Lessons
Class Introduction
03:59 2Nikon D500 Overview
11:25 3Camera Basics
08:31 4Basic Camera Controls
03:22 5Top of Camera: Exposure Control
25:50 6Top of Camera: Buttons
16:33 7Back of Camera: Release Mode
05:55 8Back of Camera: Viewfinder Display
08:44Back of Camera: Play Back
10:18 10Back of Camera: Buttons
09:36 11Back of Camera: Live View
22:56 12Back of Camera: Movie Mode
09:48 13Left of Camera: Exposure Bracketing
03:19 14Left of Camera: Focus Mode
12:00 15Left & Right Sides of Camera
05:18 16Bottom of Camera
04:56 17Front of Camera
05:34 18Nikon Lenses Overview
09:26 19Playback Menu
08:24 20Photo Shooting Menu
14:26 21ISO: Photo Shooting Menu
26:14 22Movie Shooting Menu
14:01 23Custom Setting Menu: Autofocus
14:20 24Custom Setting Menu: Metering/Exposure
04:05 25Custom Setting Menu: Shooting/Display
07:33 26Custom Setting Menu: Bracketing/Flash
03:16 27Custom Setting Menu: Controls
11:38 28Setup Menu
16:00 29Setup Menu: Wi-Fi
06:47 30Retouch & My Menu
06:06 31Camera Operation Overview
08:13Lesson Info
Back of Camera: Play Back
Next up, kinda working our way around the left side of the camera, we have our playback button. Obviously it's gonna jump in and show us our last played image. We have our garbage can for getting rid of images. You'll just need to press that twice to actually delete a particular image. Our control pad over on the right hand side is how we're gonna be navigating forward and back through our images, and then we'll be able to check out more information by going up and down. Now, somewhat irritating to me, who teaches classes, I seem to be griping a lot today, I apologize folks. But Nikon doesn't give us this extra information out of the gate. We gotta go in, and we gotta turn it on by diving into our playback menu and turning this on. And since I kinda have a factory fresh camera here, I need to turn this on 'cause I wanna show you what it's gonna do. So let me show you the shortcut and what we're gonna do. So I need to go back in the playback menu. Go into the menu, navigate over to the ...
playback menu, and I need to look for something called Playback display options, and then I go to the right there. And there's all these different options, and they're all unchecked. Nikon, why do you do this? This is great stuff, we want to see this stuff. So I'm going to go in, and I'm gonna go to the right, go to the right, down, right, down, right, down, right. And rather than just going back left, I'm gonna press OK. That way I confirm that all these things are loaded in there. Now I will come back, I will play my image. Let's find something that's a little bit more decent, that's not completely blown out. So let's go with this one here, and if I go up, I can now cycle through the various pages of information. And so I can see my shutter speed, my aperture, what lens I used, a histogram, and I can go up or down and just cycle through all of these different screens. And so when you first get the camera I think it's good to be able to have all these options 'cause if you don't wanna look at these you don't have to, you can just go left and right and scan through your images. I've taken a lot of terrible images in this class so far. Alright, and so then up and down for information, left and right for previous versus next image. Alright so our Info Options, we can either see nothing, Overview data, IPTC, this is gonna be some information that you can add, some metadata that you can add to individual images, we'll talk more about that. There are a couple of unique options that we have on here, and they are the RGB histogram and Highlight, you need to hit the minus button and go to the right. And so let me do a couple of test shots here. If you wanna watch me on the back of the camera, I'm gonna take a couple of pictures. And you know what I need, I need a better prop closeup, so I'm gonna grab my Rubik's Cube, 'cause this has lots of colors on it and we're gonna take a couple photos of this. Did I throw this into manual focusing? I'm always playing with the camera and it's always out of whack. Okay so, let's get this over here out of that bright light and I wanna take a few photos with different exposures on this. So I'm in aperture priority and let's just do one on the minus side. Let's do one normal, and let's do two bright ones. We'll do one stop, and we're gonna do two stops, oh and just for kicks we'll do three stops. Oops, one too far. And then I reset because I don't wanna have to deal with this problem later. Alright so let's playback these images and what I want to get to is a little area that allows us to see the histograms. And so as you can see, these are the different brightness images that I just shot. And if I press the little matrix looking button, it's actually a thumbnail button, right here, and I go to the right, I can look at the highlights that are blown out in the red channel, versus the green channel, versus the blue channel. And so I can see which pixels are too bright in that particular image. So now if I go to the brighter image we'll see this even more, and so this is kind of all pixels here are blown out, the blinking red ones here have a problem, the blinking green ones and the blinking blue ones. So let's go back down to the even, more normal exposure and see if there's any problems in here. And so do I see any blinkies? No blinkies. A few blinkies, so we have a little bit a problem on the red channel, and no blinkies here and there. And so it's a great way of seeing which channel might be blown out. And I have to admit I didn't practice this and it worked great for that. Gotta keep the Rubik's Cube around for that one. That one, that one's a winner. So that's how you would be able to check those different channels to see what areas are blown out, and so if you really wanna get the right exposure, it's got the right tools in there for viewing that color channel information. Okay, next up we have the little lock, and this allows you to lock your images which prevent them from getting deleted, at least in-camera. Well you can still reformat the memory card, and that will get rid of the images, and so it's a very low level of protection. If you have a small child that likes to delete photos, it'll at least prevent them from deleting them, but it's a very minor level of protection. We're able to zoom in and we're able to zoom out, and we'll be able to zoom in and then control that with the dial up there on the back, and then we can zoom back out there. And then we also have a touch screen, and so let's just do a little demo on all of that. I've already taken photos so I don't need to take photos, let's just go find a decently exposed photo here. And so if I wanted to get a closer look to check on sharpness of this, I can press the plus button and let's see, I think I just went to a lighter image, and so I can zoom in, I can zoom out. So if I zoom in, let's make sure I press the right button here. Zooming in and then I can move left and right to check out different parts of the image. And if I turn this back dial I'm actually changing which image I go to, so I can choose, remember I shot different ones at different brightness levels. And so I can choose which one that I'm looking at, choose the minus to go back, but it's also a touchscreen, and so I can move back and forth. Let me change some of the information here because I have something setup a little bit unusual right now, and I wanna show it to you. Notice what image I'm at, I'm at 301, now I'm at 300, it's going kind of the opposite direction that I'm swiping. And this is something that you can go in and customize and I think I just went in and I tweaked with it before class. And so you can control, I like to swipe this direction to go that direction with the photos, and so it's very very customizable in here. Let's find a decent brightness image, and so once you have an image it works very much like a smartphone, so you can do this little pinch and squeeze to zoom in, you can kind of move around like this. If you wanna go to the next image, you can go to the next or the previous image, down here there's a little thumbnail down to the right to show you where you are. And if you wanna keep squeezing in you can go to your thumbnails, and then you can tap an image and then flick back and forth to go back and forth between your images. It has a somewhat limited touchscreen because when you get into the menu system, the touchscreen doesn't work here at all. It will work in the live view, it does work in playback, but it's not in all the functions. And then if you hit the i button, the i button is for information, and it gives you access, it is essentially a shortcut button to some features in the menu system. It allows you to rate your images or to send them to a smart device, or choose a few other options that you will see as we go through the camera, and that i button is a shortcut to it. Now if I had to make a suggestion, I wish that I could customize the i button, but you can't. It's kind of this given short set of features that you can go to. We will be talking about all of these as we go through the full menu system. So it's just a shortcut to a few of the most pertinent modes that it's related to at that particular time. So there are some kind of special things that you can do in here, is that you can hit the OK button and go up to change which memory card you're looking at. You can press OK and go to the right to get into the Retouch menu, this is what I like to refer to as Photoshop in the camera. You can take an image that you took with a JPEG or RAW, and then you can tweak with it, you can change the colors, you can crop it, and what it does is it makes a copy of the original, you never ruin the original and it allows you to work with the image in that way. You can go OK and down, and that goes to the International Press Telecommunication Council system for adding metadata to your photographs, and so one of the things this camera is set up for is adding lots of data to your photograph, and there is sets and sets of data, not just your name and your website, but all sorts of keyword information that you might have about photographs that you're taking. Most people are never gonna use this, but it is there if you do wanna get to it. And then if you press the OK button and the center button, it'll be a shortcut to go to the wireless system or an ethernet transfer, 'cause you can hook this camera up to an ethernet system for tethered shooting, so that you're sending images to a wired computer, and this is a shortcut way of doing those particular features.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Carl Vanderweyden
John Greengo is the best! I purchased a Nikon D500 and this course around the same time. Because of this camera being so complex, I felt that a course would be beneficial. This course that John teaches is exactly what I needed. His knowledge of this camera as well as photography in general is exceptional. In fact, I own a couple of other courses presented by John and I also bought a couple of his books! I would highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to know the ins-and-outs of this D500! Thanks again John for a great course and your great way of explaining things with clear dialect and great visuals!
M Jo
Wow! What a great class! John is a natural teacher, moving at a good pace and explaining things carefully, never assuming you already know more than you might. I just got my D500 last week and am so pleased to have gone through this entire class. I learned a LOT and took some notes to refer back to. I've also just bought a Z6 and have purchased John's class for that. Can't wait to dive in!!!
Christina Brittain
By The class. John is the gold standard for teaching. He repairs lessons to perfection. He speaks in ways students comprehend all that he presents. Never waste words. Never bores. Always demonstrates his points. I will continue to purchase his classes as they provide the best learning I have found. He is making me a much better photographer, both technically and creatively. You can't make good images if you don't know your gear. Hope he teaches lessons in Portland Oregon one day. I know Pro Photo Supply would sponsor him.
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