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Shooting Menu: Page 3

Moving on to page three. So these are the different film like modes you might say. And so we can have different levels of contrast and color and you can go into any one of these, remember, here's the info button, see that? We can dive in and start making control changes. So I want to show you on my camera. Let's go ahead and customize a control in here. So let's open up menu system and we're gonna dive over. And where are we? We're on page three, picture styles. I'm gonna go into this. Now you'll notice there's all these different symbols along the top right hand side indicating the different features that will be a little bit more clear when we get inside. And then you'll see there's different numbers according to how they're set on there. So for instance, let's look at the portrait mode in here. Actually, I need to press the info detail set, or I can touch it on the screen, and we can see that the sharpness has three different lengths. The strength of it, the power of the sharpness, ...

notice where it's at. It's at two, it's down fairly low. And then the fineness and the threshold which are just subtle ways of controlling the exact way that it's implemented. We have general contrast, saturation, and color tone. Now I'm gonna go ahead and back out of this, and let's go look at the landscape mode and see how that is different. So in the landscape mode, get in here again, notice how the sharpness level is now up at I think four rather than two. And as we go down, contrast, saturation, and color tone are still similar. But if you wanted to have a more contrasty scene, you could hit the set button under contrast and dial that over and now it's set as more contrasty. If you wanted more saturation, press that, and you can dial that up, one, two, three, four stops, depending on how much you want to go. And this is gonna change the look of your JPEGs, but not your raw images. And so, great ways for anybody who do shoot a lot of JPEGs and they're not totally happy and they have to do the same fix over and over again on all of their JPEGs. You can fix it in the camera, so that it's constantly shooting exactly what you want as you go forward. And so, as I say, always pay attention to that info button because that will give you access to additional features on the camera. Long exposure noise reduction, alright. So in this case, you're gonna have the option of turning on auto, which means it will just kind of turn on whenever it needs to. You can turn it on all the time, and the idea here is that if you were doing a long exposure, let's say, 15 or 30 second exposure. There's gonna be some noise that adds up over that time. And I want to run it through my own test so I just, you know, did a 15 second exposure, turned on not very many lights so that I could do a 15 second exposure, and I turned the noise reduction on and off, and I looked really really closely, and if you're not looking closely at your screen right now, and even if you are looking really closely at your screen, I can't see a difference. So what I did is I shot them incorrectly exposed, and then corrected for them, and tried to see can I see a difference if I'm over exposing, under exposing, and there is virtually no difference I've seen in my testing. Do your own testing, do your own test, to check this out. And so it is doing next to no good in my mind. Now when you shoot a long exposure, let's say 15 seconds, and you have noise reduction turned on, what it does is it goes through a noise reduction processing which takes another 15 seconds. And it seems like when I am out shooting 15 second exposures, it's dark and I want to get back in. It's cold and I want to get back in and get warm again, and I don't want to be waiting for my camera to process something if it's not gonna be doing me any real good at all. So it just slows up the shooting process. And so I would highly recommend turning this off, unless you have found that it does something really good for the way that you shoot. Alright, same idea only now we're talking about higher ISO. So if you shoot at ISO 3200, 6400, these really high numbers, you could either have the camera go in and do some noise reduction, or you can have it not do anything at all. So I'm just gonna run it through the same test, and I'm gonna be shooting at ISO in this particular case. And so here's our little cut out example of the noise that you're gonna get with a standard JPEG, and let's go ahead and take a look at a low standard and high, and you will notice less noise as we go from standard to high. Those images look better. Now there's also something called a multi shot noise reduction, where it shoots multiple photos, and it is supposed to be superior to high, but to be honest with you, in this example, the difference is small. I think I can see a little bit, it's a little bit better, but you have to be on a tripod shooting a subject that is not moving. So it's a potential for landscape photography so long there's not too many leaves and grasses blowing around. But I wondered what if I just took that original JPEG image and I work with Adobe Lightroom, and I just use that to reduce the noise as well, because that has some noise reduction options in there as well, and I got something that I think is on par with the high and the multi shot. So if you want to do the work yourself, you can do as good as the camera can, or better in my mind. Or if you want to let the camera do it, 'cause you don't want to mess with it, I could see leaving this on standard. I think high might be a bit much for some people. Let's take it to another level of extreme, ISO 12,800. And I think I was able to control the noise afterwards better than the camera was, simply because the post production programs have more controls and you're gonna have a better screen and you can tailor it to each individual shot. And so if you want to let the camera do it, it can do a pretty good job on it's own. And it doesn't have too much negative effect on actual shooting. It does kind of lose a little bit of detail, and that's why you may not want to leave it in high. It starts marring the sharpness of the photograph and it gives it a little bit of a blur look to it. So that's why I probably wouldn't want to set that on the high setting. And so if you don't mind doing things yourself, turn it off and work with it later. If you want to have the camera do it, standard is probably the best option of the group. Next up is highlight tone priority. And so in this case, what the camera is doing is it's kind of messing with the exposures. It is forcing you to shoot at different ISO's. And what it does is it underexposes everything when it shoots, and then it brightens it up but it's very careful not to over brighten any of the highlights. So in these two photos, you'll notice that the top of this archway is blown out in the left side, but it is protected in the right side. And so by turning highlight tone priority on, you will protect the highlights. Now you might be thinking, ooo, that sounds like a good idea, and it does. The downside is is that when you turn this on, well first off, it only works in JPEG images. And when you do, you can no longer use ISO which is the best sensitivity setting on the camera when it comes to image quality. And so this is something that I generally don't recommend, unless you have found a particular use for it that you need that it works just for you. Next up is dust delete data, and this is where the camera can collect dust information to be used with the Canon software. And this is something that a lot of people are not going to end up doing 'cause they don't end up using the Canon software. We have a multiple exposure option in here, and so this is once again, another little submenu we'll dive into. First option is whether you want this turned on or not. Normally it will be turned off. Under multiple exposure control, you can have it as either additive or average. And this is depending on how you're doing your exposures. Are you cutting your exposures in halves 'cause you're gonna shoot two of them, and then half again 'cause you're gonna shoot four, or are you illuminating each subject exactly as you want it to? And so it really depends on how dark your background is, and how bright your subject is. And so in a case like this, this is just gonna be an additive, where I'm just adding a new picture to each of the others and it's fine. So you may need to play around with these controls to see how they work for you. And here's a good example of average versus additive. As I take pictures in average, it just keeps cutting the exposure and making them darker so that they're all evenly bright. In the additive it just keeps on adding the light and it'll get brighter and brighter. And you'll need to know a little bit more what you're doing when you're using the additive function 'cause you have to have all your exposures dialed in ahead of time, whereas in average, the camera will kind of just figure out the exposure as you go along the line. You can also choose the number of photos that you're gonna be shooting in your multiple exposure here. And then you can be choosing whether this is a one time event, that you're just gonna go shoot some multiple exposures or if you are on a multiple exposure rampage and you're gonna be shooting them all over for the next hour you're shooting multiple exposures. It gets to be irritating 'cause you have to go back in and turn it on again and again and so, whether you're gonna be doing this for a one shot deal or doing it for quite a period of time. And that is the multiple exposure submenu system. Next up is the HDR mode. The camera has a built in HDR mode, and I've played a little bit with the post production HDR modes and I have to admit, right from the very beginning, the built in one is a little bit on the wimpy side. But we do have some controls where we can control how wide a range of pictures we're grabbing, from one exposure, one EV, two EV, or 3 EV apart, so how many stops apart are our images that we're taking? And so I wanted to run through a little test, high contrast, and so we have a very very bright background, here's your standard JPEG. One EV doesn't rescue those highlights very much. Two EV, we're starting to see a little bit more. Three EV rescues them a bit more, and so you'll probably gonna want it have it set at two or three if you're using the HDR built in function. But it is a little bit on the wimpy side, as I've said before. Now there is also different effects that you can choose, whether it's a natural or artistic blend of these tones and colors. So let's take a look at a few examples. Here's your standard JPEG that we saw before. Let's go ahead and add a natural look to it, and this is with a 3 stop EV, so I'm trying to give it as much impact as possible. Then we go into a art standard. The colors have become much more vivid and bold, and even more vivid again in the art vivid section, and even more bold in the bold section, and then there's an embossed, which I'm not quite sure on how to describe it. But it's different. And so those are some of the different options in there and so that's for being more creative if you feel like it. And then once again are you on a HDR rampage shooting HDR for everything, or are you just wanting to shoot it for one event. You can choose that here. Next up is auto image align. The big question here is are you on a tripod, or are you handheld? If you're handheld, you want to enable this. And what it does is it slightly crops in the frame, and then it matches where all the images, 'cause it shoots three images in order to result in one final image. And if you move the camera, it needs to adjust where those pixels are. And so if you are gonna do this, it's smart to use a tripod and then turn this off so that what you see through the viewfinder is exactly what you're gonna get. And you can still use wide angle lenses and still get as much as they would normally get from side to side. And that is the HDR submenu in here. And so this unfortunately will only result in JPEG images. You cannot shoot raw HDR images, at least with this camera. There are other Canon camera that will allow you to shoot HDR images but not this one.