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Display System

Lesson 9 from: Canon 5D Mark II Fast Start

John Greengo

Display System

Lesson 9 from: Canon 5D Mark II Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

9. Display System

Lesson Info

Display System

All right, so we're going to going through the menu system is the main part, but we're going to talk kind of first about the display system on the camera we're looking at the view finder and the lcd screen on the back of the camera so let's, go ahead and get started with the viewfinder. What do we see in the viewfinder when we hold the camera up to our eye to look at it? So the first off the frame lines that you were looking at when you are looking in the camera are ninety eight percent accurate, so they're not hundred percent, which means you actually get a little bit mohr outside the edges of the frame line in some of the newer cameras or in some of the professional cameras it's one hundred percent some of the lower in cameras it's only ninety four, ninety five percent so it's pretty good just be aware that you're gonna get a little bit more and then we have the focusing points. We have the nine different focusing points where you can select one or all of those focusing points at any...

one time and here's where we get into the invisible focusing points your camera has six invisible focusing points and they're very closely surrounding the centre focusing point and these invisible focusing points come into play when you have all the focusing points activated and you have your camera in a I servo, which is for moving subjects. So if you're focusing tracking on a subject and it moves from the middle brackett to one of the outer brackets, it can kind of pass through one of these six ones so your camera can keep tracking it. And so ah lot of people have have given very poor reviews of the five d mark two on the focusing system because it does have an older focusing system on it, and there are many newer cameras and have more advanced systems, but it is actually better than most people give it credit for. In my opinion, it will do a pretty good job of follow, focusing subjects movie and so it's going to use thes invisible focusing points. When you have two things number one, you have to have all the points selected and number two it has to be in a servo, which is the continuous focusing now the points in this little red box that you can see here towards the middle. These are f two point eight focus points, which means that if you have a lens that goes down to f two point eight, these points which is the centre point invisible top and the invisible bottom one, if we had to give them names are kind of extra sensitive with two point eight lenses which is one of the reasons I recommend ah lot of those l lenses that we talked about that had apertures of two point eight the cameras focusing system will work even better. Now, some of the some of the points are on ly sensitive to vertical lines. Some are on ly sensitive time horizontal. The one in the center is sensitive to both horizontal and vertical lines. It's what we call a cross type sensor so if you had to choose one point you choose the centre one and so I rarely use an individual outside bracket for focusing, but it can be helpful in some situations depends on the situation and how you like to shoot. I think using the back button focus to recompose will allow you to use the center one very easily so there's a lot of different options on how you set this up and so that's where the invisible points are and how they'll be used. Next up we have little circle in the middle of the screen and that is thies spot metering area. And so if you want to use the spot meter, which is a very accurate meter that's measuring virtually all of its light within that little circle, you can use that now there is another meeting pattern called partial, but that one is not indicated on the focusing screen in any way and then down at the bottom, we have our led information line now, it's never gonna look exactly like this because this is has everything turned on, and what I want to do is just kind of go through this from left to right and talk about what you might see in the viewfinder generally it's either really important information or its warnings about something that has turned on or turned off in your camp, so we'll have things like the battery level on it. The auto exposure lock. We talked about that button with the thumb button on the back of the camera when you've locked the meter in that comes on when you're using flash, the flash is ready to fire. You might see a lightning bolt symbol in there if you have one of the higher and cannon flashes and you're using high speed sync on the flash, which allows you to shoot at five hundred thousand two thousandth of a second, you would have a little h by the lightning bolt. We have flash exposure lock, which is a way for you to do a test exposure toe lock the exposure of the flash and that's something that we're not going to get into too much it's kind of a different class using the speed lights. We have our flash exposure compensation, we talked about dialing that down toe a minus one, which is where I leave my camera most of the time, and so this is on all the time in my camera, and then we have the four big numbers for our shutter speeds, so you'll see a shutter speed in there. And if you're new to photography, be aware that this is a fraction of a second, so if you see two fifty it's one over two fifty, if it's a full second, they'll be a couple little hash marks next to it that indicates it's a full second or in full seconds. We have our aperture number, and then we have our exposure level, which is indicating if the exposure is going to be a little bit right in the middle or on the dark side. Pluses to the bright and minus is to the dark. The d plus is for a feature called highlight tone priority, and we're going to talk about this when we dive into the menu system. It's going to be something I don't recommend using our s o speed is next and then a white balance correction, which is something we can go in and make personalized adjustments to the white balance. We also have the ability to shoot black and white in this camera and that would be a big mistake if you accidentally left it in black and white when you didn't mean to because it's hard to go back and fix that and then what I do want you to do go ahead in this classroom, take a look through your cameras and look in the lower right hand corner and tell me, don't worry about the microphone I'll just kind of repeat this what sort of number do you see in the bottom? Right hand corner what? We got thirteen I got thirteen a third of the thirteen another thirteen wow, susan what do you at thirteen? Okay, I met seventy eight. What am I doing wrong? This has to do this is the maximum burst and probably this camera that I just took out of the box is set to j peg images and I'm going to go ahead check reflect and it is set to j peg images I'm gonna go ahead and set it to raw so that we all are at thirteen now. Okay, so thirteen images if you're shooting raw is how many pictures you can shoot right now and after thirteen pictures, the motor drive slows down and it's not because it's driving film it's just because it's how fast it can store images in the memory card and so if I was two and let's go ahead and do this just for kicks, fire off a whole bunch of shots, it's going to shoot two thirteen, it will probably actually get through fourteen or fifteen, and then the camera slows down. Now, it's trying to choke down this information and it can only go so far. Now, you'll notice on the back of the camera, this red light is on, which is indicating that it's still story in the data, and so it went off there, and so now I could go shoot thirteen pictures again and you'll see that light. Stay on until it's downloaded all the cards until it's downloaded all the pictures to the car in your camera is some built in memory and that's, where the images go first and that's how many pictures you have left and I strongly encourage you to shoot raw, but there are times when j peg might be a better option for shooting certain types of sporting events where you want to shoot a larder large syriza pictures very, very quickly and that's what you'll see what your maximum burst iss now in the bottom right hand corner is a little green dot, and that is your focus confirmation, and that comes on and just turns green when your cameras and focus so when you auto focus the way the cameras are set up by here and this one, because it's brand new out of the box, it gives you a little church there's a little red box in the focusing screens that turn on and then screen light turns on what's kind of nice is, if you want to manually focus, you can just manually turn the lens, and that will turn green when your lenses in focus. So it's just a manual focusing aid that also works all right, moving on, let's, talk a little bit about the lcd screen and the display that you're going to get in the back of the camera. So to get information through the back of the camera, you could hit the information button, which is going to give you basic sets of information about how the camera is set up and that's also where you're going to see the number of shots if you have more than a thousand on the memory card and you can get in and you can start making changes in here as well, let's see if they'll, you know, I really need to get my camera out here some ways because, uh this one is not set up, and so what you can do when you are in the screen, maybe you could just grab the shot over my shoulder here is that down in the lower left hand side there's a little cube button and it's indicating the little joystick, so if you hit the cue button, it'll activate the screen so you can go in and you can make changes within this screen. Now, most everything that you could do in this screen has a direct a button somewhere else on the camera or and or it has something in the menu system that you can change as well. For instance, we can go into white balance and we can change white balance, but the fact of the matter is, is that there's a white balance button right up here on the top of the camera that's a lot faster and easier to get to, but some people like the one stop shopping of the screen on the back. Now, the main reason that we're gonna be using the screen on the back is to go into the menu system to make changes in the camera. Besides looking at pictures we've just taken and so let's talk about going into the menu system when we're in the menu system, we're going to be using either the top dial, the main dial or the back one the thumb from nile, the quick control dial and the set button to make entry into things. And so actually here's thie the cube button is that little joystick. And besides being a joystick, it is also a button that you would press. And so if you press that button, you will see the quick control screen. Come on my camera out of that. So go ahead and try pressing that button and that turns on and off the quick control screen. And then you could just navigate around focussing points. You could even go in and change apertures and shutter speeds if you want to it's kind of a kind of a back handed way of getting in there too, to control things. So what this quick control screen has in it? Go ahead and go back to this. The keynote on this one is that it's gonna have your main feature settings on your camera. It's the quick menu it's not the full menu, it's, just the quick menu. So you're gonna have your shutter speed your apertures, you're shooting mode, basic controls like that in the top of it. And then as we get down to some of the other sections, it's going to show you exposure level, which is the same thing you see in the viewfinder, you're flash exposure compensation and a variety of the other settings that I said before there's. Other buttons on the camera that I use rather than going into the screen. But sometimes it's. Nice to see it. Just kind of as a shortcut toe where your camera is completely set. And so it is kind of the one stop shopping for all of your needs. But sometimes it's. Not the fastest way to get that one thing that you want image, quality, focus mode. And then the drive mowed down along the bottom.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Fast Start - Canon 5DMII

Ratings and Reviews

Mike Swartz
 

Having used an XTi I was familiar with the basic Canon layout, but when I bought my 5D MKii used from my wedding photographer who updated to the MKiii, I knew there would be a ton of features I'd never really understood. This video series is fantastic. I've learned so much about my camera, many tips on best practices when planning shots and I've seen an increase in the quality of all my photos as a whole vs. just taking a ton of pics to try and capture one or two that turn out nice. I'm excited to try out so many new things I learned from watching these videos. I'd recommend these videos be the required guide to anyone who owns a 5D MKii.

Mia Linguia
 

Amazing class, I walk away feeling like I've made this machine my own. Like getting a new car and adjusting all the seating and mirrors and radio stations to your comfort, then giving it a name because its officially yours. My camera now feels more comfortable to use and I can't wait to use it again with these new found tweaks. Thanks John, always a great class!

Nelson
 

Excellent instruction. The instructor is very knowledgeable and a very effective communicator. Great photo examples and "SLIDES for that". Creative Live and John should both be commended for providing in depth and pertinent information. The Canon 5D MkII is a great camera however without a body of knowledge to fully utilize it you might as well have a low end point and shoot. I would recommend this class to anyone who has a 5D MkII, no matter your skill level. Great job!

Student Work

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