Lessons

Lesson Info

Camera Operation

Let's kind of put everything together, and what do we need thio pay attention to and do when we're going out and shooting pictures and so here's the basic camera checklist that you need to do before you go out shooting, make sure your batteries are charged and installed obviously, make sure you got your memory card or cards and you have formatted them so that they're ready to go for new information, make sure that the image quality is set the way that you wanted to be set raw, jpeg or some combination of make sure that you generally haven't left anything in the menu settings in unusual ways. A lot of times, people will go out shooting late at night, and they'll do special things with their cameras that they forget about the next morning at sunrise, and then if you're gonna be going on a big trip, you should shoot some test photos of like a white piece of paper not exciting, but it's going to tell you if you have dust on your sensor, you don't want to go on a major round the world trip ...

with dust on your sensor that you have a hard time cleaning off because you don't have access to the right tools and services, so those are the basic things that I'm doing all the time to make sure things are up and running properly. All right, so your final test of the d seventy one hundred is knowing which things you're going to be changing on a regular basis and they are listed here these are the ten things that you're constantly going to be moving back and forth most of them deal with exposure, some of them deal with focus and some with just some other things so let's run through a couple of scenarios super simple mode okay, this is where you just want things as simple as they can be we're going to use the program mode and we're not going to use the auto mode because we don't want to have child safety locks on everything else for the auto mode. Well, I'm not a big fan of it. Auto isso does work pretty darn well we'll want to make sure our exposure compensation is set at zero matrix metering will give us a good generic metering pattern that will work in many different lighting situations very well auto white balance does a very good job, so we're going to put that there for focusing in auto mode here what it's going to do is it's going to switch back and forth between single and continuous I am not a big fan of this, but for a super simple mode where you might even be handing the camera off to somebody else, it does a reasonably good job for focusing points throw it in the auto mode it's looking at all fifty one points in is choosing whatever is closest to you and in the drive mode just one shot at a time in the single mode but that's not how you are gonna want to use this camera most of the time so let's look at some other options let's go old school retro so you want to do things in a more manual way you're going to put your camera in the manual mode you're going to set shutter speeds and apertures yourself you know maybe you're just going to be doing general photography hundred twenty fifth of a second would do pretty good for a general action f ate because there's an old saying in photography f ate and be there and your eye so maybe you want to shoot at the same s o that you did with tri x film so you'll be at s o four hundred and this will of course adjust according to the light levels that you actually have to deal with on traditional cameras they used center waited metering and maybe you would like to try that white balance leave that auto for right now just to keep things simple and maybe you're going to flip that switch on the lens to go to manual focus and you don't need to worry about focus points and then you can leave your drive mode and continuous low for continuous shooting all right, let's, try something more serious here. Let's do some landscape photography so what's going on in landscape photography is hopefully you're shooting from a tripod. At least you should be, or at least holding the camera very, very steady cause you often end up with very slow shutter speeds, and you want to have a lot of depth of field where a lot of things are in focus. So let's, think about how we're going to set up our landscape photograph. First off, we're gonna be in manual exposure, so we can very be very particular about our shutter speeds and apertures. And probably the first thing we want to do is jump over to the isos and set that to s o one hundred. We're going to want to have a lot of depth of field f sixteen might be a good place to be, you might be a half eleven, twenty two thirty two depends on the exact photograph and the shutter speed will be whatever it needs to be. It might end up being something pretty slow, like one second, because if you're choosing f sixteen, that doesn't allow in much like you need to let it in somewhere else, and you'll do that with the shutter speed, not a problem if you're shooting from a tripod. You don't use exposure compensation because you are in full manual, I'm going to go ahead and leave me uttering in matrix because it does a good general job leave it in auto white balance, you could put it to sunlight or cloudy, depending on the conditions for focusing, I'm going to want to be in single I'm gonna want to choose what's going toe the camera. What what it's going to focus on and let it lock in? There might also manually focus to be honest with you, but for the focusing points, I'm going to choose just one focusing point. I'm not going to just generally choose what's closest to me. I wanted to something between the most distant and the most close up scene somewhere in between and for the drive mode, I got a number of options here, I could choose the single shot. If I have the cable release, I could choose the self timer if I don't have a cable release, I could also be using the mere up mode to prevent vibration if I'm in that danger vibration zone and so that's how I would set up in a landscape shot, all right, let's, switch gears and do a portrait photograph, so whether you're photographing a person or a bird a lot of times in portrait photography, you want a shallow depth of field you also need to be concerned about movement, your movement and your subjects movements, so shutter speed is a little bit more important in here than it was in the landscape example before in this case, I like to be in manual is well, so I could be very specific about my settings. Probably the first setting I'm going to make here is with the aperture to shoot something pretty wide open to get that shallow depth of field. If I have a one point four lands, I might as well said it there next up. I want to make sure that I have a shutter speed fast enough to stop my subjects action as well as my action one hundred twenty fifth of a second would do a pretty good job in many situations, and then I would set the so I would try to set it as low as possible. If I need to bump it up, I will, but I'll try to set it at I s o one hundred, I'm going to go ahead and leave the meat oring at matrix and the white balance at auto. Those tend to work quite well most of the time for focusing, I'm going to be in single because my subjects are not moving towards me or away from me, I want it toe lock on them. And I'm going to be very specific about the focusing point that I choose one center point to make sure the eyes aeryn focus and for the drive I'm going to be in continuous high because subjects change gestures and facial expressions very quickly and I want to capture a burst of them at the right time and so that's what I would do with portrait all right let's do action so here what's important is that our subjects are moving towards or away from us we're going to need the focusing points to be grabbing on, focusing and adjusting focus we're also going to need a faster shutter speed than in the portrait example to stop the action in these mode I like manual again I want to be able to get my settings and keepem consistent in this case probably the first thing I'm going to do is go to a faster shutter speed like five hundredth of a second I might need faster five hundred's a good start next up having a fast lens that allows in a lot of light like a two point eight lens is going to be a big help here lot of sports action photographers love two point eight lenses and then as faras the so of course I want it as low as possible but the reality is with faster shutter speeds I often need a higher so like four hundred sometimes you might be up in sixty four hundred but usually at least four hundred, and I'm going to keep that meeting at matrix I'm going to keep the white balance that auto for focusing this is a big change, a f c for continuous, we want the focusing to continually adjust as the subjects are coming towards us and then the focusing points we've got a lot of good options in here. My favorite is nine point it enables me to have a target about the size of my subject that doesn't take up the whole frame that I could be a little bit particular with on where it is, and I might move it a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right. Depending on the composition, twenty one would point twenty one point would work pretty well as well as might fifty one point for the drive mode. Of course, I am going to be in continuous high so that I could get a siri's of shot six frames a second, or maybe even seven frames a second if I'm using that one point three crop mode in the camera, all right, let's say you want maximum sharpness so there's nothing moving, you have no need for depth of field, you just want to shoot a picture and have it be as sharp as humanly or camera lee possible in this mode I am once again going to be in full manual mode first step here is the esso at one hundred next step aperture at a prime aperture for sharpness with many lenses that's going to be around f eleven this varies on lens to lance the shutter speed won't matter if I'm shooting from a tripod you might end up with a very slow shutter speed wood but it won't matter because the camera is not moving a meter and I'm going to leave it at matrix and yes, I'm going to leave white balance again at auto for focusing single going to focus on a subject and lock in I might even manually focus and for focus points I'm going to choose go back to that single point again and for the drive mode the same options we had for the landscape using a cable release or the wireless remote and potentially using the mere lockup okay one final one for you this is what I call basic photography this is where you just kind of walking along you don't know what your next picture is and it could be almost anything so how do you stay prepared for everything at once in this case I'm actually going to use just a little bit of automation this is where aperture priority is really nice I don't need to worry about cheddar speeds no I do I just don't need to worry about setting them I'm going to set my aperture toe a reasonably wide open aperture like f four I can adjust it anywhere from here very very quickly under decent lighting conditions alleviated eso one hundred if I met night or inside someplace I'll bump this up as as far as necessary but in general I'll keep it started at s o one hundred I'll keep an eye on my exposure compensation to make sure that it said it zero and then I'll just be looking back over my shutter speed to see what the camera is recommending and making sure that's appropriate for the subjects I'm shooting I will again leave the metering matrix and I will leave the white balance at auto for focus I'm just going to go with single focus focus on a subject and lock in and I'm going to be very particular about what I focus on with the single focusing point in the middle because that's the best one on the camera and then I will be using a dr mo just in single I need to take several shots I'll just move up and down on the shutter release and so folks if you have made it this far in the class congratulations you are now a nikon d seventy one hundred expert so congratulations to everybody a well done well done well, thank you so much done do it does our in studio audience have any questions they're stunned or dead. Of course. Would you like a diploma so on your basic settings, would that be considered like street photography when you're just fucking around? Okay, you know, like you and all of this is just kind of a starting point. So on the street photography, if you found out that you really kind of like shooting pictures of people walking down the sidewalk towards you, you would switch off to continuous focusing and maybe turned the motor drive on and so on. These are all designed, not is. This is how things have to be, but this is kind of a starter point, and then you tweak things according to your own needs and desires.