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Lesson Info

Custom Functions Menu

Next up, a couple of logos. Don't really know why they're there, but they're there. Then we get into another little rabbit hole. So this is a sub-menu of custom functions. And higher-end Canon cameras have dozens and dozens and dozens of functions. This camera has about 11 functions. And these are just little ways that you can go in and tweak the operation of the camera. So the exposure level increments, that's your shutter speeds and your apertures. You can have them work in 1/3 stops or 1/2 stops. The camera right now is in 1/3 stops and that's the most precise, exacting way that you can get in there. And you can change it to 1/2 stops if you want. Most people don't bother with that one. ISO Expansion. The camera normally will not allow you to get up to 12,800, unless you turn off the restrictions here. And so, do you want to be able to expand the ISO capabilities? And I say yes, give me full control of the camera. Let me have the options of setting whatever I want to set. Doesn't me...

an I will set it, I just don't want to be limited of setting that when I need to set it. I don't want to have to dive in here and turn it on. So I recommend turning this one on. When you turn it on, down at the bottom it's gonna say Item Number Two Has Been Changed, in the sense that it has a blue number one down there, which means it's different than the default setting of zero. Option number three, flash sync speed mode when in aperture value mode. So one option is where the camera will automatically figure out the correct shutter speed. It might use a very, very slow shutter speed, which some people may not want. And so auto will give you a great versatility, give you a very good exposure, but you have to be careful with slow shutter speeds. One of the options is to leave it kind of in that handheld range, a 1/60 to 1/200 of a second. 1/200 is the fastest shutter speed that you can use the flash with on this camera. And then the final one is just at the very fastest shutter speed of 1/200 of a second, if you were needing to stop action a little bit more quickly. And so the auto range I think is pretty good for most people, but if you have different needs you can change it. Long exposure noise reduction deals with shooting long exposures, like 15 or 30 seconds, and when this is turned on, after you shoot the exposure, the camera will turn on processing for about 15 seconds and will prevent you from shooting pictures at that time. You have to wait. And so the question is, "Are the photos really any better "with all this processing turned on?" And so the test that I have done, turning it off and turning it on, show virtually no difference at all. And so I really don't think this has much impact at all, other than slowing the shooting process down. So I leave this turned off in the camera. I don't think it's helping much at all. High ISO speed noise reduction reduces noise when shooting at higher ISOs. And so I wanted to go in and take a look at what this looks like, so I did a little standard shot. I blew up the image, and then I wanted to compare this at different ISOs. So this is at 3200. And if we look at the image quality, you'll notice that it looks better going from low to standard to strong and there is less noise in it. But, when you put it on strong, it does start losing some of the detail because what it's doing is it's blurring some of the information, and it starts to blur a little bit too much when it gets to the strong setting. Now, in case you're wondering, you can also shoot this in raw. Now, this is only for JPEG images, but if you shoot a raw image, you can go into your own software and you can correct it there as well. And you can have a little bit more control over how much you do, rather than in these three preset options, you have an infinite number, really, available to you. Let's take a look at 12,800, the highest ISO. You can see all the noise on the left, and as we set our noise reduction to low, standard, and strong, that starts reducing the amount of noise, but if you go strong, it's gonna start reducing the overall sharpness look of the image and might be a little bit much. You can also go into raw and you can have your own control of it, and depending on which processing program you're using, you might be able to get much better results than the camera has out of it. And so a basic user could leave this on standard. I think a more advanced user might want to just disable this feature and do it themselves, but I think standard is a reasonable setting to have without going too strong. Highlight tone priority looks at the highlights of an image and it tries to restrict the highlights from going too bright, which is a great, great thing for it to do. However, when you turn this feature on, the camera does not allow you to shoot at ISO 100 anymore, which is where you're getting the best data off of that sensor, and so this is a very limiting mode in that manner. And it's not something I would recommend to most people. It's good to be aware of and it might fit a few particular needs, but it's not something most people would generally leave turned on. And, once again, an image manipulation feature, so it's not going to affect raw images. It's only gonna affect JPEG images. The auto focus assist. The flash will emit bursts of light, kind of like a disco light, when it needs help focusing, which can be very annoying and does not work over very long distances because the flash is not very powerful. When you have an external flash attached to it, that will fire or it may use the infrared beam if it has that option. And all of these can help you focus under low light, but they can be very disruptive to people or events that you're shooting in. And this is something that I would generally turn off in many cases, unless you know that it is particularly good for a situation that you are using. Number eight in the custom functions is controlling some button operation. And this is controlling what the shutter release button is doing and the auto exposure lock button is doing. And so if you wanted to turn the camera into what's known as a back button focusing system, which is what a lot of advanced photographers like, you would use the number three option, which means the shutter release button will be good for auto exposure and the back button is how you will do auto focus. And so you focus with the back button, and when your focus is achieved, you can take your fingers off the camera and then choose to shoot pictures when and where you want with all of them being in focus so long as your subject hasn't moved. A basic user can probably just leave this at the zero setting and it's fine. There's a couple of others, depending on exactly how you wanted to tweak these buttons' operations for your style of shooting. The set button in the back of the camera is not doing much on its very own, and so if you want to get in there and customize that button, there's a number of different options that you might find something that's just a little bit more convenient. One of the ones that is interesting is number four. Don't necessarily recommend it, but it's interesting because it allows the aperture of the lens to be closed down so that you can see what the depth of field looks like. Let me show you what that looks like. So a number of the higher-end Canon cameras will have dedicated depth of field buttons. At one point it was a hallmark of a professional camera, but it's filtered down all the way to the entry-level cameras at this point, albeit you do have to customize the button to do it. Most people don't need it, but it is an interesting option for people who do want to see how much depth of field they're going to get right there in the viewfinder. So the flash button on the top of the camera normally raises the flash, but for people who like to change the ISO on a regular basis, which is many, many, many photographers, you can change this and set it to number one and you can use that button to change the ISO. This is actually very close to where the ISO button is on most all the other Canon cameras, and so this makes it very similar to use along with the rest of the lineup of Canon cameras. And so the more advanced user might want to change that, especially if they don't use the flash very much. So how often and when do you want that LCD display to come on, and how do you want it to work? And so in this case, display on is fine, but if you want to show the previous display status, which is something I think some of the more advanced users might like, you might give that a try and see if that's more to your liking. Alright, so those are our custom functions buried in that little sub-menu in there. Next up is our copyright information. And this is where you can enter your name or contact information, your website, and that information will be recorded to the meta-data of the file that you are shooting. And so it would go right along there. Now, it can be overwritten, but if somebody wants to be honest, and they want to go, "Oh, who took this photo?" They can see that. I think it's nice for ownership of the camera. In case it gets lost or stolen, your name is in the camera. If it ever gets found, there is some evidence that it is your camera because your name is in there. And so I doubt that the thug who steals your camera is likely gonna know that this feature is buried in the camera, and so if it is found, there is some little evidence that says yes, it is your camera. If you want to clear all the settings back to the factory default settings, you can simply do so right in here. You can clear the custom functions, or you can just clear all the settings of the camera. Firmware is the software that runs the operations of the camera, and from time to time there is an update. And actually there was a recent update I had to do on this camera here. And it's now at Version 1.0.2, at least at the recording of this class. And from time to time, Canon will find either a mistake or an improvement, and they're gonna issue new firmware. You go find that firmware on the Internet at Canon's website, download it to a formatted memory card, and then put that memory card in the camera. Come here to where it says firmware version and the camera will recognize that there is new software on the memory card and then ask you to import that and go through the process where there's a couple of little screens that you'll go through. Takes about five minutes, and you're gonna get new software on your camera. And this is totally free, it just takes about five or 10 minutes to go through the process. And so I recommend checking in to see what version your camera is at. Go to the Canon website, see which version is available. If you don't have the latest software, nothing wrong with having the latest software on the camera.