Lessons
Class Introduction
09:14 2Photo Basics
04:00 3Basic Camera Controls
04:36 4Mode Dial
24:19 5Top Of Camera
21:42 6Viewfinder Display
09:18 7Live View Menu
08:16 8Movie Mode Menu
03:03Back of Camera Buttons
04:37 10Quick Menu
22:00 11Playback Menu
08:58 12Left & Right Sides Of Camera
04:39 13Bottom & Front Of Camera
06:28 14Lens Options
08:28 15Menu Functions Overview
22:13 16Picture Style Menu
05:23 17Multiple Exposure & HDR Menu
04:53 18Image Quality Menus
06:47 19Live View Shooting Menu
02:23 20Movie Shooting Menu
15:30 21Playback Menu
06:53 22Set Up Menu
15:07 23Viewfinder Display Menu
02:35 24GPS Settings Menu
04:36 25Touch Control Menu
03:38 26Custom Shooting Mode
05:33 27Custom Menu
26:28 28My Menu
04:41 29Camera Operation
09:31Lesson Info
Photo Basics
All right, Photo Basics, so this for anyone who just wants some basics on how Canon D-SLRs work. A lot of you already know this stuff, feel free to jump forward to the camera control section, but if you just a little bit of review section, we're just going to spend five minutes here. All right, this is a D-SLR, Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. Single lens is pretty obvious; we've got one high-quality lens on the camera. Inside the lens is an aperture unit that can open and close so that you can adjust the amount of light coming in the camera, so f/1.4 lets in a lot of light, f/22 lets in very little light, so one reason to have this is just simply to control the amount of light coming in the camera. The other reason is that it controls the depth of field, or how much is in focus, so 1.4 will give us very shallow depth of field, leaving the background and foreground potentially out of focus. As we stop the aperture down, we get a little bit more depth of field, and every aperture that...
we stop down to that higher number, we're getting more and more depth of field until we max out, on this theoretical lens at f/22, that'll vary from lens to lens, so that we can get great depth of field here, so this is one of the great controls that we have in photography over deciding what type of photograph we want to take. Next up, light continues through the lens into the camera where we get to the mirror, that's the reflex portion of single lens reflex, bounces up to a focusing screen and out the viewfinder so that you can see what's going on. When it's time to shoot a photo, you press down on the shutter release and that mirror needs to get up and out of the way so that light can get back to the image sensor, but before it gets to the image sensor, it needs to get past the shutter unit, and there is a first curtain and a second curtain. First curtain is blocking the image sensor, and it will slide away with its four doors, you'll be able to see it here sliding away, that is your exposure, and then the second curtain will come in and close it off, and that way each pixel is exposed for exactly the same amount of time. Now the shutter speeds in the shutter allow us to control how much light gets into the sensor, and we're also going to be using it for stopping motion as we'll see later on in the class, and so we'll be using the aperture and the shutter speed for controlling the amount of light coming in the camera. One of the most important aspects on a digital camera is the sensor and specifically the size of the sensor, and there's a lot of different size sensors available in the different cameras available today. The 6D Mark II uses the largest of the common sensors out there; yes, there are some that are bigger, but of the common ones it's the largest size, and this is based on 35-millimeter film, which is a very popular standard for many, many years, and it uses the same size sensor so you could use lenses back from the film era of Canon cameras. This is said to have a crop factor of 1. because it is the same as 35-millimeter film, and there are a variety of other cameras that have smaller size sensors. Many of the Canon cameras have a 1.6 crop factor on them, those are a lot of the lesser expensive cameras, and so this camera is using the full-frame sensor. If you are interested more about different aspects of photography, you may want to take a look at my class, "The Fundamentals of Photography." This is a very in-depth class that explores all different aspects of photography, and it's a good base for anyone who's going and wanting to learn more about photography and going in many different directions on it, so that's a good accompanying class that does not have duplicate information that is in this class, so you may want to check that one out if you just want a good general photography class that goes in depth on a lot of topics.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Warren Gedye
John, this is my second class of yours I'm taking on Creative Live. You are a very unique and articulate instructor. Your knowledge, understanding and experience in all matters photography is astounding! You have certainly fine tuned the knack in imparting your deep knowledge in such a palatable way! Your slides are magnificent, simple and concise and caters directly to your audience. I can only imagine the hours upon hours of time spent making these valuable slides. I look forward to many more of your courses!
a Creativelive Student
Always enjoy all of John's classes, but especially this one since I've decided to upgrade from my previous 6D. Awesome camera and this one is so much quieter than the older one. Thank you for explaining things in terms and ways that are easy to understand!
Tim Rogers
Thanks for a very useful course John. Not to get out and enjoy the new toy. Wish I had done the similar course for my previous camera (60D); will be recommending it to the person I am giving the camera to.
Student Work
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