Lessons
Class Introduction
04:29 2Photo Basics
04:53 3Basic Controls: Auto Modes
10:42 4Basic Controls: Manual Modes
14:11 5Basic Controls: Back of Camera
25:33 6Back of Camera: Quick Menu
09:38 7Back of Camera: Play Back
05:07 8Left, Right & Bottom of Camera
03:35Lesson Info
Set-up Menu
These are gonna be a lot of controls that you're gonna set one time and you're not gonna need to come back to. There's a couple in here that you're gonna come back to on a regular basis, but this is just dealing with the general setup of the camera. First up, auto power off. How quickly do you want the camera to power down? Here, it's a balance between convenience and battery life. Set at one minute, that seems pretty good for most people. Adjust as necessary. Auto rotate. So here is where I recommend a change. I think on computer will rotate your images when you download them to your computer, but will not rotate them on the back of your camera. In the top example, it has rotated our vertical image and it's made it pretty small in size. It's a lot bigger if we're willing to turn the camera 90 degrees, and I am more than willing to turn the camera 90 degrees in order to see that image as best as possible on it. You'll get a better look at that image, and it will be larger by turning it...
on computer, but it will still rotate it when it downloads it to your computer. Here is one feature that you will come back to more than any other, and that is the formatting of the card. What's happening here is if you wanna format your card, you're gonna delete all the photos on it. This is gonna get rid of the file directory and any other ghost folders or any other junk that might be on your memory card. This is healthy to do on your card. It's gonna help your card be able to communicate cleanly back and forth with the camera for the longest period of time. Now, one thing to note is that if you checkbox with the garbage can, you'll do something called a low-level format, and I call that cleaning with Clorox. That's cleaning at a whole other level. You're scrubbing that card clean with even more information. It takes a little bit longer, but I do that on a regular basis as well so that my communication between the camera and the card is as clear as possible. I'll tell you the truth, I can't remember the last time I had a communication error between my Canon camera and my memory card, and that's because I format my memory cards on a regular basis after I've downloaded my images and I've backed them up onto multiple hard drives. When your camera creates files on the memory card, they have a numbering system, and it's a continuous numbering system that goes from one to 10, and then starts over again. It will just continue up that 10,000 and then it starts over again and goes through that cycle over and over again, which is fine, but if you want to manually reset it or have it automatically reset every time you put a new card in, you can have it set to do that, but most people just leave it in continuous because they are less likely to have duplicate file numbers in the long term in that system. On a memory card, you can create different folders where images are shot and stored. For instance, if you only have one memory card, you can have a folder for business photos and another folder for personal photos. Let's say you're giving your business clients a slideshow of a business project. You're not gonna have your family photos mixed in there with it, and so it's gonna be just exclusively images in that folder that you're looking at, and so if you want to do that, you can go in and create those folders and select which folder you are accessing, recording, and reading information from. Most people don't use this, but it does have that capability. The screen on the back of the camera can be changed in different colors. White on black, black on white, white on red, yellow on black, and so if you have a slight preference to which color you like to view it at, that's your choice. Put it in there. I think the white on black is my favorite because if you're shooting at nighttime, it's less light shining in your face, but it's a matter of personal preference there. All right, second tab under Set-up Menu, the LCD brightness can be controlled. Normally, you're gonna want to set this in the middle. Technically, you could save a little bit of battery power by turning the power down, but a lot of times, we are judging the exposure of a particular photograph by just looking at the LCD, which is pretty accurate. It's not perfect, but it's pretty accurate, and so leaving this in the middle will give you the most truthful information off the back of the camera. Okay, the LCD off/on buttons, what controls turning that LCD on and off. There is a display button that you can use if you just wanna use that, but the shutter can also activate it as well, and so I prefer the shutter display button. That way, when I press down on the shutter, that turns off when I hold it up to my eye. Otherwise, that information would stay on, and then when I'm done shooting, it'll come back on. For adjusting the time and date, there's a whole section in here for making those settings. Different language of the menu... And I mentioned about cleaning the sensor. One of the things that this camera does not have is it does not have an auto sensor cleaner that some of the higher-end cameras have, all of the higher cameras have. Getting dust on the sensor is an important issue. Do be careful when changing lenses, especially in a dusty environment. Try to be in as clean an environment as possible. If you do need to clean your sensor, you come here to clean manually. You're gonna need some tools. There's stage one, which I think everyone can handle, and there's stage two, which isn't for everyone. Stage one is using this rocket air blower. What you'll do is you'll put the camera in clean manual mode, it sends the mirror up, you take the lens off, the mirror comes up, the shutter opens up, and you can see the sensor in there. Then you blow little puffs of air in there, trying to knock off any dust that might have landed on the sensor. That should clean off most of the problems, but sometimes something a little sticky gets on there, and that's where some people are willing to resort to step two, which is a swab and liquid. There are some other dry solutions as well. The idea is simply to sweep off the dust on the sensor. As I say, this isn't for everybody because just some people don't wanna deal with that. You can turn it in to a repair shop to have them do it for you for a small fee, of course, but if you wanna do it yourself, the camera does have that capability to do it. The camera has this little feature guide, and if you're new to the camera, that's kind of cool. It gives you extra information about what you're selecting or what you're trying to do in the camera, and just a little bit of helpful information, which is great until you've kind of figured your way around and you don't need that help all the time because it's a pop-up window blocking all the stuff you want to look at. So this might be something that might be useful for the first dozen or so times that you take the camera out but after you do that, you're probably gonna get tired and just wanna get in there and see the stuff and go to the stuff that you want to change. You can hook a GP-E2 GPS receiver up to this camera. It sells for around 250 dollars, and you can log GPS coordinates with where you shot all your photos. It's a cool device, but it's got an add-on at the top, you have its own batteries, and it bulks up the size of the camera a little bit, but if you have an interest in knowing exactly where you shot photos, it is possible with this extra device.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
May Brown
Thank you so much John Gringo!!! This class was fantastic!! I have learnt so much about my camera an setting it up properly to use!! I am so grateful for taking your course. I will be looking into the starter kit soon!! Thank you also for the pdf manual!!! I'm so excited!! Its like you turned on a light out of darkness with my Canon Rebel T6 Camera!! God Bless you!
Myrta Rivera
I learned so much about my canon camera in this course. John is an excellent teacher because he shows you and demonstrates the functions of the camera so you can really understand it. I feel so much more knowledgeable about my camera now and feel more confident to take better photos. Thank you John!!!
Kylie
This class was great! I've had my Canon Rebelt6 for a year and a half and now I finally feel like I know how to use it! He does a great job reviewing all of the functions of this camera.
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