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Lesson Info

2:30 pm - Camera Operation

All right, so this next section is just called operation it's where we kind of put some of the main tools together and so for actually operating the camera whether some final thoughts and suggestions on it and so for your basic camera checklist okay you're going on vacation you gotta shoot have been hired to go shoot something what are the things that you need to keep foremost in your mind before you go out and shoot first off charging and installing the battery, making sure you've got a memory card that has been formatted in the camera making sure that your image quality is not where you were goofing around last night doing something else with the camera set where you want probably on raw images make sure you know, maybe just a quick peruse through some of your more popular settings maybe just checking my menu said he to see that you have all your setting set properly next up if you really want to be sure about things, what you're gonna do is you're going to shoot a test photo to make...

sure that you don't have any dust on your sensor and so if I go on vacation or take a big shooting trip, I'm going to make sure that my sensor is nice and clean before I head out because it's a lot easier to deal with things at home than it is later on next to that all right, this is kind of your d six hundred final test here. I've kind of narrowed down all the features we've talked about what I believe are the ten most important functions that you're going to work with on a regular basis in the camera. Now, for those of you who get the pdf by the class, the final all this stuff, along with additional information is on the final two pages in here, so you don't have to keep notes in class don't worry about writing things down it's probably better just to work with the camera in your hand and think about what each of these settings do so first off let's, just do some super simple photography, just setting the camera up in the most basic of all basic modes, which would be putting the camera in program so it handle shutter speeds and appetite. Were you the esso in auto kills me to say it, but yeah, you know, just in auto is a real quick, simple way of doing it. Make sure your exposure compensation that plus minus button on the top of the camera is at zero you do not want to accidentally leave your camera at minus three you will be very unhappy with your photographs, matrix metering is a great system, and I'm going to recommend that for a lot of types of photography. Auto white balance is a good safe place to start you can adjust it from there is necessary for focus I'm not a big fan of the auto switching back and forth on the focus but in the super super simple mode I'm going to throw it there for focusing points just turning them all on in the auto mode he's a very simplistic way the downside is that the camera always focuses on what is closest to you and that might not be what you want to do if you were a very discerning photographer and then single mode for the drive which is the collar around the top left of the camera is good for basic photography so let's do a couple different types of photography old school retro so you're an old film shooter you kind of want to shoot like the days of your old nikon fm to our f e too all right, you might want to have the camera in the manual mode you're going to need a faster shutter speed well reasonable shutter speed of one hundred twenty fifth of a second for hand holding at least there's a famous saying in photography how do you take great pictures f ate and b they're kind of an old photo journalists lingo there about a good aperture is f ate for general photography now maybe you were used to shooting tri x film, which was four hundred sl we're not going to worry about exposure compensation because we're in the manual mode and back on those older cameras like the fm twos, threes things like that great cameras they use center waited metarie measures the light in the center of the frame white balance the w b button on the back of the camera we're gonna leave that auto just keep things nice and simple and if you want to switch to manual would once again recommend switching to manual on the lands the switch on the side of the lands just where it says m don't need to worry about focusing points and you might want to have your camera in continuous low so that you can fire off shots well, not with two second exposures they won't be very quick, so let me make a little change here so that's three frames per second. All right? One of my favorite types of photography is landscape photography, so when you're doing landscape photography, one of the most important things is depth of field you're shooting with lots of depth of field, so everything is in focus and when you're doing this, you're probably going to be needing a tripod so kind of keep that in mind as we go through this exposure mode, my favorite mode is definitely manual that way I can set a specific shutter speed and aperture and it does not change on me I typically amusing a pretty slow shutter speed because I'm using a very small aperture sixteen twenty to thirty two those types of apertures are going to get you lots of depth of field, and when you do that you're typically going to need longer shutter speeds. The esso is something you'll definitely want to leave it low one hundred this is where landscape photographers will have their camera virtually all the time. We're not going to deal with exposure compensation because we're in the manual mode. I'm just fine with matrix metering it does a good job. Take a picture look at the back of the camera, check out the history graham by getting the pressing the information button on the camera white balance you could set it to sunny or cloudy whatever you're in, but autos not a bad place to start off, especially if you're shooting raw images for focusing. I would definitely leave this on single you're not tracking any movement, you're simply focusing on a tree iraq, bush something like that to get specific focus and single point focusing is gonna work just fine here, you're going to have plenty of time to focus exactly where you want to and as far as the drive mode there's lots of options single shot if you have the cable release hooked up self timer if you don't have the cable release and potentially, if you have the wireless remote or the wired remote, you could be using the mere up, and with one second exposure, I might want to be using that near up option on the on the, uh, drive out the release. Smell it. Excuse me. Next up is portrait photography, and so one of the main things here is that you want shallow depth of field kind of the opposite of landscape photography, but in this case, we're not going to be working on a tripod in most cases, and so we're gonna be a little bit concerned about shutter speeds, both of our subject and of ourselves moving and so in these modes, where you have a chance to get a number of shots in one city, I would recommend manual that way you can be very specific and have him stay exactly where you want them. You're going to need a faster shutter speed, I would say one hundred twenty fifth or faster, depending on exactly what lands in a number of other parameters, but at least one hundred twenty fifth of a second. And if you have a very fast lens, like a one point four, you're probably going to want to shoot it fairly wide open anywhere from one four tow for depending on exactly what you're doing in your portrait photographs. Of course you're going to want to leave your s o as low as possible you'll bump it up if necessary but starting off one hundred is the best call matrix metering I think works just fine for these situations as well as leaving auto white balance on for focusing you're gonna want to focus on the eyes and stop you don't want to track movement back and forth unless it's a person that is moving back and forth and being able to choose just the eye you're going to be able to do that with a single point and I would probably choose the single point in the middle and then recompose unless they're really far off to the side you could try using one of the outer points to focus on them and as far as the dr modi tend to wantto leave the camera on the continuous mode because people's expressions change their gestures change and sometimes there gets to be really good moments that you want to get a series of pictures all from that same couple of seconds we're going to switch to action now so sports wildlife all sorts of things like that and this main mainly is dealing with subject's moving towards you and away from you and the big deal here is focusing you need to be able to track their focusing you also need to have a fast enough shutter speed to stop the action with subjects that I have a chance to set up with, I like manual and this is where you're going to want to shutter speed of five hundredth of a second or faster depending on the situation sports photographers love lenses that go down to two point eight, so if you have a lens to but that goes down to two point eight, you'll probably want to set it there and make use of that because with that faster shutter speed, we need to let in a lot of light through our aperture ideally, of course I would like to be at one hundred, but realistically speaking with thes fast shutter speeds, you're probably going to need a higher so you'll bump that up as necessary. I'm fine once again with matrix metering and auto white balance so there's no adjustment they're focusing we're going to make our change here to continuous this way the camera contract the focus towards us and away from us focussing points we have a lot of options here and there's a lot of good options. The one I would just say that I like the most is nine point focusing because those nine center points are all cross type focusing points that work with five six lenses and faster and so that's just a really good system but I can totally see using the twenty one or the thirty nine point depending on the situation and then of course in the drive mode no guessing here continuous high being able to fire off at five plus frames per second is going to be pretty good for sports photography. All right, let's do maximum sharpness this is closely related to landscape fi, but if somebody was gonna have you photographed their painting or a piece of artwork that they made where the subject's not moving the camera's on a tripod, how do we get the greatest sharpness possible out of the camera beyond selecting just simply raw images, you're going to have a chance to set up the shots so definitely manual shutter speed doesn't matter if you were on a tripod so it could be anywhere in there. The sharpest aperture is in the middle of the range depends on which lends you have in general it ranges anywhere from five six to eleven but it's the middle of the range on a given lance you are of course going to be at s o one hundred we're gonna go ahead and just keep this at matrix metering and auto white balance I think they're good general places to keep him those most of the time for focusing manual is a pretty good option, but single focusing would work as well and I'll highlight that one and you want to be very precise about you're focusing, so you're going to choose just the center point and as far as the drive mode it's the same options we talked about in landscape photography. If you have the cable release, you could use the single shot. If you have the remote, you could be using the self timer, and with either one you could be using the mere lockup mode and with a shutter speed of a half second in this example, I would say that used to be using the mere lock up mode to ensure that the camera is vibration free when the picture was taken. All right, so let's end with one good last one that is basic photography and that's where we kind of don't know what our next picture is going to be. And so, in this case, I am going to recommend just a weensy bit of automation. Aperture priority. Let the camera choose the shutter speed, and I would leave the aperture fairly wide open. May be f four if your lens allows for it. I tend to like to leave my eyes so at one hundred just so that I always know it's in the best spot. If I get into a dark situation, say I go into a market that's undercover and not under good lighting, I would might immediately bump it up to four hundred or eight hundred at that time. But normally I like to keep my camera at one hundred so that if I just grab it and start shooting it's not at sixty, four hundred exposure compensation, you want to make sure that this is at zero. I'm once again find with matrix metering an auto white balance and for focusing most of the time. Single focusing works just fine for me. My camera focuses on a subject it locks in, and then I can recompose the shot. And if I choose the single point in the middle it's good under very low light conditions with vertical lines, horizontal lines, it's, a very, very accurate and fast focusing point. And normally I'll just leave my camera in the single mode. If I need to take a serious of pictures, I'll just pump up and down on the shutter release to take those pictures. And so, if you're still hanging with us, I can say, congratulations. You are now a d six hundred expert.