Lessons

Lesson Info

Camera Operation

All right, so then we're going to move on to our camera operation section and this is going to be of most benefit to people who have the camera right there in front of them because we're going toe be working with the camera and making changes on the camera, so we talked about setting the camera before and this is more of the full set up you're going toe if you want to go out, we're going to take a vacation, you're going to shoot a wedding, you're going to shoot something really important here and I want to make you so you charge up the battery you got your lens and battery installed swells the memory card probably want to form at the memory card before you get started on this big shoot after that, make sure that you have the time and date set properly. Make sure the diop ter knob is adjusted so that you have a good clear view through the viewfinder. Make sure that you have chosen raw or j peg for your quality, and then you'll want to make sure that all your set up in custom function se...

ttings are set appropriately for the type of work that you were about to d'oh I would shoot a test photo and maybe look for a little bit of dust on the sensor I would hate to go to africa on a safari with a big old guber up in the corner of every sky picture because that's kind of me kinda hard to fix over there and be a lot easier to fix here at home will you have time and access to all the tools that you might need to fix it so that's kind of what I do with all my cameras before I engage in anything really important so here is kind of what I call our final test for the fifty one hundred and of all the features that we've looked through I've picked ten that I think everyone really needs to know and so if you have the camera there in front of you you can kind of just kind of walk through where all these things are exposure mode the big dial on the top of the camera how do you change shutter speeds that's the command aisle in the back of the camera our apertures they're going to be changed by pressing the plus minus button as well is pressing their returning the command I'll r s o is something where we have to go into the information screen so I will press thie I button and over on the right hand side I would navigate up to the I s o and I could go in here and select and make a change on that and this is where we're going to change a lot of our other features so we'll change our exposure compensation army during our white balance, our focus and our auto focus area mode all inside here, as well as our dr moz. So we're going to be working with that information screen on the back of the camera quite a bit. So let's set the camera up for what I would consider a very, very simple operation mode. The first step is to put your camera in the pee or program mode cameras, going to figure out shutter speeds and apertures, so we don't need to worry about the next two columns. The so is going to be at iess a one hundred, and so I will press eso with the camera and actually make sure it's there check, got it, make sure the exposure compensation is at zero. How do I do that? Well, I'm going to press the plus minus sign, and currently my camera is set at minus three and I don't want it there, so I am going to adjust that by turning the command wheel in the back of the camera to zero. Matrix metering is the preferred simple metering mode, and so I can navigate down to the meat oring mode and check to see that matrix metering is checked off. The next setting is going to be white balance auto white balance is a good, simple setting, so make sure that is set at auto. Focus now the focus is going to go a little confusing because there's two areas of focus the first area this determining how the camera focuses in the second one is where it focuses and so the first one is a f s stands for single their single continuous auto and manual and f s is the single mode the area mode is choosing which area we're going to focus in and that is one stop below where the e f the focus mode is so the f area mode has two options single point an auto area and we want the auto area and then finally the drive mode is going to be in the single option as opposed to continuous or self timer and so that's a simple set up for this camera now let's ah let's set it up for the enthusiast maybe you're a little bit into photography and you like doing this you like having a little bit more control over the camera how would I set the camera? Well I would probably start with aperture priority this gives you control over the aperture the camera will figure out the shutter speed so we don't need to worry about shutter speeds but just for practice let's set an aperture of f four and to do that all we do is we change the command I'll on the back of the camera till it gets to have for r I s o is going to be hard to get our aperture up there that four yeah, let's, get our s o said it one hundred actually that's where it was for last time, so we don't need to change that. We can just look at it on the back screen and see that we have it said it I s o one hundred make sure that exposure compensation is set at zero, which is where we had it last time. We're going to maintain matrix metering and auto white balance so there's no change there, and we're going to keep our focus mode at single, which is a f s, but we're going to change our area mode, the area that we're focusing to single point, so we're going to take those bracket the large bracket and go to the small bracket in the a f area mode and for our drive mode, we're going to leave that in single, and this just gives the photographer a little bit more control with aperture priority and a little bit more selective focus. Now, if you're an old school shooter and digital is new to you and you kind of like working your camera like you did twenty years ago, well, here's, how you might want to have your camera set up let's, change it over to the manual mode by turning the mod ill to him and now we're going to be concerned with shutter speeds and apertures so let's set a shutter speed just for practice of one hundred twenty fifth of a second and it's kind of nice on this camera because it's going to show you one over one hundred and twenty fifth of a second so it's very clear what you're shutter speed is we're going to change an aperture to f eight because there's a good old saying and photography that says f eight and be there so you take a good photograph, so there we go f eight and be there next up let's change our episode of four hundred just so we can have a little faster isil so we're going to go to the s o setting in the information screen and we're going to bump that up to ice, so for hundred one stop two stops hire good for a little bit of action now we're not going to worry about exposure compensation because we're in the manual exposure mode, but we're going to change our meet a ring system to center waited so we're going to go into our information display and we're going to go down to the meter metering pattern and we're going to change that to center waited, which reads the light in the center of the frame for auto for white balance, we're going to leave that at auto and for focus, we're going to do something really drastic here, and we're going to go to manual focus and to do that we're actually going to go over onto the side of the lands and make sure that it is flipped into the emanuel setting on the land, so we just change it by focusing on the lands. If we do that, we don't need to worry about the area mode, and we're going to go straight over to the dr mode and we're going to move that to the continuous mode, and so in our information screen, we're going to go up and instead of in the release mode instead of having s we're going to change that to continuous. All right? So we're going to dio a couple of little tests here just to see how good you are at adjusting your cam, we're going to go a little bit quicker. This is not how anyone would really set their camera, but just to practice moving things around, let's go to s for shutter priority mode ill on the top of the camera let's set a shutter speed of one half of a second turn it all the way dials down to the left to we get to one half of a second, I don't need to worry about aperture cause we're in shutter priority let's set a nice so of sixteen hundred bump that up quite a bit to sixteen hundred for the exposure compensation let's do something radical and do plus two this is not a normal setting here but if you were up photographing in snow conditions you might want a plus setting of too so we're going to go to the left plus two for me eatery let's try spot metering scene if you see if you can find the spot meter we had changed it to center waited and now we're gonna want the one tiny little dot very precise in its reading of light our white balance let's just change that to flash go upto white balance and moving that down to the lightning bolt for focus let's change this to the auto mode and if you go to this you can change it to the auto mode but you do need to make sure that your camera is in auto focus if you are in manual focus, you will not be able to get to it so here my cameras in manual focus and I'm not able to get to that feature so you do have to be in manual focus our out of manual focus back into auto focus for the area mode let's put it into dynamic area which is going to be the bracket with the little dots around it great for action photography and then finally for the drive mode we're going to move that up to the two second self timer so you need to go to the drive release mode and go to the let's see two second time or to second remote timer there we go and hopefully now you're starting to get a feel for where these buttons and controls are in the camera so let's just do one more of these kind of random tests so in this one here lets go toe aperture priority I'm gonna go a little bit faster don't need to worry about shutter speed let's change to an aperture of f eleven so we turned the command I'll tow f eleven we're going to change our s o two eight hundred info screen I esso down a couple stops to eight hundred let's change our exposure compensation to minus one so we were at plus two we're going to go the other direction to minus one something that is dark minuses dark we're going to change our media ring back to center waited metarie anybody getting confused out there? Well care barbados had asked if you could again show howto change that returns shutter speed in manual mon okay we will do that coming up in the next one x rated so we will definitely be doing that all right try to change your white balance see if you can follow along white balance we're going to go change to incandescent incandescent is the traditional style lightbulb we're going to change the focus setting make sure this is working to manual, so we flipped the switch on the lands to do that that's an easy one to get to. I like those switches that we have direct control over and that will change the drive mo to continuous so where's our drive mode that's right? The self timer? We had that set, and so now we can fire pictures very rapidly, all right, so that's just practise on how to set the camera. Now let's set this up in a riel manner, and so the first style of photography we're going to do is landscape photography, and when I talk about landscape photography, that that kind of assumptions is that you're probably working on a tripod, it helps because you'll be able tio use lower shutter speeds, you'll have stuff in the foreground you want and focus and maybe stuff in the background you wanted focus. You want everything in focus, so you need lots of depth of field and you're not really concerned about shutter speed because you're not moving and the subjects aren't moving. So put your camera in the manual mode we're now going to control the shutter speeds and apertures ourself now what shutter speed you need to use totally depends on the amount of light, but just for fun let's set one quarter of a second in the way you do that is when the cameras in manual you simply turn the command wheel back and forth until you get to one quarter of a second one over four next to change our aperture let's change it to f sixteen to change her aperture, we need to press our aperture button, which is also they plus minus button and turn the dial at the same time until we get to f sixteen and that would be a good aperture for shooting a lot of different landscapes. We're gonna want her eyes so as low as possible, so we're going to need to go into the information screen and lower our I r s o down to one they're the finest quality setting in the camera. We're not going to worry about exposure compensation because we're in the manual mode, but we are going to change our meter into the matrix metering mode and so navigate down to the media ring and change that to matrix our white balance we're going to set at auto white balance, we could set it for sunny or cloudy or whatever the conditions are, but auto is a good, simple one, too. For a lot of things, the focus we want to be pretty particular about what we focus on, so we're going to put the camera in auto focus on the lens and we're going to change that to single a f s on the single the camera will be very specific about what it chooses and then it's going to stop right there and then as far as the area that we're going to focus on, we're going to choose one single bracket in the middle, the small brackets and that would be a good way that you could select an individual tree or flour or rock to focus on and for landscapes we generally don't need a motor drive on, so we're going to move it two single shot mode so just shooting one shot at a time and this is kind of my recommended landscape set up your exact exposure will vary, of course, and this definitely helps having a tripod. All right, let's do something else completely different portrait photography so when you're shooting p people pictures, there's a couple things that you need to be concerned with number one is a appropriate shutter speed for stopping the motion of how fast that person is moving around and all people are moving a little bit. So you got to be concerned about getting blurriness. You got to be concerned about your own handheld movement because most times when you're shooting portrait's, you're going to be handheld and finally for a nice portrait look, a very common technique is shooting with a very shallow depth of field, and so you're going to want a very low aperture setting so that your background goes nice and softly out of focus so the subject of your photographs, it is nice and crystal clear the person in your photograph so I like doing my portrait in manual exposure. I can choose the shutter speed in aperture that is best for that situation, so a manual mode is a great mode to be in, and we're going to start with the shutter speed that is reasonable for most portrait's, which would be one hundred twenty fifth of a second, or maybe faster, but we're going to go for one hundred twenty fifth of a second. I know I can hand hold the camera, and if somebody is just standing there for a shot stances, chances are one hundred twenty fifth is going to stop their slight movement. Now I'm gonna want a very shallow depth of field if I have a lens that goes down to one point for I'm going to set it down there, and the lens that I have right now does indeed go down to one point four, so I'm going to set it wide open for a shallow depth of field. If you can't get down to one point four, just go is lois, your lens can handle and that's a good starting point that isn't where you have to shoot all of them, but it's a good starting point. I want to have the best quality images possible, so I'm going to set my eyes so as low as possible in my eyes, so is indeed at one hundred, so I don't need to make a change there. We're not worried about exposure compensation because we're in the manual mode and army during is going to be at matrix our white balances at auto, so we're not really going to be changing those too much the focus mode is kind of important. We're going to want to be in the single auto focus, moz so that's a f s I'm going to want to focus on my subjects, eyes or maybe they're cheek or something like that and that's where I want the focus point to be, and I wanted to stop and lock in once it's achieved that place. Now the area mode is also important what we're focusing on, and in that case, I want to make sure that that small bracket has chosen so that I choose the eye to focus on. I don't want to focus on the tip of the nose and have that in focus in their eyes, out of focus it's a very selective thing that you want to do, especially when you're shooting at a very shallow depth of field next up, I'm going to set the drive mode. Two continuous because people's gestures change and their facial expressions change and I want to be ready to shoot a burst off when I see something I really like and so I would probably turn the continuous mode on that way you can fire up to four frames per second next up we're going to do another completely different type of picture and this is taking blurry pictures who would want to take a blurry picture well I love taking blurry pictures as long as they're blurry in the right type of way and so we got a waterfall that's blurry cause it's scott it's moving a lot during a slow shutter speed and then we got the dog race that's also blurry because they're moving and I'm panning with them I'm moving the camera following them in the camera ok once again I like manual mode here let's set a shutter speed of a fifteenth of a second so we're just going to turn the command I'll to change it down to one fifteenth of a second that's a pretty good place to start with for blurring you may want to go lower than this it completely depends on the subject though so there's our fifteenth of a second and for our aperture well that's going to totally depend on the amount of light that we have to work with but just for practice I'm going to set an aperture of f eleven follow along if you can the I s o should be at one hundred to get the best quality possible you have a lot of leeway here on the aperture that you could work with so I would definitely want to keep the eye so as low as possible metering will be once again at matrix white balance will stay at auto for focusing we do have kind of a couple of options it depends on what type of shot you're shooting you might want to be in manual for some types of shots it's just a little easier to deal with rather than having the camera a just focus on you or you might want to be in single shot I'm going to go ahead and just put the switch on my camera and emanuel for practice here because that's easy to do now if you do choose auto focus you would probably want to be in the single point but it may be something different according to the situation that you're photographing and in the dr mode once again this is going to vary according to what type of shot you're shooting if I'm shooting the waterfall I'll probably just be in the single shot mode but if I'm shooting something that's action like the dog race there I might want to be in the continuous mode you could also use the timer mode for the waterfall so that you're not actually touching the camera at the time you're shooting it all right, moving on to another type of photography action photography so sports, dance any sort of action where you have subjects moving around, that you need to track their movement that's so they do need to be fairly large in the frame. It's going to be tough to track a small bird across the street with a standard lands you need to get close to your subject or have a big telephoto lands or, better yet, a combination of both. So once again, I do like manual exposure. Here, you'll need a faster shutter speed. A good general shutter speed to start with is going to be around five hundredth of a second that's going to stop human action, you may need something faster if they're moving even faster for an aperture. Well, it's going to depend on the amount of light that you have, but a lot of sports photographers like working with the lens that has an aperture that goes down to f two point eight, so if you have it, that might be a good place to start. It leaves you with some shallow depth of field, so your subject will stand out clearly from the background there's a good chance that you're going to need to raise theis, so to bump that up a little bit, so let's bump theis ota four hundred just for practice reasons camera still has very good image quality of four hundred and we're probably going to need it to get that faster shutter speed not going to worry about exposure compensation and we're going to leave our media ring and white balance at matrix and auto good simple areas really important in this action photography we're going to be changing the focusing so here is where we want to get to continuous focus so make sure your lens is in auto focus and the a f setting the focus mode is said it see for continuous we want to be able to track the movement of the subjects we are focusing also important is the area that we're going to focus on and this is where you might move away from the single point and move either into the dynamic area or possibly the three d tracking might hesitation is to start with the dynamic as you're kind of standard and you can play around with the three d mode to see if you like that the way it tracks and if it works for the type of subjects that you were photographing so the dynamic is probably the best starter choice there and then of course we're going to want to get several pictures in a row off and we're going to want to change our camera to the continuous mode so that we can get a siri's of pictures of our subject in action and so that's my recommended starting set up for action photography all right let's do another one here this one is just maximum sharpness we're taking a picture of something that is new not moving and doesn't have tremendous depth of field so it's pretty close to a landscape shot but we don't really have that great need for depth of field here once again I do like working in manual so we're going to be in manual on this one just for fun we're going to set a shutter speed of two seconds cause oftentimes we're needing very slow shutter speeds and obviously this indicates that I'm going to be on a tripod cause I cannot hand hold the camera at a half second very well we're going to set an aperture of f eleven and unfortunately we don't really have time to get into it there's more about this in my fundamentals of digital photography class but the sharpest aperture on your lands is in the middle of the rage now the lens that I have here is a one point four down to f sixteen so the middle of this lands would probably be closer to eight so this will very according to what lends you have for many people with the kit lands that would be closer to f eleven I want the finest quality picture possible so I'm gonna make sure that isil is at one hundred we were last doing sports at four hundred, so I'm going to bump that down to aya, so one hundred matrix metering will be fine and auto white balance will be fine focusing, though we're going to change this back to a f s for single focus we want to focus on are one solid object in front of us and have the camera stopped there. We don't want the cameras focusing, changing on us, and as far as what area we want to focus on, we can choose a number of different ways and the dynamic. Actually, I think I may have a little error here. This is where I would go a single point, not dynamic. I made it error on the keynote that's my one for the show, I always include one just to make sure people are paying attention, including myself. So this is where you would go with the single point auto focus and then as far as the drive mode, well, there's a couple of options you could do here, you could either do the single mode if you have a cable release or you could do the self timer mode, either one of those would work because you just don't want to be bumping the camera while you are taking the picture. So before we end this class let's, just get the camera set up in a basic photography mode good way for you to finish the class up and put put the camera away in the camera bag is just for general photography, so for just general photography were you don't know what your next picture is going to be here's what I recommend I'm moving away for the manual mode and I'm going into the aperture priority mode here leaves me just a little bit of automation let the camera would do a little bit of work, so aperture priority on the let the camera figure out the shutter speed and I'm going to choose an aperture that's why relatively wide open? I have the option of going all the way down to one point for, but I'm goingto I'm going to close it down just a little bit two f or it's a good general place toe to be for many lenses I want my eyes so as low as it can go and I do have it said it one hundred so that's a good place to start it out and let's make sure that our exposure compensation is not set to any wacky position where it is a little wacky right now it's at minus one from our last tests that we were doing so let's get that reset down to zero for me during matrix is going to be fine and for white balance auto will be fine for that as well. For focus I'm going to choose single generally the subjects I'm photographing aren't moving too much and so single focus I'll be just fine and that is indeed where I'm at right now actually let's get to a f s single nature that's correct and I'm gonna want to choose very particularly what I am focusing on so a single plane is going to be the one that I would choose and for the dr mode I'm going to choose a single shot I just want to get one shot at a time and so single frame in the release mode it's just a good general set up mode when you don't know what your next picture is going to be and if you have somehow been able to follow along for this entire class congratulations, you are a d fifty one hundred expert now and so even if you are an expert, you probably still have a few questions so let's see what questions might remain at this point. All right, great. Well, thank you so much, john. People in the chat room are saying they learned so much and not just about this camera so good, fabulous a couple finishing questions, the nikon d five thousand has I s o low one low too low three what does that mean? The low setting low one is going to be one stop lower than the lowest number and you said the d five thousand not the fifty, one hundred so the previous model I believe had a lowe's heavies I s o two hundred and the low setting would be s o one hundred ah and I believe rather than not a three they had a point three maybe in a point seven pretty sure they didn't have a low two or a low three but it's just slightly lower setting its it's still better to be at the lowest numbered setting. So for an eye for a d five thousand user if and I don't recall stop my head if I s o two hundred is the lowest number that would be the best city. Okay, great. So that kind of answer is the next question from dacey, which is for older models of cameras the standardize owes two hundred so which is best to use two hundred or low one, two hundred would be the best at the lowest numbered setting is what we call the native sensitivity of the of the sensor. Okay, great and a question from red he'll fan from a personal preference how does john feel about the lack of any lcd display on top of the fifty, one hundred well, I prefer camera with an lcd display on the top of the camera, but they are returned to reduce the size of the camera and something had to give the back display gives you a lot more information than the top display and it is kind of redundant information. There's very little duplicate information are very there's no unique information that you get in the top lcd but it's just kind of an extra convenience feature when you have a larger camera, you have more space to work with so it's it's part of the game that you get when you get a smaller camera and there's a request, would you be able to demonstrate their articulation of the lcd display? Can you fold it back out and see if we can show us how it works? So I'm going to unplug our hd my cable here because it's gets ian's a little bit of the way and so you can have it so that you can see it, you can flip it out so that you can see it from low angles or high angles on, and then you can close it to protect the screen, which is kind of nice so that if it gets in your bag and gets bumped or scratched or anything like that it's less likely to have any damage done to the actual screen and so when you're actually shooting it works kind of nice for video because you can hold the camera and some steady or positions it's a little uncomfortable holding a camera up in front of you like this your arms get a little tired and so a little tilt to the screen bring your elbows in down to your torso and it's this much steadier position to hold the camera and so it's a nice feature and a lot of people are wondering are higher in nikon is going to include the swivel screen because it's generally only been entry level and intermediate level cameras that have had that and so everyone's kind of wondering are they going to put this on a professional level? Cameron I don't know we might find out in a few weeks and icons got a new announcement coming out and might be something interesting we'll see great thank you and a question from lisa s is the I serve on the cannon the equivalent of the a f c on an icon or the f s it is the fc the continuous sown cannon uses a term called servo which not everyone knows but it means to move nikon uses I think a little bit simpler terminology in continuous great um see anymore questions folks I think that that is bringing us to the end ah black apple could you demonstrate auto focus and video mode and is there some focus assist in manual um focus assist well, yes, there is the focus assist that's the range finder that we talked about that you could turn on if you forget that rewind the tape if you've purchased this glass and go to the settings where we were going into the custom menus, there is a range finder that you can turn on that's a focus assist in the manual mode, and when it comes to live, you let's see if we can dio a experiment here, and so I'm going to focus on something closer to me and it's using that box in the middle to focus and it's not too bad now if I want to go in and change the focusing too full time focusing let's, see how this difference and so I'm not pressing anything on the camera now I'm not pressing the button it's just looking to see what's in focus come on, maybe it's a little too close and so it's a bit slow and this is why a lot of people prefer manual focus in their camera it's just a little awkward and so when I'm shooting video with these cameras, I'm generally manually focusing ok great and see ah loomis picasso asked, what is your opinion of the v r switch? Or does the fifty one hundred not have that the switch is something that is only on lenses and so the lens that I have on here right now does not have that feature and so it's going to be a feature of the lens, and if you are hand holding the camera, I would probably leave it turned on. If you do put it on a tripod, you do want to turn it off. You can actually get blurry pictures on a tripod with vibrant vibration reduction on on, so you've got to remember to turn it on and off when you're putting it on and off a tripod and a question from bruno alexander, did you talk about how to get better settings for making full hd videos? Well, we went through where you did the quality settings for setting the video, and you would just set that to the highest resolution rate, which is going to be the nineteen a twenty by ten eighty aspect ratio, and whether you want to shoot at thirty frames a second, which is generally going to give you higher definition, or whether you want to shoot it twenty four, twenty five, twenty five is going to be for pal systems, twenty four is going to beam or the way hollywood movies air shot that's a little different look to it, but if you want the highest resolution, that would be nineteen, twenty at thirty frames per second and one last question from k r barbados so the dial controls both the aperture on the shutter speed in manual mode can you show us this or re explain that sure if we have our cameras set in manual and we want to control both shutter speeds and apertures we only have one dial to do that with and that's the command I'll right here in the back of the camera if I just turn it without touching anything else on the camera I'm changing the shutter speed if I want to change the aperture I have to press this plus plus minus button on the top of the camera so if I press that in and hold it in then I can change the apertures so it's kind of a two finger affair to change apertures and if you're not sure whether this is the right camera to buy the next camera up has a special dial so that you don't have to do this to button thing you can direct dials for it and that's kind of one of the downsides to this the lower in cameras is that they force you to do a little bit more finger contortions to change your center speed in aperture but once you get used to it I think it's pretty quick to work with so it's not a major hindrance you can still do everything everyone else can it just takes an extra push of a button all right, great. Well, this has been a wonderful class. John, do you have some some last words for us? Well, I just want to let everyone I know that if they are interested in knowing more about photography, I do have a class here that's available for download right now. It's called fundamentals of digital photography and it's a ten week class that goes through more than twenty hours of basic instruct in the class that you just went through is all about how to work a camera. And even though you may know everything about this camera, that still doesn't mean you know how to take good pictures. There's a lot of other things going on involved in taking pictures. And so if you want to take a good photography class, this is one that's going to run you through all the basics and get you up to speed and fill in all the gaps that you might have been wondering about if you've been learning this on your own. And so that classes downloadable it's available right now at creative live dot com. Also, if you want to do more of in photography, I have some offers for you how about a photography to or to myanmar? I'm putting together a workshop and tour this october and november for me and more it's going to be a rather small group of students, and I like having all levels of students, so whether you're very experienced and you know exactly what you want to get or whether you're a rank beginner that's just starting to learn, I like teaching, and I have no problem answering questions and helping people out in the field, and so we're going to go to this great location it's, amazing photographic location, and we're going to going to several cities and locations within the country and learning photography and seeing some of the most beautiful places in the world. And so if you're interested in that, you can go to my website, my websites releasing to get to it's just my name john gringo dot com, where I'll have more information about the class that I teach the fundamentals that tours as well as thie in class are in person classes I have here in the seattle in portland area. So if you want to find out about any more that you can go to john gringo dot com for that next to that, I think everyone for tuning in or watching the glass and very much appreciate you being with us.