Lessons

Lesson Info

Camera Operation

all right, We're here in the final section of the class, and we're gonna be working with the camera operation, and this camera is filled with tons of features. And the way I see it, there's like 100 features, half of which you will never, ever use. And that's very, very common. There's a bunch of features that you will use. Maybe once you'll turn it on, turn it off, and that's the way you'll have it set for the entire life of camera. There's a few features that you'll go in and change once in a while, but there's about 10 controls that you were going to use all the time, and it's those 10 controls I really want to concentrate on in this next section. And so here is where we're going to start setting our camera for really going out and taking pictures. And I gave you a brief set up the camera before charging the battery, putting the lands on, putting the battery and putting the memory card and a few other things that you should probably do that we've kind of gone through things like set...

ting the date and time formatting. The memory card you're gonna attach the strap if you wanna have a strap adjusting the die after knob. I think we've kind of already gone through in that, but you want to make sure that that is adjusted properly. You want to make sure that you're setting raw or JPEG on the camera, and then all those features in the menus that we've gone through. You want to have those set the way you want to before you go out, start shooting pictures for sure. And then the final test is to shoot some chest pictures and make sure that you don't have any dust on your images on and then fix that problem, whether it's manually cleaning it or a shooting that white card. In doing that dust, delete data photo. And so this is where you're going to start to be tested on different features of your camera. So this is kind of your T two I final test. And so whether you're here in the classroom or at home watching this, I want you to kind of follow along. So first off your exposure mode, how do you change that? Go ahead and just kind of touch that on your camera. Think about where that changes. How do you change your shutter speed? What you gonna do when you need to change your shutter speed? What about changing your aperture? What are you gonna need to press to change your apertures when it's time to do that? Where is your I S O button? How do you change that? Your exposure. Compensation. Do you remember where that button this metering? How about that? How do you get into your meter? Insisted? I'm not asking you to make any changes right now, but just kind of think about where these things are. Your white balance. How do you change the white balance on your camera? Which menu is it in your focus where you're gonna change your focus modes, Your focus points. Where is the button or menu item for that? And then finally, where is the drive mode? I've picked these out, and I think these are the most important controls that you really need to be super familiar with. So let's go ahead and set your camera up in what I call the super Simple mode. All right, so the first thing I want you to do is. I want you to adjust your camera to the program mode, and I will go ahead and do that with my camera here. A swell turning the dial to the P mode. We won't need to worry about setting shutter speeds or apertures because their camera is gonna handle that. But we should change the I S o Who do I really recommend auto here? Okay, for this one. Super simple. I'm gonna change the auto. I'm gonna press the I S o mode and I'm gonna make sure it's an auto I s o auto. Very good exposure. Compensation should be should be set at zero. I can see on my camera that it is set on zero right there on the display screen in the back metering system is we're gonna wanna have this in Evaluative Metarie. Now, we don't have a button on the outside of this camera, so we have to access the Q menu and go into the metering mode, which is right here. And I like to have it in evaluative metering for this super simple mode. So make sure that you are an evaluative metering press set to enter that next up white balance auto white balance In this particular camera, I will use the Q menu to navigate up to the auto white balance and make sure that it is an auto, which it does say, right there for the focus mode. Let's set this in one shot. So focus mode. We have the A F button right here. I have my camera in manual focus. I'm gonna switch that back to auto focus and it's in one shot right there. Focus points. Let's set them to all points. Remember the focus point switch right over here and we can turn the dial or we can use the crosshairs, turn the dial to get all points selected. And then finally, we're gonna go to the drive mode of single you remember on the back there is a drive mode and we're gonna go to the single mode, which is the far left choice there. And so if he wanted to set your camera up in a super simple way that it's the super simple way, it's not my preference. But if it's the easiest way for some people to go out and just start shooting pictures and what we're gonna do is we're gonna set this up for different types of scenarios. Now, this is how an enthusiast and photography somebody has got a little bit more skill who really enjoys photography, might set their camera and so just follow along as we go through this. So let's change it toe aperture value. Turn the mode. I'll to a V. We do need to change our apertures. Now, let's change it to F four if you got it. So on this ah, lands I may not be able to get to F four and up. I can get to F four by turning the main dial on the camera and we're not adjusting cheddar speeds. We're gonna let the camera figure that out for this mode. Next up, let's change the I S O from auto to 100. So you remember the I S O button right here. Change that to 100 set that in. Next up. Let's just make sure our exposure compensation is at zero. It is. We can see the marking right there below the zero. So that's good metering. That is an evaluative metering. Well, it's again. We're gonna go press the Q button we can go into the metering mode and make sure that it's an evaluative meeting, which is the same is where it was before. White balance will be auto as well, and I think before I went into the Q menu. But this time you can also do it with the tab right on the back, the upper of the cross keys and it's in auto white balance for Focus. That should be in one shot. Press the A F but and it's in one shot, as it was in the last setting. And here we're gonna change from focus points to the single point in the center in the center. So I'm gonna press the button in the upper right hand corner where your thumb goes. I'm gonna turn the dial around till it highlights the center bracket. And then finally, I'm gonna set the drive mode to single, which is where it's at right now. And so, for just a general photographer, I think this is a good set up on the camera aperture. Priority means that you just have one dial to change. You could just change your aperture very quickly according to how much depth the field and how much resulting shutter speed you're going to get out of that, so that's a good mode for that. So let's try another mode. I call this the old school retro style. So if you're an old manual film camera film shooter, this is how maybe you like to have your camera set up and so just follow along, if you will. Let's set it to manual exposure, which means we need to set shutter speeds and apertures. So for a shutter speed, let's try 125th of a second. That's a good general shutter speed to set in an aperture of F eight, and I choose F eight by pressing the A V button and turning the main dial FAA and I choose F eight for anyone who recognizes the phrase F eight and be there. That's the phrase of how you get a great photograph, said F eight and be there. Next up is I s So let's ah, let's pump that up to 400 eyes. So just so that we could be ready for low light in action. We pressed the I S O button and we jump up to 400 set that exposure. Compensation would be set if necessary, were not going to set it here. But let's go to the old school center. Weighted metering How do you change the meeting on this in the quick menu? Go in there and change it and it's that bracket that has nothing in the middle. But it does say center weighted average metering white balance. We're gonna leave that on auto and white balance. Check to make sure that's auto. It is indeed Auto Lips that there focus mode. We're going to go manual. This is old school. And how do we change manual not in the back of the camera, but on the side of the lands. We're gonna go to manual focus on the switch for focus points we don't need to worry about because we're in manual focus. But let's go to the continuous drive so that we can shoot action in case it happens. So how do you change that? The drive mode and we're gonna change that to continuous shooting and set that in. And so that's the old school retro style you like shooting with traditional cameras. Maybe you'll like to set your camera like that. And as we're doing this, you are just basically getting familiar with how to make all these major changes. Now, I call this test number one, and it's, ah, just simply a test for you to change all the settings on your camera. And I don't think anyone would ever set their camera up like this. But it's a good opportunity for you to just practice changing. So here we go. Time value set a shutter speed of 1/2 of one second, and it kind of has an unusual reading. You gotta go all the way down to where it says zero quotation marks five. And that is 1/2 2nd We don't need to worry about aperture in this cause we're setting time value, and it's gonna figure out the aperture for us. But let's take it up to on the I S o press the I s o button and up to and lock that in exposure compensation. Let's set a plus two on the exposure compensation. In order to do that, I'm gonna press the A V button in the back and I'm gonna turn the dial till it says, plus two. The little indicator is right below the to next up. Let's change it to spot metering. All right, where's our meter? Got to go into the Q menu and change it to the spot metering and set that in white balance. Let's change it to flash. The white balance is the top of the cross keys. Excuse me. Got set that in. And we're gonna set this on flash, which is the lightning bolt. Focus modes. Let's go to a I servo. How do you change that? The A F button right on the back allows us directs access in there. Oh, you're not gonna be able to switch it until you switch your lens back to auto focus. You gotta switch that switch back to auto focus and then go to a I servo, which is that right hand option and suppress set for? Okay, let's get all points activated. So we press that top focus point button and lock in all points. They're all activated. And the drive mode. Let's set that at continuous. And that's where it was from the previous one. That made it easy. All right, so now you're getting used to the controls and where they are and where to find all of these things. And so most of the things are gonna have a button right on the back of the camera, right on the top of the camera to get to the one that doesn't is the metering mode, but it's the only one we need to go into the quick menu. So the Q button has kind of become our shortcut for getting to the metering system. So let's try another test here once again. This isn't how anyone would set the camera, but it's good practice for us all right, quickly, folks. A V aperture value said an aperture of F 22. We're not worried about shutter speed, but we want an aperture of F 22 I s 0 exposure compensation minus three. Am I going too fast for you? Good. You have to catch up. Next up. Metarie. That's in the queue menu. Let's change that to evaluative, and then we're gonna change the white balance to shade. There's a button on the back for white balance. The shade is the cloud. Little symbol. Focus. Let's try a I focus. That's that one, where it switches back and forth between still subjects and moving the one that I don't recommend. But we're doing here for just for the fun of it. Next up, let's check. That's do focus points. Let the let's set the single focus point on the right hand side so you can use the cross hair keys in back to move from the middle to the right, or you can use the dial to switch around all of them. Why would we switch to the right? So now when we shoot a vertical, that's maybe right up where the eyes of our subject ISS and so that would be a good reason for switching to one side or the other. And then finally, in the drive mode, let's change it to a two second self timer. So the drive mode to second self timer and then just for fun. I'm gonna go ahead and take a picture and you can tell I have that annoying beep still turned on, and I got a very terrible picture cause we're just testing things out and having having some fun here. All right, we're gonna do one more test just to make sure that everyone knows what they're doing. So this is our third and fire final Unusual test, and we'll do some more real stuff. Okay, Program mode. I don't need to worry about shutter speeds or apertures. I s 0 do an exposure compensation of plus one. Are you following along its partial spot? Where's that spot meter in the queue menu? Partial Metarie White Balance. Let's set that to fluorescent That's that long, skinny, with the bright Chinese lights coming off the top and bottom of it, and then the focus mode. Let's go to a I servo. That's for the sports mode. Servo means moving. Focus points. What are we doing here? There's my remote. Let's set it to all points all nine points activated and our drive mode is going to go to self timer continuous. And let's set it for two pictures and press set. And this is where our cameras sounds like a little bomb, and it's gonna take two pictures at the end of 10 seconds. You'll notice the light. Go steady right at the end of the exposure. There's one, and there's two alrighty, so let's get our cameras set up for some real photography. And so this first example is landscape photography. If you wanted to take a landscape and some things about a landscape photograph that are generally true, but not all the time is that you have a lot that you want and focus from foreground to background. So you want a lot of depth of field, your frequently working with the subject that is not moving so you can use a slower shutter speed without a problem. And when you do that, you're often with a tripod. And so, in that sort of mode, how would I set this camera up in a landscape mode? Well, you're gonna find that I like manual exposure because I like to set something and not have the camera change on it. So the shutter speed isn't gonna really matter because we're on a tripod for depth of field reasons. Well, it's going to depend a lot on the fat on many other factors, but let's just set it to F 16. That's gonna give us lots of depth of field, so we need to press that button that a V button on the back of the camera while we turn our dial two F 16 now, my landscape shots. I want to have this fine of detail as possible. So I'm gonna make sure that I eso is at the lowest possible setting in 100 is the lowest possible best quality setting Next up metering, I'm gonna choose evaluative. And so for that, I'm going to need to go in and changed the change it in the queue menu the quick menu to evaluative, which has a dot and a circle around it within the brackets, the white balance. I'm gonna have it, auto. So let's change the white balance to auto white balance. I'm shooting Ron. I can adjust the lighting later if necessary. Next up, we're gonna change the focusing to one shot. So the a f button on the back, we're gonna move that over to one shot mode. Focus points. Let's choose the single point in the middle. It's the most precise. It's the best one to use for accurate reading. And finally in the drive mode, we're just gonna choose single because we're taking one nice shot at a time. We don't need the motor drive engaged. And so this is Ah, good mode for setting up for landscape. Now the aperture is gonna have some variables as to where you want to set that. Potentially, you may need to change the white balance. There's a some other little options that you may want to change in here. And if you forget these, this is going to be a downloadable from creativelive thes little notes that I have here kind of on these different major settings for landscape. The next one that we're gonna look at is a portrait. So if you'd like to take a picture of a person, for instance, and so in a portrait type photograph, kind of. Some of the things that are common is that you are taking pictures of maybe people, sometimes animals. But it's a portrait, and the person is alive and moving. So you do have to be concerned a little bit about shutter speed to stop their movement. Ella's well as your own movement. Typically, these air not done from a tripod because as the person's moving, you're gonna want to make subtle adjustments for composition and framing that you're constantly going toe want to adjust, and so hand held photography and getting a shutter speed fast enough to stop the action. The other thing that's very common in a portrait photograph is shallow depth of field. You can see this especially to on the left image here of the young boy drinking tea, you can see the background is out of focus. You wanna have focused very sharp on the eyes of your subject. And so this is how many people might set up a portrait shot. Once again, I kind of like to have it in manual. So I want to keep control of things. I will want to choose a reasonably fast, but not too fast to shutter speed. And for this experience, for this cause right here, I'd say 125th might be fine. It'll vary according to a number of other factors. For the aperture, choose the aperture with widest possible opening. Now, I don't have enough 1.4 lens on this camera, but I will open it up is white as it goes, and this camera goes down to 4.5 at its current setting. That's a good place to start. The I s o. I would prefer that it stay at 100 but I will raise it if necessary, so that I can maintain a good cheddar speed exposure. Compensation will be adjusted if necessary. Metering mode. I will probably have in evaluative metering me double check. My camera is in evaluative metering. It's in the quick menu with the Q button the white balance. I will have it auto, which is set now focus points. I will choose. Excuse me. Focus. I will choose one shot because what I want to do is I want to be able to focus on my subject lock, focus in and then recompose by slight movements of the camera, side to side, and it is locked in on there. I if that's what the That's what I want in Tokyo's for focus points. I want to choose the single point in the middle because that is the most accurate. I want to be very precise. If I'm focusing on a person, I don't want to focus on the tip of their nose. I want to focus on their I cause the eyes the most important part, And if you have a very shallow depth of field lens, you could have the lead in the nose and focus and the eyes out, and that probably wouldn't be a very good shot. And then finally, for the drive mode on this, I'm gonna choose continuous because people's expressions and gestures change very, very quickly. I want to be able to shoot two or three pictures in a row very, very quickly to capture that right expression. And so I think that's a good way to set up a portrait photograph. You have great control over all the shutter speeds and apertures, your manually adjusting the shutter speeds and the ISOS according to necessary. All right, let's look at another type of picture. In this case, we're gonna look at a blur picture. And why would you want to take a blurry picture? Nobody wants to take a blurry picture. Sure, they dio is a lot of good reasons for shooting blurry pictures. So on the left we have the camera mounted on a tripod, letting water move in front of the lands and on the right, were actually doing a panning blur. So we're panning the camera with us, so there's a lot of different options for shooting an interesting blur shot and for either one of these. Once again, I like shooting in manual. That way you have direct control over your shutter speeds and apertures. Now what shutter speed you choose will depend on what you're shooting in the lens and a lot of other factors. But a good starting point might be around 1/15 of a second, so go ahead and set 1/15 of a second. Just for this case, the aperture Layla. It doesn't really matter too much. In many cases, it's probably going to be a smaller aperture. For this instance, let's try F 11. The I S O should probably be at 100 because you want to keep things as good equality as possible exposure. Compensation will be set if necessary. The metering is continuing to be kept at evaluative. The white balance is on auto, where it has been for many of the previous settings. Just double checking, making sure that that's correct for focusing on this. This is where I told some people you might have a surprise. I choose manual focusing. Alright, if you're focusing the waterfall, this is a great time to put your camera in, live you and magnify in and look at those rocks and see if they're sharp and just manually get that focus properly. If you're photographing like that blurry dog or a runner or the horses or anything like that, just manually focus on where those animals or those people are going to run through ahead of time manually. Focus on that spot on the road or the path that way. You know your camera is in exactly the right focus spot. When that event happens, if you leave it upto autofocus, it may or may not get it. This is just a way to guarantee that you will get it in focus. Focus points don't matter because you're in manual focus. But I would set the drive mode to continuous so that you can shoot several pictures and get several chances of that for the waterfall. I would probably set it at single. It's not that big a deal, but for any sort of action, I would leave it at continue so you can get a Siris of shirt blurred shots of the people movie. Next up, let's do a good old action shot. So whether it's sports or just general action, some things that you have to deal with here is you have a subject that is moving. It might be moving towards you. It might be moving away from you or just kind of from side to side, but it's moving around, and so focus is going to be very important in this section. Once again, I prefer manual keeping, direct control of shutter speeds and apertures. For most action, you're probably gonna need a shutter speed of 5/ of a second or faster. So let's go up to 5/100 of a second. And chances are you're gonna need a fairly wide open aperture. A lot of sports photographers like lenses that open up to 2.8. I don't have 2.8 on this particular camera, but I will open up as far as it'll go, which is F four, where the lens is currently set. If you have a lens, it's 2.8. Go to 2.8. If you shoot a lot of sports, you may want a lens that goes 2 to 2. or faster. Now, this is where we start changing our I s so a little bit more freely, many times shooting sports depending on the lighting conditions, you're gonna have to bump that I eso up. So let's go ahead and bump it up to 400. I s o because we're probably going to need that better light gathering ability with that faster shutter speed exposure compensation really won't be necessary in manual exposure metering. We're gonna leave that in evaluative and auto for white balance, which is where we've been for the last several focus. This gets to be very important. This is a I servo, and in the last setting, we ah, we turned it to manual focus. So let's make sure lenses are in auto focus and that the auto focus is in servo. This is the moving mode where it will adjust and track movement of the subject ahead of us. So the servo mode for focus is the most important thing that you can do when shooting action like this. For focus points, it depends on the type of sport and action that you are shooting. But for a lot of things, activating all the brackets is advisable gives you a wider bullseye to put on your subject as they're moving. And so I will frequently use all points when focusing on subjects, you do need to be fairly close to your subject. You can't be photographing a tiny bird flying 1/4 mile away and have your camera track it. It has to be hitting those focus points. And then, of course, of course, for the drive mode, I would set it to continuous. So let's make sure our drive mode is in the continuous mode, which is where it was before. And so when you do set up for sports, there's a lot of camera settings that you need to adjust. So remember these settings and adjust to your needs. Your sport. There's a lot of little adjustments that you'll make between whether you're photographing dogs running around or car races, and you'll have to be the best judges to what works for you, what you're doing. So the final one that I'm gonna do here is just a general one, and I call it maximum sharpness. If you are trying to get the absolute maximum sharpness out of an image off of something that's not moving off of something that doesn't have a particular need for depth of field, this is where you can get the maximum sharpness from your camera manual exposure. The shutter speed isn't going to really matter here if you were on a tripod, and that's one of the things that getting the sharpest possible picture requires. So I'm not even gonna bother with the shutter speed. But the aperture you want to set is something in the middle of the range that your lens has. My lens goes from F 4.5 to 29 and F 11 is about halfway in the setting in the middle of that sort of those settings. And so F 11 is a very sharp place to shoot most lenses. The sharpest point does change from lens to lens, but that's a good general spot to be out. The I S O, of course, will be at the lowest numbered setting possible. So set that at 100 for maximum quality, we're not gonna worry about exposure compensation cause we're in manual the metering. We're going to continue to keep that in evaluative and the white balance in auto for focusing one shot focus. So make sure your A f is switched back over into the one shot mode. Focus points like I've said before, the center point is the most accurate and best for determining one particular place to focus and for the drive mode. This is where we go to that to second self timer. So let's go to the drive mode and set the two second self timer. That way, when we're on the tripod and we press the shutter release, we can take our hands off the camera and there's no vibrations going through the camera at the time we take the picture. And so it's kind of an unusual situation where shutter speed and aperture don't I mean too much in that particular photograph. But it does happen in macro photography and some sorts of landscape and architectural type photography. Now let's get this camera back to just basic photography. And so this is really the last one here, just basic photographer. You're gonna take the camera slinging around your neck and go out and just take pictures of whatever you happen to experience that day, whether that somebody walking down the street on motorcycle or just doing whatever. Here's the way I'd set my camera. I've taken my camera off manual. How about that aperture priority. Just kind of a nice way to have quick control over the camera. Not gonna worry about shutter speeds, but let's open the aperture upto a fairly open setting. So in this case, I'm gonna open it up. Teoh, about F four in this case, 4.5 on this lands. Can I get it for There we go. All right, Next up, I s so I'm gonna leave it at I will adjust it as necessary. You know, if it's the sun starts setting, it starts getting darker. I'll bump it up to two for 800. Whatever the case needs metering, I'm gonna leave that on evaluative white balance. Leave that on. Auto. Don't need to worry about those for focusing. I generally will keep it in one shot. Some people like to leave it in the servo. It depends on Are you mostly shooting something that's not moving or you mostly shooting something that's moving. So whether it's still or moving is kind of your choice there for focusing points. I like having the control of selecting the single point in doing focus lock and so focused lock is where you focus on whatever's in the middle of those brackets. And let's get my camera into the folksy mode. Perhaps it is not focusing. Why is that? Because I have to. Self time returned on from the previous example. So let's change that drive mode back to single shot so I can lock and recompose. That gives me a lot of versatility when just going out and shooting. So let's get that final drive mode set up there at single shot. And so that, I think, is just a good general way to have your camera set when it's sitting in the camera bag and you're ready to pull it out, take pictures because you can pull it out and just start taking pictures. And the exposure is probably gonna be right, and the focus is probably going to be right. And so we're gonna check and see if we have any questions about some of the exposure settings because a lot of this is subjective. There may be plenty of disagreements on this, and this is a season to taste type thing, and so this is a good starting point for people who don't have experience in photography. John I would just like to say that when you started with your slide, the chat room went completely silent because they were all Yes, because they were practicing. All the fingers were on the cameras, which is good. And when I asked them why they weren't asking questions, they said she please be quiet. Eso Okay? Hear me? Okay, we're gonna So I thought that was We did have a few questions, but I just wanted good. It's time people got off their keyboards. I mean, I'm sure those people at home that are writing all the questions are very good at switching things. But my hope is that after playing with that and I'd love to see some nods here, do you feel more comfortable where those most important controls are once you get used to them and you don't need to worry about the fact that there's 100 things in the menu system, you don't go to those very often. It's those main controls you go back to again and again. I'm curious as to see what sort of follow up questions people have on this. I would think there more criticisms. No, I want it. Set This here. I would set this here. No, I was just going back to try to find the comment is to whoever said it that they would buy this course just for this one slide. Yeah, it's really I was That was far Julia. Um, many wanted to know if it's possible to explain the differences between the metering modes, and I know we've covered it a little bit. The metering modes, Yeah, let me turn that on on the back of my camera. Here, going to the metering modes. There's a little bit of indication by just the little symbol that they give you The Evaluative Meter Remote is measuring a very wide area around the whole picture, and it's comparing and contrasting different areas in the picture, trying to figuring out the correct amount of light. The center, the partial spot and center weighted have all of their light scented centered right in the middle off of various size points. In the days of film, this was huge because you couldn't see your results, and this was the only way you could tell if you were letting in the correct amount of light. Nowadays, when you can look at the back of the image and look at the history Graham. It's much simpler to get a good guest, shoot a picture and then make a small adjustment as necessary. And I know that kind of sounds lazy. But the fact is is that I'm getting feedback and I'm knowing if I'm getting exactly what I want or not. And when I walk away from a situation nowadays in Digital, I'm 100% confident 100% that I have the right shutter speed aperture and I let the right amount of light in. In the days of film, I would use the spot meter and I would measure certain ways. And there's a whole style and technique to doing that, and it's valuable to know to some degree. But for the average photographer, I think just using the evaluative meter and shooting a test picture and looking a result and going on from their works fine beyond the evaluative, the spot meter is probably the most practical I have. Never, ever. Once I put my camera in the partial meter, it's just a tool. There's sometimes too many tools, will only complicate the task and if you are very selective about what tools you use. The 1st 1 is the evaluative. The second is the spot. And then some people kind of prefer those other two. They're just options that just cause they're there doesn't mean you have to use him. So play around, see what works for you. Different people have different styles.