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Adorama Canon 70D Demo

Lesson 1 from: Adorama Gear Review: Canon 70D

John Greengo

Adorama Canon 70D Demo

Lesson 1 from: Adorama Gear Review: Canon 70D

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

1. Adorama Canon 70D Demo

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Lesson Info

Adorama Canon 70D Demo

And this demo we're going to going over, they can in seventy d and this is a very popular camera for a lot of different users. I think anyone who is interested in a really good value, a very good product for the money, this camera is going to be one of the top cameras that they can take a look at. So what we're going to be doing in this little demos, I'm going to go through a bunch of camera critical specs. You know, when you get a brochure and you look on the back side and there's like one hundred things listed that the camera has or does well, I've picked out nine that I think are the most important that you can compare with other cameras, and I want to go through these nine specs, and I'll explain what they are and then how they relate to the real world. After that, I want to talk about some of the unique features that this camera has that not all cameras have or very few cameras have in some cases, and then what I'm going to do is I teach a class that's, a five hour class on how to...

use all the controls functions and go through all the menu, and I've just taken a few little clips and a few little slides from that, and I want to show you some of the operational features of the camera and how you use it, which is going to give you credit good feel for the way the camera actually works in the real world. And then finally, I'm going to give anyone who owns this camera a few little tips on some items that maybe kind of buried in the menu system that you may not know about that I think are kind of nice to go in and make a little adjustment, teo, and after that, we're going to see if there's a few little questions. I know that you can send in questions, and we'll try to answer a few of those questions at the very end. So let's, go ahead and get started with some of these cameras specifications, so any time you have a digital camera, of course, the first thing you really want to look at is the sense of what's going on with the sensor now this camera has an a psc sensor, which means it's twenty seven millimeters from corner to corner it's kind of what I would call a medium size censor it hits ah, very good sweet spot, you might say when it comes to the size of the sensor for image quality, but then for camera size and length size, it keeps things relatively small. It is a twenty megapixel sensor from canon it's, a new sensor that they haven't been using in previous cameras and it's got some interesting technology that we're gonna be talking about here, and that is, is it has dual pixel. I see moss sensor now what this means is that the camera has dual pixels where there is each pixel, so you could make a certain argument that it is a forty mega pixel camera. But that would be a little deceptive in some ways, because it is using twenty megapixels for the image quality it's using the dual pixels for focusing when it's in live you or movie mode, which makes this camera the best slr on the market for focusing with the movie mode or in the live view mode, which puts this in a unique category of cameras that can do good in focusing in that moat and so that's that's what's unique about the sensor on this camera next up what's important is the isil how sensitive is the sensor? How good is it under various low light conditions now the sensor on it is has a range of one hundred to twelve thousand eight hundred which is a huge range. One hundred is where you're going to get the best quality off of a sensor like this this but you will adjust it to higher levels as light levels get lower and your need for faster shutter speeds increases but it also has an expanded range up to twenty five thousand six hundred it's rare that you would ever need to go there but it can go there if needed next up frames per second how fast can you shoot and the buffer so frames per second it's seven frames per second which is really fast. So if anyone is going to be shooting, you know high school sports or any sort of action seven frames per second is considered in many cases very professional, very high end. There are very few cameras that have a faster frame rate then this camera it's just just a handful of them out there and then the buffer the buffer is how many pictures can you shoot right now in a row on the camera before it even downloads the images to the memory card and in this case you can get sixty five j peg or sixteen ross and that's a fairly healthy buffer cannon has done a good job at putting a pretty good sized buffer in their cameras so that you can shoot in a fairly large burst next up let's take a look at the focusing system on the camera this uses a nineteen point all cross type focusing system now this is inherited from the cannon seventy and as an owner of that camera, I can tell you that the focusing system is very good for both basic photography and action photography what's really nice is that all these focusing points are crossed type focusing, which means that they're sensitive to both vertical lines and horizontal lines. It just means they're more sensitive and there going to pick up on subjects very, very easy now within that focusing system, you'll be able to use either the single point you can use a group of nine or you can use all nineteen for very simple photography. The nineteen point is kind of nice because you got all these focusing points going out and they're going to focus on whatever is closest to the camera single point is very good for what I call thoughtful photography, where you want to be very precise about what you're focusing on and I like the zone or the nine point focusing when I'm working with action because it's very hard to keep a single point on a radically fast moving subject and then finally we do have that dual pixel seamus f system that I had talked about earlier that makes the camera exceptionally good at focusing using the live view system or using the movie mode system. One of the things that is critically important to me in a camera is the viewfinder. How good is the viewfinder now? This uses an eye level pinter prison, and one of the things to note for anyone who is comparing this camera and one of the rebel cameras is that the rebel cameras use a different type of oral prism system that is not as high quality, not a sharp and not as bright as the prison system in this camera. And so you are going to get a better view out of this camera van, the rebel cameras. It is a ninety eight percent coverage, which means that you're going to get a little extra over the edge, and they do that just kind of for safety reasons that whatever you see in the viewfinder will definitely be in your final picture. Finally, it's a point nine five magnification, which has a twenty two millimetre I point and what that means is it's. A fairly large view that you get inside, and the twenty two millimeters essentially means that you have twenty two millimeters behind the viewfinder to see. So if you wear glasses or you need to hold it just a little bit away from your eyes you're still going to be able to see a good portion of that screen and so handy thing to have is a high I point level on any camera next up let's take a look at the lcd now on this camera we haven't articulated three inch lcd screen, so let me kind of show you what's going on with this one and so we have a hinge on the side and there's a number of cameras that have what people affectionately call tilt e screens that just tilt up until down and this one is a fully articulated one so you can have it out here to the side so if you're shooting video, this is a much easier position to shoot it in because you can have the cameron a very stable position also you can point it down if you're going to hold it up over your head and if you want to just flip it around, you can have it back here and if you want to protect the camera like while it's in your camera bag or you're not using it, you can have it here and it stays very well protected because it's closed around to the back side we'll leave it around here because we might want to use it here so that's the articulated lcd it's got about a million dots on it so it's very, very detailed and so you're going to have great time being able to judge sharpness when you're zooming in on the camera next, the thing about the lcd that's kind of fun is it is a touch screen and has a capacity touch and so you can navigate through the menu system you could use it for focusing. This is one of the neat things about that fast autofocus system for live you and movie motives that you can actually just touch the screen where you wanted to focus. So a lot of people like this touch screen there's some people that don't and I'm happy to say that if you don't like the touch screen well a you can turn it off but be there are buttons for doing everything else on the camera so it's purely an option if you want to get in and use it all right, next thing that we want to talk about is the shutter unit on the camera fairly standard for ah medium to high end camera shutter speed range from thirty seconds to one eight thousand or excuse me one four thousandth of a second we also have a a bulb mode on it so that if you want to shoot pictures longer than thirty seconds you can set it up to do two minutes four minutes ten minutes an hour as long as you want the flash think on it, which is the fastest shutter speed that you can shoot with flashes one to fiftieth of a second and you'll be hard pressed to find a camera that can fire faster than that in a t t l automated flash type mode. Next up, let's talk a little bit more about the flash it does have a built in flash and so it's very simple let me just pop it up here for you you can have it pop up for you automatically in the auto modes, which, by the way, just drives me nuts because I think flash to be something that you intend to turn on and choose when you want it on there and you could just push it back down when you don't want it but it's very easy to get to it's not the most powerful flash in the world like any flash and a built in camera, but I think it's really helpful if you are doing people shots and you want to add a little bit of phil light to their eyes or if they're wearing the hat get a little bit more light on their eyes and I think that's a highly recommended technique that I talk about in my classes as well also on the flash we do have many different modes that we can use with the flash there's auto flashes I'd mentioned you, khun force it on any time you want there is a built in red eye reduction mode slow sink allows you to fire the camera with a slow shutter speed together ambient light as well as firing the flash a great technique when you're in a fairly dark room and you still want to bring the lights and the ambient room into the picture it also has second curtain flash so you can trigger it for special effects mode and it's a wireless trigger so if you have one of the other cannon flashes in a remote location multiple flashes from canada you can have this firing and controlling those remote flashes and then finally of course these cameras do video and people are very interested in shooting video with these cameras because they do have very good quality cannons have been very popular for this reason we have nineteen twenty by ten eighty which is known as full hd and we can shoot that at twenty four twenty five or thirty frames per second if we want to go down to standard h d which is twelve eighty by seven twenty weekend shoot as fast as sixty frames per second and then they also have a smaller six forty by four eighty more for a youtube upload it records it in a standard movie format there is an option oven all I or an I p b option and what this is is basically it's a high end video format or a low in there's, a high end one that records very detailed information from frame to frame. So if you are going to be editing on a frame by frame rate basis, you're going to be shooting a commercial with it. You want to get very exact in the editing you would choose thie all I for a basic mom and pop, just, you know, shooting some weekend fun with the family probably don't need to do that on, they could be able to shoot. In that case, they would be shooting the I p b it's going to be a little bit smaller file size it's still high definition in size. And then finally, the camera does have a stereo mike built in right into the top of the camera, and there is a three and a half inch mini jack on the side that you can plug in an additional stereo microphone if you would like to get higher quality sound out of the camera. So that's that's some of the key stats on the camera let's, take a look at some of the things that might be kind of unique about this camera. First off, it does have wifi, so if you want to hook the camera up to your phone and use it as a remote viewer or to download images from the phone which I think it's kind of handing you take a great picture out in the field and you want to post it on facebook or you want to send it somebody right away you can download it without it computer around and so that's kind of nice another feature that I really like doing landscape photography is an electronica level and in the back of the camera there is a level that tells you if you are tilted and you can just kind of follow that until it gets you straight on and you'll get straight horizons, which I think is great. The camera has a built in hdr stands for high dynamic range is where the camera shoots multiple photos to grab one photo that retains the best parts of the highlights and the shadow region. So if you have an area of a photograph that you're taking that has a really extreme contrast range you can do all of that in camera we also have a multiple exposure mode so if you want to take multiple exposures normally I would use photo shop for something like this but it is something that is kind of fun to have in the camera and it does technically help out when you are trying to align subjects and being there and being able to see it and shoot it in the field is really a nice advantage to have for anyone that owns some fast cannon glass the camera does have micro adjustment. This is where you can go in, and you can tweak the focusing of each of the lenses if they're not focusing exactly the way that you think that they should. And so that's a very nice feature to have for any of the more advanced photographers out there. We do have a silent mode, it's not truly silent it's, just less noise than the normal shutter, but if you are going to be taking pictures in a concert hall or any sort of environment where you want to be as quiet and discreet as possible, the camera does have a mode for that camera has a single sd card slot test is the standard cards that most cameras air using these days, and I did mention the touch screen, so those are some of the nice extra features that I do like about this camera now for the next little section. What I want to do is I want to jump into the class that I teach on this camera called fast start in the cannon seventy d, and I've just taken a few little bits and pieces that I thought would be relevant to anyone who is interested in buying this camera or maybe has. Just bought it so let's go ahead and jump on into that class and one of the things I like to talk about is just give you a thirty second history of cannon cannons a great photographic company they've been around for a long time very on screen you can see their original logo kawana and that is the goddess of mercy notice all the hands for pressing buttons on the camera cannon started making range finders and in the nineteen fifty nine they started making their slr cameras they started kind of on the low end and went up to the professional levels in nineteen seventy one and they became quite popular in the eighty's now in nineteen eighty seven they made a radical change they saw that they were kind of at a dead end point on their old lens mountain they introduce the new ceo's lens mountain which has auto focus so you can use auto focus lenses back to nineteen eighty seven on this cannon seventy d and they're fully compatible their first mainline digital camera was the d thirty remember when this came out sold for about three thousand dollars and had three megapixels and this camera is a direct descendant of that camera. So what has gathered the most amount of tension about this camera? What makes it kind of special in the marketplace? Most part is that dual seamus sensor with that unique focusing system I've talked about twenty megapixels one of the higher resolution canon cameras available today very good auto focusing system built in y fine and seven frames per second is not easy to get on an sl are only a handful of cameras are faster than this now within the cannon line up. One of the things that's great is that they have a huge collection of cameras these days. If you want to buy an upgrade to this there's an upgrade, if you want to buy somebody else in the family kind of a junior version of this so that you can share lenses back and forth, they're going to have a junior version of this. They have a tremendous number of lenses, pretty much anything that you're going to want to do. They're going to have a lens for it, and they have a very good complete flash system. So if you want to add on a more powerful flash than the built in flash, you can certainly do that now, where the seventy d falls in their lineup is it's, one of the higher of the smaller, censored cameras, they have full frame cameras, and they had their a psc sensor cameras, which have a little bit smaller sensor and sell for noticeably less money, but this is squarely aimed at the kind of advancing amateur thea spyer ing amateurs there sometime call now the the lineage of this camera is their longest lineage, and so if you like the idea of you making a good product and they're tweaking it just a little bit better every couple years, this is a camera that has seen a lot of refinement over the years and as you can see there's been a lot of generations since that original d thirty being an slr it's got a number of advantages over some of the mirror elice cameras or the point shoots so the single lens reflex what does that mean? S l single lands we have one very high quality lens on the camera in these lenses is an aperture unit. The aperture unit is the first line of controlling how much light gets into the sensor, so you'll be able to adjust the aperture via controls on the camera to see what's going on the light is bounced off of the mirror and this is where the are comes in for reflex, any camera that is described as a reflex camera has a mere in it somewhere now, in order to see this screen easily, we bounce the light through a prism system, and the advantage here is that you get to see exactly what the lens sees. You get to see whether it's in focus or how wide of angle or telephoto you're right, you get to see if the lens cap is still on the camera very, very easy and bright viewing even in low light conditions now when you take a picture that near needs to get up and out of the way so that light can get back to the image sensor but before it can get there it needs to get past the shutter unit and the shutter unit actually has a first curtain and a second curtain when the picture was actually taken the first curtain will drop away that's when your exposure is and then the second curtain will come in and stop the exposure and then the mere will return so that you can see what's going on and the camera will do this at seven frames per second allowing you just a little glimpse between each picture so if you are panning with the subject from side to side you'll be able to see that subject and pan with them very easily let's look at the main controls on the camera are on and off in our shed a release make sure you press down halfway on the shutter release to kind of wake the camera that's way most cameras work cannons main control dial is on the top of the camera most controls are going to be done right here with this main control which is very easy to get to but there is also a secondary control on the back of the camera known as thie quick control dial so you have to big dials on your camera, and this is one of the step up features. If you're considering this camera or one of the rebels, one of the things I really like about this camera is that we have to direct dial inputs on it. So when you're changing shutter speeds and apertures, one is dedicated to one, and one is dedicated to the other, so it's, very direct and easy manipulation of those features within that quick control dial is a multi control. This is going to be used either for navigating through the menu system or for adjusting your focusing points. There is nineteen different points, and you may want to move one off to the left or to the right, then you will use it with this little touch pad and then there's a little set button in the middle. When you want you confirm the various settings that you will put in there, and then if you feel like you accidentally bump this, die along the back of the camera, there is a lock switch on it so you can lock it out so that if you are carrying the camera over your shoulder and it's rubbing on your belt to the side of you it's not going to accidentally start pressing those buttons and so it's a very logical good layout on this cameras can be very quick and easy for anyone to use in my opinion let's take a look at the mod ill on the top, the camera and some of the various features and functions that it has the a plus the autumn oh this is where you put put put it in when you first get the camera and you just quickly want to take some pictures and you don't want a fuss around with any sort of camera settings on it the camera's going to figure out shutter speeds, apertures and a whole host of other features now the a plus on this the intelligent auto what's intelligent about it well when the camera is looking at what you are pointed out it's trying to determine is this a static scene? Is this an action scene? Does this person need lots of depth of field or is there less depth of field necessary and so the cameras trying to figure out things for you for somebody who doesn't know what they're doing with the camera? This is probably going to be a good thing, but for somebody who wants to really control the camera, I think they're going to want to put the camera in a more advanced mode where they have specific controlling but it's nice to have it there so that when you do hand that camera off to somebody, you're going to get the best pictures possible one of the things that I find a little irritating about the intelligent automotive is that the flash pops up anytime it's dark and just because it's dark doesn't necessarily mean flashes appropriate, you may be sitting in the balcony of the of the concert hall and that's not a good time for using flash, and so there is a flash off mode that has all the same features as thie intelligent auto it's, just that the flash will not fire, so it very handy to have that right there next to it, cannon has a creative auto mode in this mode. The camera is still in an automatic mode, controlling shutter speeds and apertures, but it's giving you a little bit of room to play around as faras faster shutter speeds, more or less depth of field. It's a little bit limited for anyone who really wants to get in it manually control things, but it's kind of a learning mode. I kind of consider it training wheels for somebody who wants to start getting more creative with the camera, and then there are the scene, moz nowthe scene modes are going to be accessed by going into the queue menu and let me see, maybe I'll do a little live demo here on camera with that, so first off, let me put the camera in the sea a mode. Make sure we're all turned on here and then I'll hit the cuba and and if you can see on the back of the camera let's see if I got this right don't want to go to the scene mode here and hit the cue button and we can see hopefully we have different modes close up action nighttime night portrait handheld night scene hdr backlit control so if you have something that's heavily backlit ah portrait mode a landscape mode close up mode and I think we're back around to the beginning again so there's a whole host of different modes and these air kind of nice for learning the camera and putting it into a little bit more specific mode. I also think they're fairly useful for a new photographer as a cheater mode. What you could do is you can put it in the sports mode you can take a look at how they I have set up the camera for sports and go ok, I see what they're doing and then you could take that over into the manual mode and take it a little bit further more extreme maybe faster shutter speeds or some slightly different changes on the camera so there's all those predefined seen boats now let's get into more manual modes where you have more specific control of what's going on the program mode here's where the camera is going to set shutter speeds and apertures but nothing else, and so if you want to change the meter in, if you want to change the motor drive or things to do with the focusing, you could do that in here. It's very similar in some ways to the intelligent auto mode without what I'd like to call the child safety locks on the camera. And so if I wanted to grab a quick photo, someone says, hey, john, take a quick photo here. I would throw the camera into the program mode and just real off a quick shot because I know the camera's going to take care of those basic shutter speeds and apertures when it is in the program mode, you can go up to the main dial and push that back and forth, and that is called program shift what's happening here is the camera is still controlling shutter speeds and apertures, but you're giving it some direction as to more depth of field, less step, the field, faster shutter speeds or slower shutter speeds and so it's a good kind of mix of auto and manual on the camera on the back dial. If you turn that it's going to change exposure compensation and what this is going to do is it's either going to lighten the photograph up? Or it's going to darken it. So if you say you know this picture would be better if it was a little bit brighter or a little bit darker, you could make that adjustment very easily with that back wheel and you'll notice this feature when you look in the viewfinder, you're going tohave a display that's going to show you going from left to right it's going to show you your shutter speed, you're aperture your light meter and that will tell you whether you're over exposed on the plus sign or under exposed on the minus side the so you have set and the images left and that is in a burst mode. How many images can you take right away? Not the total number of images that remain to be taken on that card? The time value mode allows you to adjust shutter speeds and let the camera adjust in aperture not my favorite mode because there are relatively few apertures that the camera could choose and there are a lot of shutter speeds but can be very helpful in particular situations where you need an exact shutter speed aperture value is one of my favorite travel notes when I'm in travel photography mode and I'm walking down the street of a city I've never been in and I don't know what my next picture is going to be my cameras probably in the aperture value mode because I can set an aperture that's just kind of a generally good aperture for a lot of different things and if I need to change it it's a very quick change by just turning the top dial on the camera it's a very quick and easy moto work with gives you great director control over where things are on being able to just change it so quickly it's nice but when I get into serious photography I am in the manual mode and manual mode is very easy to work on this camera. The top dial controls the shutter speeds back dial controls the aperture I'm looking in the viewfinder at my light meter and trying to get that set appropriate to the scene I'm working with its very quick it's very simple and very easy to work with now bold is an extension of the manual mode manual mode allows you to go down to thirty seconds in time if you want to go longer than that you can put it in the bulb mode and you can extend that time out as long as your cable release wants to his essentially you could leave it open for an hour and finally the c mode is for custom this is where you get to customize the camera let's say that you have something very particular that you like to do with the camera from time to time and it requires about ten different menu changes on the camera and it gets very tiring making those ten different changes every time you want to go in and do that one type of photography well you can set the camera exactly the way you want it to work and then program that in to the custom mode so that when you switch it into the custom mode all those features are automatically set for you by just turning it into the scene wrote and so very handy for anyone who has something that has a lot of particulars about the way it needs to be set up next up I'd like to talk about the focusing system and the camera camera has a very good nineteen point autofocus system I had mentioned earlier covers a pretty wide range across the screen to activate it there is a button on the back right hand corner of the camera the kind of the right shoulder of the camera that will activate the a f point selection out right next to the shutter release on the top of the camera is thie f area mode button and by pressing this button you'll be able to cycle through the three different modes the camera has for focusing you can select your manual point by a number of ways either turning the front dialogue attorney in the back dial or using the little touch pad on the back of the camera so let's talk about the three major modes that you can have for choosing different areas of focus single point is obviously one point within those nineteen points, you can select any one of the nineteen that you want, and it is what I prefer for what I call thoughtful photography, where you're really careful about what you're pointing your camera at and focusing next up is the zone auto focus, and this is where the camera chooses either nine or four points, depending on where that group is selected, because you can move the group up, down left and right. And this is my favorite mode when I'm photographing action, and so if you're going to be photographing footballer basketball or somebody running, this is a mode that kind of it's going to hit their chest kind of big, but not be so biggest to pick up, say, referees and other players moving around so you can keep it targeted on an individual athlete a little bit more easily. And then finally, there is the nineteen point a f, which basically looks it all nineteen points and chooses whatever is closest to the camera. It covers a little too wide a frame for many of the action that I that I like to shoot but is good for very simple and basic photography for somebody who's not really familiar with the focusing system, this might be an easy place just to ensure that you're going to get good, sharp pictures to start with. And so these three different modes should cover most things that most people are going to shoot with the camera. You know, I want to get a little technical on you and talk about the focusing points that are used on this camera. All nineteen of them are what are known as f five six cross type f points. The five point six means that they're good on all lenses that are five, six or faster, and as of today, all of cannons, lenses, there's, over fifty of them are all f five, six or faster, so all focusing points can be used on all lenses. Cross type means they're sensitive to both vertical and horizontal lines. In addition to that, the center one is what's, known as an f two eight high precision vertical, a half point sensor, and what this means is if you have one of cannons faster, more professional lenses that goes down to two point eight, the center point has an extra layer of sensitivity, making sure that it is getting the focus. Exactly perfect, because there's really very little leeway that you have with the two point eight lens and that's exactly when you need that extra sensitivity. Next up, I want to talk a little bit about the live view system and the movie mode on it camera has a very convenient little color switch on the back of the camera that you conflict back and forth between the movie mode or the live mode, depending on what you want to do. If it's over in the live mode, all you need to do is press on the button, and then that will activate the live view system. Be aware that the info button is something that you compress almost any time on this camera form or or less information. So if you want to see what your shutter speeds and apertures are, get that button, if you don't want that clutter over the screen, you can hit it a couple of times, and that will take all that information away. The cue button stands for quick menu, and this is where they have put a shortcut to a lot of nice and useful features on the camera. So in the live you mode, by pressing this button, you can see all these different aspects that you can control in there. But the one that I want to talk about is the auto focus system. Because I've mentioned this duel seamus sensor and I want to explain a little bit more about why that's important and why it's a big benefit on this camera most sl ours we also lars I should say have this unique, partially silvered mirror that allows light into a secondary mirrors and down to the phase detection auto focus censor this is how an slr works it's one of the reasons why sl ours are known as the fastest focusing cameras out on the market they have a very, very good system that's been developed over about the last thirty years, but when you put the camera into a live view or movie mode on sl ours, the mere needs to get up and out of the ways that like income stew back to the image sensor. And the problem up to date before this camera was that cameras were very slow because they were using the system called contact contrast detection and they basically look at the image on the sensor try to determine if it's sharp or not and adjust the focus. But now in this camera we have a whole different system going on the pixels in the camera, as I mentioned before our duel dual pixels and so this is where we get that name, the dual see moss sensor and what happens is these pixels are kind of separated into two halves and the light is analyzed from each half, and it could determine whether the camera is front focused or back focused and having this information is critical because now it knows exactly which direction to turn the lands in order to get sharper focus. Now, one of the great things about this particular system is that these pixels are covering about eighty percent of the entire frame. If you want to focus on something that's way off to the side, you're probably going to be able to do it. This covers a much larger area than the built in normal focusing mode when you're in the standard focusing system. And so this is a little bit on how this works and why it's unique, and there is no other manufacturer that is doing this, and currently there is only one other camera within the cannon lineup that will do this, and this is the least expensive of that. So if you're looking for a great video camera with sl arc in an slr style, this is the least expensive camera that'll do it now within the auto focusing system. Beyond that, there is four different ways that you can choose to focus. There is a face tracking system that could detect faces and focused directly on the face. We have two flexi zone areas, and flexi zone simply means you have flexibility in where the zone is. You could move it to the laughter, to the right, up and down, and all around and there's two different size boxes there's, a small box and then there's a big box essentially there's, also a quick mode where the cameras will return to the standard slr, focusing sister him and focus very quickly with these. My favorite is either the flexi zone, multi or single, depending on the size of my subject, let's. Talk for just a moment about the lenses that are available for the cannon seventy with the seventy d. You can use any of the canon lenses, but you will have the choice between e f lenses and e f s lenses. Thie s lenses were specifically designed for the smaller sensor in this particular camera, but you can use both cameras. The e f lenses have a red dot the s have a white square to them and there's a little difference in how they operate, so I'd like to do that with a little visual example. All right, so we have our full frame sensor on the left, and when light comes through that lands, it produces a very large image circle of which the camera is recording a rectangle in the middle. With the f s lenses it works the same way but they're producing a smaller image circle and collecting a smaller square within that particular circle. The question a lot of people have is what happens if I switch lenses on the various different cameras? Well if you take a t f let f s lens and you put it on a full frame camera, you're going to get some very heavy vignette e if you could actually mounted on there the problem is is that you can't even take those lenses it's probably for the best you cannot take any f s lands and mounted on a full frame camera but you can use any f lens on this camera any cannon lands will work on this camera it'll produce a larger than necessary image circle and you'll be recording just the middle portion of it now canon uses a lot of letters and special designations on their lenses and let me kind of decode some of this information for you so the e f lenses is what they introduced back in nineteen eighty seven it's the elektronik focus the f s is especially designed lenses for their crop frame sensors like this camera and he reminded these will not work on their full frame cameras the l lenses you've probably seen professional shooting with these these air the lenses with the red ring on them and they're basically cannons professional line of lands very well built very sure many of their lenses have image stabilization, a nice feature to have something that I would leave turned on most all the time when I'm shooting hand held many of their lenses air now in their second generation of auto focus models, and so you'll see a roman numeral number two beside it. The ultrasonic motor is just a very quiet, fast focusing motor, most of their lenses air of that technology these days, but they didn't have some new lenses out that are called s t e m lenses, and these have stepper motors and these air designed for video use and these air very affordable lenses, they're typically kind of on the lower end of the price range and what's different about them is that, and this is something that a lot of photographers have been coming to realize over the last few years is that the needs for still photography and video can be very, very different in still photography. Photographers want a lens that focuses from point a to point b as fast as possible with video how smoothly they focus is now an issue, and these stepper motor lenses focus a little bit more smoothly. If you are shooting video well in my class, I like to talk about how I would actually set the camera and use it in a variety of situations. And so what I want to do is I want to narrow all these features down to ten of the most important controls on the camera and talk about how I would set the camera up for doing something like landscape photography and so in this case what whatever we want to d'oh is have lots of depth of field we're probably going to be shooting from a tripod, and other than that, we just want to take a sharper picture as possible, so let's, take a look at what we need to do to make this happen. I like using manual exposure. There should be plenty of time to do this in a landscape type photograph, you'll be able to consciously set shutter speeds apertures esos exactly where you want them. The first thing that I'm gonna want to do is have eyes so one hundred set because that's where the camera's sensitivity and the information coming off the sensor is that it's a very, very best. Next up, I'm probably going to want to have a fair bit of depth of field might be f eight eleven, sixteen, twenty two somewhere in there but f sixteen's a very common setting for me when doing landscape photography the shutter speed but will be wherever it needs to be according to the light levels and it often ends up being in a fairly slow shutter speed expose your compensation is not used because we don't use that in manual mode metering system the evaluative metering system is a very good general all purpose metering system that I use on this on the cannon system almost exclusively white balance I usually leave it in auto partly because it does a really good job and second because I shoot raw and I can adjust it later if necessary but if it doesn't need to be changed feel free to make that change to daylight cloudy or shade or something like that focusing I would leave it in one shot this is where the camera focuses on a subject and then stops and this is going to work out quite well for landscapes because the landscapes are not moving around the focus area I would choose a single point figure out where you want to focus you can adjust it with the focusing points or you could use the focus lock technique where you focus on a subject and leave your finger halfway down on the shutter release while you recompose the camera and then finally the drive mode there's actually a couple of options I would use single if I had the attached cable release if I didn't have the attach cable release would use thie to second self timer that way I could trigger the camera the vibrations would settle out and there would be no camera movement the time that the shutter is actually opening and as a bonus, people like to get an extra credit. You might want to go in and activate the cameras near lock up system. This is where the mirror will lock up, and it will prevent any vibration when you're actually shooting pictures. And this might happen, especially at those slow shutter speeds around one eighth of a second. So that's how I would set up the camera for doing a landscape photograph next up, let's do a little action photography. So here, there's going to be a number of changes that we need to make. We need to have faster shutter speeds to stop the action. We're going to need to change the focusing system so that we can track these moving subjects. So let's, take a look at how I would set it up for action. Photography first off. Yes, I do like the manual exposure mode this way. I can be very specific about what shutter speed I need to choose. And that's, probably the most important setting, is choosing a good, fast shutter speed. It depends a little bit on the action for fast human action. I do like one five hundredth of a second. The next important setting is probably going to be a wide open aperture. Allowing in a lot of light so that you can have that fast shutter speed and possibly also to blur the background because you want to keep the eyes on the subject would be, which would be sharpened focus. And this is where having an f two point eight lands really pays off. I know they cost more money, but when it comes to shooting sports, it's very, very helpful and then for the ice, so I would prefer to be at ice so one hundred, but the reality is with faster shutter speeds and that fast action, we're going to need a little bit higher on higher rating on the isil I'm often at four hundred outside and then if I have to go inside, it often gets bumped up to six hundred thirty, two hundred or even sixty, four hundred. In some cases I'm going to keep it on evaluative metering. I'm going to keep it on auto white balance unless it needs to be changed. The focusing is probably the first change that I actually make when I go out to shoot sports is I want the camera in the a I serve a mode and this means the camera's going to continually track subjects as they move closer and further away from you very critical to have that setting made in the action photography world. Next up, the focusing area will depend a little bit on what you're shooting, but I think in most cases you would probably be best off starting with the zone mode and seen if that works for you. This is the group of nine boxes in the middle, you could move it around to the various boxes, top left and right and bottom. But that nine point zone, I think, works really well for action photography and, of course, on the drive, having it in the continuous high, getting seven frames a second is going to help you capture some of those hard to see moments that would be hard to predict when they're exactly going to be at their very best. And so I would shoot then, in short bursts of probably three to six shots as action reached various different pinnacles. So that's, how I would set up for action and that's basically a little cut of my class that I teach here a creative live live called the fast start in the cannon seventy d if you like that there's like four and a half hours mohr of that if you wanted, get with that at creative life now. Before we do questions, I have just a few menu items that I think well, I don't say they're buried in the menu system but they're kind of hidden and not everyone gets to the menu system on the camera and some things that you might want to know about so if you own the camera you can get your camera out and press the menu button and navigate to shooting menu number two in there there is something called chromatic aberration and this is a little visual artifact that happens when you shoot something that has heavily backlit and as the light kind of comes around the dark edges it occasionally causes a little bit of ah purple haze to it well, the camera can fix that in camera and so you can turn that on and able that particular feature now if you do that it's going to fix it on the jay pegs it does not fix it if you work in raw because whenever you shoot raw camera always gives you the original information from the sensor and any other menu setting that seems to control image quality it's not going to impact raw but it will impact the j pegs and I encourage people with this camera to shoot rock because we're going to get the best image quality possible out of the camera but I also realize not everyone has their software set up for it at this time or they're just getting started and they just want the basic j pegs out of the camera and I know people will be shooting with j peg on this camera, so you might as well get that set right. Another setting in shooting menu number two is going to flash control and going to the built in flash settings and getting the exposure compensation exposure compensation set for the built in flash to minus two thirds of a stop. What this does is it powers down the flash on the camera just a little bit, and if you're shooting people pictures, this is going to take that harsh flash look a little bit off the image. And so I highly recommend that if you do a lot of people photography, adding on a little bit of that fill flash let's, do a couple of more shooting menu number four long exposure noise reduction. Now this could be turned on or turn off on what this refers to is when you shoot an exposure that is longer than I think one second on the camera, the camera camera has an automatic built in noise reduction that throws onto the image now for somebody just beginning who doesn't know how to do this on their own, that might be kind of nice to turn on, but for those who are a little bit more experienced and they have the right software they're probably going to be better off doing this on their own I turn it off on my camera because I'm I'm used to adjusting for that noise later on, but when I'm out at nighttime shooting a thirty second exposure, the downside of leaving this turned on is that after the thirty second exposure, the camera works for another thirty seconds doing this processing on that image, which means I can't shoot during that thirty seven it's and it seems like every time I'm out shooting at night that thirty seconds it's just a lot of dead time I'm cold, I'm hungry, I want to get inside, I want to be taking pictures and so if you're going to be shooting raw pictures and you're going to justin later, I would turn off the noise reduction system there let's see what else we got in here? Um in set up menu number one set up menu number one there's something called auto rotate and what you want to turn this on is on computer you don't want to have it on computer in on camera, and what that does is when you are shooting a vertical picture, I want to see it on the full frame right here as largest possible because that's, the way you're going to judge images better is if they're large, what the camera wants to do is that when you rotate the camera it'll come up with a very small vertical image here if you lose leave that turned on camera, I want to have it on computer so that it rotates it on the computer but not on the camera. If I shot a vertical, I want to see it vertically here and I want to see it as large as possible that size is important and so that's a nice little neat feature to turn and it will flip it when you downloaded to your computer so all your verticals you don't have to go in and rotate them. Let me see another little thing in custom function number two so there's a group of custom functions that you can get in there number five so that's custom function group to number five auto focus assist beam firing this camera will send out a helpful beam to help focus under low light conditions, which sounds kind of cool but it's actually kind of disruptive in dark environments, especially if you're going to be photographing, say, a speaker in front of an audience or somebody on stage. You want to turn those sorts of lights off so that your camera is more discreet so custom function number two, number five on their emphasised team I would disable that and let's go for one more custom function group number three, group three, number one dialled direction during tv and a v what I recommend is setting this to setting number one, which is reverse and the reason I want to do that is because when you look at the light meter in the camera and you turn the dials, it seems like the indicator wants to go this direction but you have to go this direction with the dial and so that you're turning the dials exactly in the opposite direction that seem logical so in that particular case trust me set that to reverse that's custom function group three, number one dial direction and set it to number one reverse and anyone setting manual shutter speeds and apertures I think will thank me for that because it's just going to be a whole lot easier to d'oh so that's ah whole munch on your cannon seventy eight some advanced tips and beginner tips hopefully it's something a little bit for everybody there often john gringo is accretive live gear guru, so he has done so many of these fast art classes. If you guys have a camera that isn't possibly a seventy, check them out because they're all on sale right now. Did you know your classes are on sale right now? Well, they throw him on sale every time I teach a class and I'm always teaching the class so they're almost always on sale that works out for you people so seriously he is our you are here you're so check him out on creative live all the classes he's talked all right, john, we have a few questions sure and there some of them are kind of review so bear with me here so jane ames said if you're going to do indoor shooting without flash for shooting conferences which for me personally are the worst places to shoot is so challenging how does this camera perform in low lighting with s o like what does I know? You already covered that, but when you talk about well, because it gets that kind of grain, the worst is the higher up you go in the isis, the more noise you get yeah, and everyone has their own standards is like I'm not going to go beyond this well, it also depends on where the photos going to be it I mean, if it's going to be in the school newsletter point and it's going to be an inch high in an inch wide used twenty five thousand six hundred it's kind of behind nice eso it depends on your final purposes I can I can see in a situation like that for a simple use going up to sixty four hundred if it's going to be you know, on the cover of a magazine, then you're going to probably be limiting yourself to maybe sixteen hundred or thirty, two hundred and that's, where having a faster lens that allows you to work under low light will be a major benefit. These cameras coming out with these highest iose they're just getting higher and higher absolutely insane. All right, so a question about the wireless flash this is from joe fun. I have an older cannon flash I believe it is the five eighty e x will the wireless function work with this camera? Do you know? Yes, it will with his five haiti so not a problem there. Okay? And another one said, should I fix things in the camorra or fix things in cairo? Oh, in love well, it depends on who you are and what you're doing, you're always going to be able to do a better job if you have a larger screen that's color corrected and you have all the right tools to work on it. So the question is is, do you have the time and do you have those things with you? And in some cases, you know, some people they don't have it, they're in a rush they need to. I need to send something up right now because I'm I'm in a time crunch, and so you're better off quality wise, doing something afterwards and so when I'm out shooting, I'm just simply trying to gather the highest quality best quality information possible, and I'm going to deal with it later. But I know there are people with other needs, you know, photojournalists who need to get something up right now. Generally, they're not fixing things too much on there are on so there's, a little bit of ah, trade off there and what you're going to do. But in general, I prefer to shoot in raw, and I'm going to take it into my computer, and I'm going to make a few small adjustments, and I'm done. John gringo, I love learning from you. You are my guy, live in structure. Thank you, always have been, always will.

Ratings and Reviews

xkldnamhai com
 

That was a great presentation! I particularly liked the funny examples you used

Kyosa Canuck
 

Just a tip, John. What some call "vertical" is, normally, called portrait mode. At least, when I was younger it was.

Saw Mu Ka Hbaw Aye
 

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