Lessons

Lesson Info

Canon 7D Mark II Overview and Basics

My intention is to show you all the major controls and how to get the highest quality images out of the camera. In many cases, a lot of these cameras have a lot of bells and whistles, and I tend to like to turn those off unless you are specifically using them for something. And so that's kind of how my recommendations are going to go along one of the things that comes with the class and you will see this in the downloads section of the class is the pdf, and this has it's more of a note taking device when you are actually taking this class too good place to write down little thoughts as we're going through the camera. The couple sections in here that I think might be of particular help for many people is on page six at least in this version is the entire menu on one page. I'm a very visual orientated person and I can scan one page very, very quickly, but sometimes diving through dozens and dozens of men use takes awhile. And so this is all on one page, so it's, very easy to scan and fin...

d things in fact. Every once in a while I hate to admit this I will get lost in the camera's menu and I'm like, I know it's here, and I will actually pull this out to look at it because I can scan more quickly on one page, I've also put in my recommendations, and we will be going through all of this in this class one item at a time and because I know all of you are gonna have different ideas about how you want to set your camera than I said mine up for my recommendations, I did include a blank one, so you could include your own settings that you like to set on here and then at the very end of this is ah, bunch of recommendations on how I was set the camera, for instance, for landscape, portrait or action photography and where the critical settings that you would want to adjust for those major, different types of photography so that's in the download section of the class, make sure you get that so let's, go ahead and get started with this class. So here we go, all right, seventy mark to what we're going to be doing in this class is doing a little overview for those of you who might be new to the canon world talk a little bit about basics, I would imagine that most people who bought this camera have owned a previous canon slr, but we're just going to go through a couple of basics in case you are brand new to the system most of the class we're going to be spending going over all the controls, all the buttons on all sides of the camera and then we're gonna go to the menu and then be going through the entire menu and this is going to be good because that's, how you really get to know a camera is by knowing the menu system very well, but you're also going to be able to set it up so that once you finish this class, your camera will be perfectly tuned to the way you want to go out and shoot and then at the very end will go through and do some practice setups in different types of camera operation and what are the major controls that you would want to change for that? All right, so when you get this camera, you get this very hefty instruction manual nearly five hundred fifty pages, which is going to take you some time to bore through that and this class is going to be about five hours, maybe five and a half. This is going to be one of the longest fast art classes I've done just because the customization menu and this camera is more than just about any camera I've seen to date so it is impossible for me to put eighteen hours of information into our five hour little class, and so I am concentrating once again on the major controls for focusing and exposure and how to get the best image quality out of the camera possible. I'm not too worried about howto hook this camera toe a printer. I'm not too worried about how to do slide shows on your tv with the camera. There will be some additional information in the instruction manual that this class doesn't quite have time to cover, but we're going to be covering all the major functions of the camera. This is also not a photography wanna one class if you have just got into photography? Welcome to the club. Great great activity is a lot of fun, and this class is really focused on the operations of this camera, so if you're really looking for some great explanations on depth of field or how to shoot sports photography, this class doesn't have time to address those issues were going to be focusing just on the operation of this camera if you are interested in other classes, creative live myself included have many classes here that we'll be able to help you out in those other areas of interest, but right now it's the set cannon seventy mark, too. So can has been around for a long time they started office kalon in and that was their original logo the goddess of mercy with all those arms for pushing buttons on the camera they started making little range finders and then they went on to make lars and they got started kind of on the cheap end of lars they were trying to get very affordable cameras out there. They started getting serious in the nineteen seventies with their professional serious of cameras, and then they had a major change in nineteen eighty seven where they changed from there fd lens mount to their ceos flynn's mountain and this camera has an eos lens mount on it so you can use lenses back to nineteen, eighty seven with one hundred percent capabilities their first digital camera, the d thirty had three megapixels and was about three thousand dollars when it first came out. And so they have come a long ways and this camera is very much a descendant of that very first digital slr that they market it. So this is more the opinion section right here. This is what I like most about this camera. First off is the sixty five auto focusing points and they're all cross type. It is the best focusing system I've ever had on any camera period, and this camera is just designed with the sports photographer or wildlife photographer in mind with all those focusing points, you do get the ten frames per second. So if you want to shoot sports, ten frames is fantastic. I remember my first professional camera shot at five point seven frames per second, and I thought that was pretty awesome and sixes good eight was fantastic in the previous seventy and now at ten frames, I find myself actually having to start to hold back from shooting pictures because I know that I'm getting so many pictures, I'm going to have to go through and edit them. And so it does mean that you are gonna have tio take a little more time editing, potentially the camera is also very weather ized and very tough. We'll talk a little bit more about this specifically as we get into it, but it's a type of camera that is going to handle the elements as good or better than most all the cameras out on the market. The familiar layout for anyone who's been with cannon for a while, especially a lot of users with the cannon five d mark three or even a cannon seventy d coming up step or from the old cannon seventy the original one. They haven't changed a lot, and one of the things that I both love and hate is new things in cameras. One of the problems is is when they start changing things and moving stuff around it gets very confusing and they have stayed with the tried and true layout it really feels like cannon has got themselves into a good sweet spot. People are happy with where all the buttons are and how the controls work and they have stuck very, very true to it there's a new item or two but for the most part it's going to be an easy lay out that anyone who has been using cannon he's going to be able to pick it up and start shooting right away very, very easily. One of the great things about being in the canon family is that there are so many choices of cameras whether you wanna upgrade or by a lower in camera for somebody else in the family to match up lenses with there's going to be a lot a lot of options tons of lenses many, many great lenses will talk specifically about some recommended lenses that I have for you as we get into a later section can also has a very good flash system, so if you want or need more power than you have with the built in flash, they do have some good systems I'll be giving you some recommendations and talking about those as we get more into the class all right, so the cannon seventy mark to say it's kind of in the middle of all their cameras as faras price, but it is their top of the line camera with their smaller frame sensor, and it is clearly at the top of that line. The seventy d is the next step down, and if you want to hire in camera, you're gonna have to go to a full frame camera and if you want to hire in sports, cameron would have to go all the way up to the one d x because everything else is going to be a camera that shoots a little bit slower doesn't have quite a cz many focusing points on it. So I think this is ideal for anybody who's, shooting, sports, wildlife burning things like that it's going to be a great camera it's probably not going to be as good as the one d x, but considering the fact that it is probably doing some rough calculations here, about one quarter of the price one third the price of a one d x, you'd have to think about what could you spend all that extra money on it much better glass, for instance, and so I think for many photographers, this is going to be more than good enough for professional needs. This camera has lineage back to the fifty and sixty d and predecessors as well. What happened is they kind of split the line and made the seventy, which was a slightly higher performance camera designed for more more for sports in action photography they've had a couple incarnations of the sixty d and the seventy d come out and now we have the seventy mark too, which is very similar to the seventy so if you own the seventy if you've had it in the past it's gonna operate very, very similar to that to that they've made a lot of improvements and will be going through all of those in here. One of the things that you might come across in the instruction manual is all these warnings about how not to use the camera and what not to do with it and some of these are actually a little funny to me in general they could just replace it all with don't be stupid with the camera and that would probably cover most people one question that people often have and it is very contradictory because one of the things that they said about this camera is that it is four times mohr sealed than the seventy camera, which means whether sealed dust sealed it's much much better than the seventy was in the seventy was actually very good, but they also state very clearly in their instruction manual that this camera is not waterproof and cannot be used underwater so clearly no scuba diving no snorkeling with it folks but what about rain? What about a splash of water? What about spilt coffee things like that? Well no camera does real well under super wet conditions and so if it was raining I wouldn't have a problem going out shooting with it for a short period of time and this is going to depend on a couple of factors how hard it's raining and what type of lens you have on there because some lenses arm or weather sealed than other lenses and it depends on exactly which lends you have there l sarees of lenses with the red stripe are typically better weather sealed than their other ones I have on here a thirty five f two and let me take this off and if we get a close shot on the lens mount here on the side of the camera this lens does not have a rubber seal around the metal mount on it which means this is clearly not a weather sealed camera whether sealed lands excuse me there are l lenses that do have weather ceiling and they're not all equal you have to do a little bit of research because I don't have all that information right here at hand is to how weather sealed every one of those lenses are but if you are going to be using this camera in a wet environment, you would probably want to be one with one of the lenses that has the rubber seal in the back, and you'll probably also wanna have a uv filter on the front, because some of those lenses have lens elements that move in and out on the front, and you want to keep that protected from the rain as well. And even with the best weather sealed lands and this camera, you still need to take precautions, because if you're going to be out in the rain for hours shooting, I would imagine you're probably gonna have problems at some point, and so you're just gonna have to use a fair bit of reason when it comes to how long you're going to need or can shoot out in the rain with this camera next, cannon says that they're not liable if there used with non cannon accessories, so this is a good time to point out that case you haven't noticed. I don't work for cannon, and so I'm tryingto say anything particular here other than I think kanan wants you to buy their accessories, and their cameras do work very well with their batteries and their lenses and their flashes. I, however, will not have a single problem putting the tamron or takina or signal ins on this camera because every once in a while they offer lands that cannon doesn't that fits your needs and it's perfectly acceptable, and I own other brand of lenses that I will use on this camera, and I'm perfectly happy with there is a feature or two when it comes to the way the camera processes images for j peg images that are a little different because it doesn't know the lens it can't correct for barrel distortion or chromatic aberration and that's a fairly minor issue if you shoot rather's really no reason at all to worry about it, and so I have no problem with those other third party lenses. There are many other flash units that you can use with it. If you do want to use an automated through the land system, I highly recommend sticking with cannon, they can sometimes be fifty percent more or hundred percent more in cost, but I think the ease of operation is worth the extra money. The other flashes just could be a little bit complicated to work with, and so I would strongly recommend sticking with the cannon. The exception to that is if you want to hook this up to any sort of studio equipment, of course you can hook it up to all studio equipment and that's going to be absolutely fine, and I tend to want to stick with the cannon batteries, there's a lot of aftermarket cheap versions. For the most part, they'll work, and they won't damage the camera. They're just not as good and there not as efficient in their operation, and so I tend to want to stick with him, although if you needed it a backup that you were going to use on a regular basis, you're going to be fine with an aftermarket battery. All right, moving on so let's, make sure your camera is ready for today's class. Hopefully you have charged the battery and put it in the camera, it's going to take about two and half hours to charge, you're going to get around eight hundred shots less if you do intense things like used the flash used live you shooting movies review your images, play around in the menu a lot, but close to a thousand shots on a charge. They did increase the battery charge, and we'll talk more about that as we get later into the camera. So make sure you have a camera or lens on your camera kills me to say this, but put your camera in the a plus, the little auto mode on the camera, make sure that your lens is in auto focus, and so on the side of all cannon lenses, well, most all cannon lenses is an auto fit focus and a manual focus switch. And that is a completely separate item to exposure. And so you want to make sure that that is in auto focus and go ahead and take a picture. So I'm just gonna go ahead. Take picture here in class. Make sure my camera's working right and looks like it's working pretty good.