Lessons

Lesson Info

Class Introduction

Hello and welcome everyone to the Nikon D850 Fast Start. My name is John Greengo and in this class, we're gonna be going over all the features, functions, buttons and operation of the Nikon D850. We have a pretty long class here for you, because we got a lot of stuff to go through on this camera. The D850 was introduced not that long ago. And one of the things that's been interesting to me about this camera is that it is one of the most universally loved cameras since it's introduction. It seems like everybody is been just heaping mounds and mounds of praise on this camera and there are very few haters out there of this particular camera. Nikon has really taken a lot of their very best features and put it into one great package. And so if you own this camera, you should be very happy, because you have a very, very capable device. There is a lot of controls on it, there is a lot of features. There is a huge menu system and we're going to be going through all of that in this class. We're...

gonna start off going around talking about all the buttons and the major controls on the outside, second half of the class will be looking at the menu system And that is where the PDF that comes with the purchase of this class will come in handy. This is a downloadable PDF that will have for the class and what this has is the entire menu system on a single page. I'm a very visual person and in order to find something in the menu system, I like looking on a single page like this. And so this will have the entire menu system laid out that's easy for you to see. Along with my recommendations on it. And so when you get the class you get that PDF that comes along with it. Well we have a lot of ground to cover in this class, so let's go ahead and get started. Alright so we're gonna break this class up a little bit. I'm gonna give you a little bit of overview on this camera here at the beginning. We're gonna talk a little about photo basics for anyone that wants to just make sure that they are up to speed on those little things. And most of this class is gonna be on the camera controls section, that's where we're talking about all the buttons and controls on the outside of the camera. The second half of the class is the menu functions and we're gonna be making a walk through of the entire menu system where I'll be telling you what each of the items in the menu system is and my recommendations on where you might want to set it at least to begin with and why you might want to change it for other types of photography. And then at the very end we'll do a little camera operation where I will show you how I would set this camera up for a variety of different types of photography. Now if you have purchased this camera and gone through the instruction manual, you'll know that it is fairly big and has a lot of information in there. This class is not a total supplement for the instruction manual, but my hope is that you'll rarely if ever need the instruction manual after this class. We'll spend four and a half to five hours in this class going through all the information. And it's impossible for me to cover every bit of information that is also in the instruction manual. And what I tend to want to concentrate on in these fast start classes is how to shoot the camera manually, how to get the best image quality out of the camera and I tend not to spend a lot of time on all of the accessories that you can hook up to the camera. You can hook the camera up to a printer there is a lot of remote controls, you can connect it up to computers for downloading and tethering and all those other devices that you can connect to your camera, I'm not gonna be concentrating. I'll be addressing them in a light manner, but I want to concentrate on how to get the best image quality out of this camera and how to really take control over your camera. Now this is a class on this particular camera. It is not a class on photography. And so if you are new to photography, and you want tips and lesson on lighting and composition and shutter speeds and apertures, there are many other good classes for that. I have a couple of classes here at creativelive that are very good in that manner I believe. We have the photography starter kit for somebody who wants a quick class to get them out the door very rapidly. And for those of you who really want to get into the details a bit more and really know everything that there is to know, the fundamentals of photography will take you through a very in depth class. And that's not just on a particular camera, that is going to be applying to all different cameras. And this class we are going to stay concentrated on the features of the Nikon D850. If you are new to Nikon, well welcome to one of the companies that has been around the longest. They've been around for 100 years now. They started off with some simple range finder cameras back in the World War II era. Then things got pretty serious when they went to the SLR system. And that was in 1959. And the Nikon D850 shares an F mount with the 1959 Nikon F. Now the F mount has gone through a number of changes, and I'll talk a little bit about that when we get into the lenses and types of lenses that this camera will accept. 1986 saw a big change where Nikon introduced auto focus. And this camera will work with all of the auto focus lenses back to 1986. And then in 1999 they brought out their first digital camera which had a whopping 2.7 megpixels on it. And that sold for well more money than the D850 sells for. One of the best parts about being a Nikon owner is having the option of so many different camera bodies and lenses and flashes that you can choose from. You are part of a huge collection here and so there's a big ecosystem that you can choose from. So almost no matter where your photography goes, you're gonna find equipment that is going to be supplied by Nikon to fulfill those needs. Now the 850 is an interesting camera, 'cause Nikon's lineup of cameras is kinda changed slightly in the more modern era. This is not technically their flagship camera, the D5 is, but that camera is more of a sports and photo journalist camera. This is the camera that most of the top of the line photographers are going to be using. It's really gonna be one of the best cameras you can choose for landscape photography, portrait, wedding, even travel photography. For sports photography, the D5 is gonna shoot at faster frames per second, but this is the highest resolution camera that Nikon has ever made. Now this is the latest in the lineup of Nikon's full frame cameras, that is kind of a high end full frame camera but not specifically designed for sports or photo-journalism market. And so it builds on the great reputation of the D series and the D810. And so the D850 I think will be very popular camera for many years to come. In the instruction manual, there is a lot of warnings about what not to do with the camera, and I think most of these are pretty obvious. One question that a lot of people have is about the weather resistance. Because Nikon specifically states the camera is rugged and weather-sealed magnesium alloy body. And so they have a lot of weather sealing, which you can see here with all the yellow in these photographs and so they have done quite a bit to keep the camera protected from water, but however, some place else in the instruction manual they say it's not waterproof. And so whatever you do, do not take this underwater without the proper housing and even in very wet, rainy conditions you want to be a little bit cautious about shooting the camera. If you were gonna be out shooting in the rain for a very short period of time, let's say three, five minutes or so, you're probably fine just with the camera as it is. You do need to be careful with lenses, though, because some lenses are weather sealed and some are not. And so one of the way that you'll see is on the back of the lenses there'll be a little rubber gasket around the edge and so make sure your lens is weather sealed if you plan to do that. But if you're gonna need to be out of the rain for a longer period of time, I recommend some sort of weather proof housing, a rain cover, or something like that. For most little light drips and rain, you're probably gonna be fine just as it is, it seems to be very robustly built in that manner. Nikon also warns about using accessories not made by Nikon. And first off, I'm not sponsored by Nikon, I don't work with Nikon directly in any way, and so I get to say whatever I want about them, and yeah they want you to buy Nikon lenses and flashes, and batteries, and all their other accessories, but when it comes to the electronics on this camera, I do favor the Nikons. I prefer the Nikon flashes, just for the ease of communication. If you get into manual flash photography, then I think you can look at anything that's gonna trigger from the flash, but one of the key things is the batteries. There's been a number of manufactures that make after market batteries and they never seem to be as good as Nikon batteries. Sometimes they come in much cheaper, but I think the Nikon batteries are probably a better value and has a very close relationship with the internal workings of the camera. So you're probably safest to stick with the Nikon batteries. Alright let's make sure your camera and my camera is ready for today's class. You will want to charge the battery, it will take about two and a half hours. You can expect to get around 1200 shots, depends a little bit on how you use your camera. Got a lens attached, got a memory card in there and I'm gonna go ahead and make sure my camera is turned on right now. Now the auto-focus is a little bit on the tricky side. There is a switch on the lens which has an "M" or "A" and "MA" option. You want to have it in the "A" side for auto-focus and then there is another switch on the body which you also want to have in autofocus. If either of those is in the full "M" position, then you will be in manual focus on the lens. And so for right now, let's just keep it in auto-focus. On the top of the camera is a mode button, which you can turn down and you can press down and turn the back dial so you can get it over into the program mode, which is a nice simple place to start with here. And let me make sure that my camera is all set up, so now I'm just gonna go ahead and point my camera and take a photo, and yes, my camera is working and hopefully yours is as well. 'Cause we're ready to get into this class. Alright this section on photo basics is probably not necessary for most of the people who own the D850. I'm guessing for a lot of people who own this, this is their second, third, fourth or 10th, 20th camera from Nikon. But for those of you who do just want to cover a few of the quick basics of photography, let's take a look at what we're working with here in the D850. So this is a single lens reflex camera, which means it has a single lens that we get to take on and off. Inside the lens is an aperture unit that we can open and close down to control the amount of light coming in the lens. So these apertures or f/stops as they are known comes in many different sizes and these are all fractions where 1. is gonna be a very large opening and 22 will be a very small opening. And we're gonna open and close this aperture to help control the light as well as controlling the depth of field. As we stop our lens down, we will get more and more depth of field and that is the distance from what the closest thing in focus to the furthest thing in from us in focus. And so as we stop our aperture down here, we're getting more and more depth of field with each of our settings. Most lenses will close down to f/22, some will go beyond it, it's very dependent on the lens itself. Once light gets through the lens, then it comes into the camera and it gets to the reflex portion, which is the mirror in the camera that bounces the light upward to the focusing screen around the prism system and out the viewfinder for you to see. You're gonna get a nice bright, clear, very sharp image view with this camera. It's got one of the largest viewfinders around, so it's gonna give you one of the best views of any SLR on the market. When it comes time to take the photo, the mirror needs to get up and out of the way so light can get back to the image sensor. It then needs to get past the shutter unit and there is two curtains. There's the first curtain and the second curtain, and so what's happening here is the first curtain is blocking light to the sensor until it's ready to capture the image, it then opens up, allows light in for that fraction of a second in most cases, before returning back to its starting position after that mirror returns so that you can see what's going on. Now the shutter speeds are another way of controlling the amount of light after the aperture in the camera, and so there's a variety of shutter speeds for controlling the light as well as controlling the motion stopping ability of any particular photograph. One of the most important elements in any modern camera is the sensor in the camera. This uses a large full frame sensor, which is designed for these largest of the normal cameras you might say. There are cameras that do have larger sensors, but they go into a different realm. And so this is all based off of 35mm film. And so this is what is known as a full frame sensor in today's lingo. There are a number of other sensors. There's other Nikon cameras that use the APS-C system and they'll be slightly different set of lenses that you'll want to work with if you have that crop frame system. And so this is using a large sensor, which is gonna enable you to have very fine detail because there's a lot of megapixels on there and it's also gonna enable you to work under very low light conditions. So this is just some general photo information for you. If you would like to know more about this, I do have a class called the photography starter kit and the fundamentals of photography, if you like to get more into the different types of cameras and lenses and lighting and composition and all of that. You may want to check out those classes which are also available here at creativelive.