Lessons
Class Introduction
05:58 2Welcome to Leica
15:54 3Shutter Speeds
12:38 4Apertures & ISO
06:30 5Accessory Shoe
06:46 6Back Side Controls
25:30 7Bottom Controls
06:24 8Front Controls
04:56Lesson Info
Camera Menu Functions
Next let's take a look at the full menu system. And so the menu on this camera is rather short, there's only five pages. It won't take very long to get through this 'cause it's pretty simple stuff. And so just simply hit the Menu and we're going to be able to scroll up and down and go through things quickly here. Alright, hitting the Menu button. We're gonna dive in and were gonna start on the top page. First of five pages. Lens Detection. And so this is where the camera is reading information off the 6-Bit code in your camera. And so if you have it set to Automatic, it'll automatically read what camera or what lens you have on your camera. So, let's do a little demo with my camera here. And so one of the things that we can do is we'll first off, let's just hit the Info button right here and you'll see that the camera reads that I have a 50 millimeter 1.4 lens. So I'm gonna take this lens off, I'm gonna put on my other lens and see if you can figure out what lens is on the camera. You ...
see it automatically changes to 28 Summicron F/2 there. Alright. Let's try this again and this case I'm gonna put on my 180R lens. Okay, so now it knows that the R to M adapter is on there. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go into the Menu system and I'm gonna go to the right here and I'm gonna go in here and I am gonna select which lens that I have on here. So, that is the 180 3.4 and I'll select that as my lens. Let's make sure that it's selected, hit Set button, so we're good there. And so now if I hit the info button, it's gonna say the 180 3.4 R. So, if I go in and I start changing lenses again, it automatically picks this back up. If I go back to putting the R on, let's make sure what it does. And so it's automatically picked that up. And so you can switch lenses back and forth. Now, if you have multiple lenses using an R to M adapter, that may prove to be a bit of a problem. And so you'll have to do a little test to see how well that works with the numbers of lenses that you have. And so what's going on here is it's just automatically correcting for some vignetting or any other sort of little problems that that lens may have but it's also just recording that information for the censor, or excuse me, for the exit data so that it gets attached to the file properties as you shoot. And so you'll have a list in there. And so if you have an older M lens, you'll be able to also go in and choose which lens that you have in here. And that is something that will get updated in the future with more firmware adjustments. Next up is our self timer. If you wanna use the self timer you've got the two and the 12 second option. Two seconds is good when you're working on a tripod or you wanna work in time exposure and you don't wanna vibrate the camera by pressing the shutter release. 12 is good if you wanna get in the photo yourself. The Light Metering Mode. So, in the Classic mode, as I mentioned, what it's using is a center weighted metering system. It's measuring the light bouncing off the shutter curtain and this is the way they've worked for many, many years. What they've included is an Advanced mode on this camera and it sounded cool at first and I thought I wanted to give this a try. What it does is it opens up the shutter and it uses the censor to meter the light, which is a more advanced metering system than the traditional classic system. The problem is is that the shutter has to open in order for it to do this and then what it has to do when you take a picture is the shutter needs to close, reopen, close and then reopen again. So there ends up being a lot of clicking and there tends to be a bit of delay when using this. And so I don't think the advanced mode is something that most people are gonna wanna use and I don't think it's really worth it in most cases. Next up is Exposure Bracketing. Let's take a look at what this does. Exposure bracketing allows you to shoot a series of photos very quickly at different exposures so that you have a bracketed series of exposures. This can be very good for landscape photography or any time when you're not totally sure what the correct exposure should be. You have a few perimeters that you can play with in here. You have the three frames or five frames that you can shoot with. You can shoot in half stop to up to three stop increments and you can also do this with exposure compensation. So you could have the whole series of bracketed photos lighter or darker than average. So, in here, first item will be the number of frames, three or five. Three is a pretty basic one. Five is a little bit more intense bracketing series. The Aperture Stops, how many aperture stops different do you want from one image to the next. One stop is pretty common. Two stops is a little more serious. Three is a big change. And then if you want to automatically go through those images with one press of the shutter, you can turn that on. In most cases that's gonna work out pretty good. It's unless you're trying to time something and very particular in doing that case. And, you know, that might make a fun little demo here to do so let me just move a few things around and let's just do a little demo and set our camera up to do a bracket series. This is something that you'd want to do on a tripod because you don't want the camera moving between these things. So, we're gonna go into the menu system. We'll go down to Bracketing. Over to the right, number of frames. Let's make this five. Let's come down here, let's do this extreme. We'll do it two stops. And for Automatic, let's turn this on and I'm gonna hit the Set button so we can confirm all that. And so it should shoot through five photos, two stops apart. I'm gonna leave it in Aperture Priority in the top so what it's gonna be doing is it's gonna be adjusting the shutter speed between each of these shots. Camera's in single mode but watch what happens when I press down the shutter. And so, I think these final ones might take a little bit. Did it get all five or is it shooting one? I think it's still shooting 'cause you can see the red light working on it. Alright, so, storing all those images. Let's take a look at these images. Let's bring up the information. And, let's see. So you can see this one is over here, so this is four stops, two stops, correct exposure, minus two and minus four. And so that is a bracket series. You could use those to build an HDR image. And so I'm gonna go back in here into Exposure Bracketing and I am gonna turn this off. Because I don't normally want to be shooting five photos with different exposures. So that is Exposure Bracketing. Normally that is going to be left off. Alright, next up, Flash Sync. Mode. If you happen to have a flash attached to the camera, you can synchronize whether it goes with the first shutter or the second shutter and there was a very different look from your images when you have a moving subject going with the front or the second shutter curtain. You can control the exposure compensation with the flash. And so one of the things that happens with TTL flash is a lot of times the automated flash is a little bit too powerful. And you may wanna power that down for a little bit more natural of a look. And so powering it down to TTL minus one or maybe minus two, depending on a lot of the other conditions is something that's very common that you'd probably wanna do. And so if you are working with flash I encourage you to experiment with flash compensation and probably set it at around minus one. It's often where a lot of things look quite good. When you are using the flash, you can have the camera help set the correct shutter speed. And so, in the Auto Slow Sync., what sort of shutter speed are you gonna be using with flash? You can use a particular shutter speed or you can have it based on the lens, which is a pretty good option. So, the one over the focal length option is a pretty good option that would work for most people.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
nancy mercury
This class was very helpful as a new owner of the Monochrome 246, even though there are some parts not applicable, most of the basic "get around" the menu and set up was extremely helpful. Very complete overview.
a Creativelive Student
call a really good class. I just bought a Leica M Typ-240 and it is my first time ever using a Leica. I have learned a great deal about how to use the camera. I do want to note an error though. In the Back Side Controls lesson at 21:52 he states to scroll through images in the magnified mode to press the menu button and the trackpad. On the M240 it is the Play button and the trackpad. I found it by trial and error after trying the menu button as instructed.
Student Work
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Camera Guides