menu: Page 2
08:02 14Shooting Menu: Page 3
12:28 15Shooting Menu: Page 4
08:14 16Shooting Menu: Page 5
02:18 17Shooting Menu: Page 6 & Secret Menu
09:42 18Playback Menu
06:01 19Setup Menu
22:28 20Custom Functions Menu
28:13 21My Menu
04:23 22Camera Operation
10:40Lesson Info
Shooting Menu: Page 2
Alright, we're onto page two in the Shooting Menu now and we have Exposure compensation which, if you remember, was the back dial on the back of the camera, but you can come in here and adjust it as well because this is also where we control our AEB, your Auto Exposure Bracketing, and this is where we can choose to shoot a picture, a series of pictures that are either brighter or darker. The ISO speed settings, okay, we are into another sub-menu, so we're gonna dive a little deeper into these and first off, we get to choose what ISO speed we want. Now, this is the same as the ISO button on the top of the camera, with the same options available. Next up is the Range for still photography. What do you want to have available for you? And I say have the maximum range available, so set the minimum to 100 and the maximum to H(25600) so that if there's any ISO that you want to choose, it is available for you to choose. You can also choose the range that is gonna be used in automatic if you us...
e Auto ISO, and here you'll have to use a little bit of thought process as to, what is the highest ISO that you want to use before the camera starts going to lower shutter speeds? And so, typically you would put in a number on the maximum side that is the highest number that you feel comfortable with when it comes to image quality and noise on your sensor. And so, I think for a lot of people, that number maybe might be around 6400. Other people are gonna want it lower and some people are gonna want it higher. The way that the camera changes the ISO is by looking at the shutter speed and so, here is where you get to have some very fine-tuned control over what shutter speed the camera will cause the camera to go into a higher ISO. Let's say you can't hand-hold the camera anything slower than 1/60th of a second. If you wanted to, you could manually go in and say, at 1/60th of a second, start moving the ISO 'cause I don't want it to ever go below a 1/60th of a second. For a lot of people, they know that their hand-hold limit will depend on which lens they're using. And so, if you choose the Auto option, it will choose a shutter speed that is equivalent to their focal length. So, let's say if you have a 100 millimeter lens, it's gonna give you 1/100th of a second. If you have a 24 millimeter lens, it's gonna give you about 1/25th of a second. And if you want, you can further tweak it so that it is always about one stop lower or two stops lower, one stop higher or two stops higher. So, myself, I know that I have pretty steady hands and that I can hold it about a stop better than that average. And so, I would set this at minus one, but this would depend on how steady you can hand-hold your camera. Maybe if you have a little bit of tremor in your hands, you might wanna set it at plus one or plus two if you use that Auto ISO setting. And so, this is a really fine-tuned control that a lot of people like because they can really dial it in according to their own particular needs. Alright, so that was all buried in the ISO speed settings, the sub-menu there. Auto Lighting Optimizer, and so, let me just give you a little visual example of what this is doing. And so, this is gonna be working on JPEG images, not RAW images, and it looks at the highlights and the shadows and it tries to improve the photo from what it naturally got off the sensor. And so, in this photo, the shadows are a little on the dark side and we could lighten them up and that would be a little bit better for seeing all the people in them. And so, you could have the option of turning this on Standard or leaving it on Disable. It's a very subtle difference and generally what it's doing is it's raising the shadows so that you can see into the shadows a little bit more easily. But some photos look better with more contrast and so you have to be a little bit careful about when you wanna turn this on. This is the type of thing that I think is better controlled in post production in all cases. So, if you are shooting this and you really wanna take control of your photos, I would probably turn this off. If you never wanna work in post production and you just wanna get the best results out of the camera and you shoot a lot of stuff that might have shadows, then you might wanna leave it on Standard. I don't think I would wanna go beyond that for most situations. The White balance, well, this is exactly the same as the White balance that we saw in the Quick Menu, but we have it here as well again. Now, one of the options you'll see is that we have an Info button that can switch us back and forth on the White balance. So, let me go ahead and get my camera out here 'cause I wanna dive in here and just show you a little bit about this. So, I'm gonna get into the menu system, what page are we on? It says we're on page two, down under White balance right here and you'll notice the Info button allows us to switch back and forth. And under Auto white balance, we have the option of Retain warm ambient color under tungsten light or light will be reproduced even under tungsten light. So, tungsten light is that really, really orange light and the question is, do you wanna retain some of the natural look of that light? Some people wanna absolutely correct for it. For instance, they might be using tungsten lights in their studio and they're photographing objects that have very specific colors to them. In that case, you would probably wanna correct for it altogether. But if you're photographing in your living room and you have these nice, warm lights that give you a very warm feeling in the room, you might wanna keep that light. And so, for the average user, I think probably just keeping it retaining its warm ambient color would be a good choice right there. But be aware of that bottom line of information, it might say Info and that's gonna give you access to an additional level of information about any particular feature. Okay, so that is the White balance. Next up is Custom White Balance and this is an option for you if you really wanna get the right color, I'd mentioned this before, where you could photograph a white piece of paper and you can see my photograph of a white piece of paper came out very orange 'cause I was using a tungsten lamp to illuminate it. And then what you're gonna need to do is go to Custom White Balance right here in the menu system and select that photo and then have your... You're gonna have to set the White balance in the previous setting to Custom and what it will do is it will correct for the color of that particular image and give you a nice, clean image. Now, in White Balance Shift and Bracketing, you are able to do a bracketing mode and this is the same as we saw in the Quick Menu if this seems familiar. And you're also able to tweak the white balance. I hope that you do not need to adjust this, but if you found that your colors were off just a little bit and you're shooting JPEGs, you could tweak it by just very, very small amounts here. Color space, this is the range of colors that your camera will record JPEG images in. When you shoot RAW images, it collects it in the Adobe RGB color space which is a fairly large color gamut. When you shoot JPEGs, the camera, by default, comes set to sRGB and so, if you wanna get that larger color gamut, if you're gonna do any printing, I would highly recommend Adobe RGB because it's a larger gamut of colors and that's mainly where it's gonna come into play, is printing. When you view things online and on the web and things like that, you'd be totally fine just in sRGB, but I always like to collect as much information as possible as long as it doesn't hurt anything else.
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Ratings and Reviews
Ashley McCarrick
I bought an 80D so I could have a good all-around DSLR and I was thrilled to see that John just did this class. This is my 3rd class of John's and it was just as great as the others. I now understand what each of the menu settings means and which ones are the best for me. John is an excellent instructor, no matter what your photography skill level is. Thanks, John!
Justin Brodt
Awesome class!!! First watched "How to choose your first DSLR camera" and decide on the Canon EOS 80D based on my needs and what I want to accomplish in the future. I have ordered the camera but have not recieved it yet but I still watched the class. Even though I didn't have the camera in hand I feel that I have a good understanding and feel for it already. The class is very informative and I would advise it to anyone who plans to or has purchased this camera. Great job John!!! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with all of us.
Scott Ace Nielsen
I just purchased my Canon 80D and also this course, and I am so glad I did. It is truly a perfect virtual owners manual that I can watch any time. John Greengo is am awesome presenter and this is the second course of his that I have purchased so far. ..Well worth the cost, thank you!
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