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Camera Settings - Details

Memory cards are obviously necessary for storing images on our digital cameras. What's gonna happen is that they're gonna go into a folder, and into another folder. And what happens when you delete those photos is it generally will start a new folder and store those images in there. And when you delete those, it starts another folder. And what happens after a long period of time is you end up with a cluttered database of empty, ghost folders and file directories that you're no longer using, and it's potential that it could cause a communication problem with your camera. And your camera might just go, "card error, reformat." Okay, then you're in trouble. Gotta take that card out, download those images, put another card in, which is one of the reasons why I say, "Always carry a spare memory card." Even though you may not run through the first one in full images, you just keep it there for emergency replacement purposes. So what you'll need to do on your cards on a regular basis is to for...

mat the card, and what this does is it deletes the photos, the ghost folders, the data directory, gets rid of everything on the card so that it's basically a clean slate that you're starting with. And so, I reformat my cards generally before I go out on any shoot or any sort of tour, or vacation, or trip. Because I wanna leave the house with a fresh set of places to put all my pictures. And that helps maintain the life of that card as long as possible, you want to be formatting on a regular basis. If it's July, I do not want to see Christmas photos on your camera, all right? You should have downloaded those pictures long ago. Don't leave them on your camera for a long period of time. It's just waiting to get lost or have something happen to it. You need to get it backed up as soon as possible. In your camera there's gonna be an option for formatting the card. Don't do it right now unless you're sure that there's nothing on that card that you want. This is something that if I go out and shoot, I'll come back, I'll download my images. I won't reformat right then, something may happen with my computer and I can go back to my camera. I'll wait til the next time I go out, and then I'll check. Yep, I've downloaded these, and then I'll reformat the cards and clean everything off. One of the other little minor things in your camera, but it can be important later on, especially if you're trying to restructure when everything happened, is the date and time. And so this is something that you need to go in and you need to adjust for Daylight savings, and those little time changes, and when you travel to new time zones you're gonna want to adjust that so that when you're shooting photos you can go back. Ahh, yes I was up at seven o'clock in the morning shooting these photos, and then at lunch we shot those photos. That sticks with the metadata that is attached to the photograph. You don't see it in the photograph, but all the file information, it's located in there. It can be very helpful. Firmware is the software that runs the operations of the camera, and from time to time, these software engineers make a mistake. Or, they come up with a new feature. And if you want to get a new Firmware version for your camera, they are often issuing updates. Some companies do it more than others, sometimes it's for things that just don't matter, like a spelling mistake in a foreign language that you're never gonna use. Sometimes, they add in features. There are some companies, Fuji, that adds in maybe too many Firmware updates. But they add in cool features, they just had a camera that did not shoot 4K video and now it does, because they just added a free software. Which is great customer service, making my camera better as time goes along. And so, go to your camera manufacturer's website, look up your camera, look up what the current Firmware is, I'm not gonna go into how to check it on your camera, but generally it's gonna be in your menu system somewhere, and see if you have the current Firmware. If you don't, you can get the new Firmware for free. Go to the website and follow their instructions about downloading it to your camera. All cameras these days have custom functions. Boy, when I think back to the original days, the Canon EOS-1, first camera ever had custom functions. Six. Six things you could tweak this way or that way. Now, let's see I'm trying to think, the Nikon D had close to 300 custom functions in the camera. Functions, I call them custom functions. But they're functions, different things that you can tweak and adjust in your camera, and so there are all sorts of ways that you can tailor your camera. You know, you can take a camera like this one here. Almost all these buttons are reprogrammable on the camera. Do you wanna press this to focus, do you want this to be the self timer, do you want this to be your metering or do you want that to be your metering? And all of us are going to be a little bit different. I mean, kind of neat thing is that if all of us had the exact same camera and customized it, everyone's camera would be a little bit different. Because no, I like doing this with here, and I go into this one all the time. And getting a camera customized to you is like getting your own home and decorating it. It's like, this is how I like to live, this is me. This is tailored for me. And so I encourage you to get in there. We don't have time to do it now, there's far too many cameras and far too many custom functions. But there's a lot in there and there's a lot of things that you can check out and customize to the way you like to work. This is one of those forgotten controls. A lot of people don't even know, I'm surprised at how many people don't even know that their camera has a diopter control. I go, "Yeah, if you turn that dial it makes it clear when you look through the viewfinder." Like, "Oh good, I thought I was going nuts here." You wanna adjust this viewfinder so that the text data in the viewfinder, the numbers and any sort of text generally on the bottom, is gonna be nice and sharp. Don't worry about what the lens is focused at, it's that data of information in there. You want that sharp, if you have that sharp you've got it in the right spot and you can leave it be. I've just found that these get bumped from time to time. They need to make better locking, turning. Some of them are pretty good, the Nikon ones are pretty good 'cause they pull out, they turn it, and then they lock it in. Now if you happen to share your camera with somebody else, good luck, because you might be arguing over where that dial gets put. So those are a few of the most important secondary controls on the camera, we'll talk about other things like image stabilization and obviously the important shutter speeds, apertures, and ISOs as we go through. But those are a few of the other critical settings for getting your camera set up properly. Question from Eileen who says, "Do you happen to know where on the Kelvin scale these newer energy-saving light bulbs are? Have you come into that and like what's closest?" Right, and so fluorescent light bulbs have a wide range. And I'd say Nikon probably has the widest range. They can reach down from really warm to normal lights. And so when you buy your lights, look at them. Are they cool white, are they warm? Take a look at the number. They're probably not gonna have a Kelvin temperature. But they'll probably have some sort of wording as to what style light they are, and it's whatever looks good, it's whatever you want it to be. There is also the option in many cameras of doing a test where you shoot a white piece of paper and you get it set. In some cameras, they'll tell you what it is. And in many cameras, you can set it manually. Just set out a white piece of paper and dial in 8000. See what that looks like, 7000, 6000, 5000. You'll be able to easily tell which looks the whitest, cleanest without any color reflecting that light. And so there are a wide variety and the, you know, LED lights, they can run the gamut. 'Cause they can make them pretty much any temperature. And so traditionally, fluorescent lights have been kind of this greenish color, but now they're making a lot of fluorescents a little bit more warm, like tungsten lights. And so, wide gamut to choose from there. All right, it is time to enter the second big section of the class, and that is the sensor. We're gonna be talking about the image sensor in the camera and lot of things about it. But first, let's have a little bit of fun, all right? So, I wanna share with you a photographer's life in chart form, okay? And so you start off with a basic camera. And then you get your first serious camera, you'll probably end up with a tripod. And then there will be more cameras down the road, hopefully a long life of lenses until the bitter end. So this is your timeline here, and over on the left we're gonna measure your skill level at how good you are at different things. And the first thing is your knowledge level of photography. Nobody is born knowing it all, and so it's perfectly fine to have lots of questions. Now when you start taking your first photography class and using manual exposure, you're gonna get better. But then there's gonna be new equipment and new software that comes out, and it's constantly a changing game. And so you're gonna need to take classes and workshops and stay educated on these changes. Trust me, all the people that are my age that have lived through manual focus to autofocus to digital to mirrorless have had to keep up with all these changes. It's an art based on technology and that's where we live. Next, let's look at the quality of photographs. I have known nobody that takes great photos from the very beginning. It takes practice. And often times, you learn a little bit, and then you start getting involved in things that are over your head. And you end up getting yourself just enough information to be dangerous. But eventually, the quality of your photographs will parallel your knowledge level. If you want to take better photographs, become more knowledgeable in everything that you are doing. The final thing we'll look at is how good you think you are. Now for some reason, non-photographers think they would be the best photographers. Photography seems very easy. And then they get their first camera, and they start like, "This is hard. I'm getting bad results." A lot of people have a very negative feeling about things. But eventually, they learn more, they get better, they feel better, then they have a bad day. (audience laughs) And then they have a good day, and then they have another bad day. But eventually, if you study, you go out there, you shoot, you will get better, you will feel better about how you shoot. This is kind of a common feeling that a lot of photographers go through.