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Lesson Info

Button Layout: Top Deck

So let's, get into the button layout of the camera, so what we're going to do now is we're just going to have the camera in hand and go around and talk about a little bit of everything on the camera. So first off we're going to talk about the main power switch on the camera they've moved the video feature on this, so now you have off on and video so honest for taking still pictures and the movie or the video mode is obviously for shooting movies and videos. However, when you do put it in that mode, you can still take still pictures because this is primarily a still taking machine, even though it can shoot video as well. And where is my power there's? My sometimes I get behind on my keynote or I get ahead of my keynote, so it seems kind of strange, but we're going to jump right in and talk about the movie mode a little bit because this is where the first main switch on the camera is, so this camera was designed to be used as a still camera and having it work is a movie camera has been a...

bit of a challenge in it, and the challenge has been in the focusing there's been two major problems telling lens where to focus and then having the lynns smoothly focus there while you're shooting video on this is the first of the canon cameras that can now continuously focus while it shooting video, and it can do it, but my honest opinion is it doesn't do it very well, and so if you do want to shoot video with this camera, it would be better if you could set up your shot so that you don't have to change focus during that video shot. So if you're going to shoot a tenor's ten second clip, think about where do you want the lens? And then set it there, the camera can focus it's just not as good as a camcorder for a variety of reasons that we're not going to get into explaining some technical reasons, but I just wanted to say right now that you can't have three different modes for focusing when you're in the video, we have faced tracking, which looks for faces if it sees multiple faces. It's going to choose the face that's closest to you. All right? Because that's the default system, we have two new focusing systems, we have flexi zone multi and flexi zone single, and what this has to do multi is a basically think of it as a big bracket, you couldn't have kind of a medium sized bracket, but it's looking at many different areas in there to focus on. We also have single, which is a smaller bracket that it's more versatile and where you put it in what you can focus on and so there's some slightly different systems, depending on how you want to focus shooting video, we're going to get into this later, but in the menu system is how you get in and make these changes, so you don't have to worry about making the changes right now. I'm just kind of want to prep you that these are some of the options that you're going to have now. One of the new things that they have in this camera is the ability to continuously focus, as I said before, it's not really good, but it can do it, and you can turn continuous focusing on or off when we get there. You might want to turn it off depending on how much you're going to shoot video just because it's a little bit slow, but it can't do it, and we will get into it a little bit later. Some other little notes. If you plan to shoot movies with this, there is a four gigabyte maximum file side. If you shoot a lot of video and you hit the four gigabyte limit, don't worry it automatically starts a new file exactly with the next frame. So you can just take those two files and combine them in a video program and you'll have a seamless video, but it just has to break it up for a little technical not a problem but just a limitation within the cameras and the way that they work. We also do have a thirty minute limit technically it's twenty nine minutes fifty nine seconds it's not that they don't know how to make it go longer than that it's that there's certain tax and tariffs on cameras that go to thirty minutes, they become camcorders and then they're subject to more taxes, which means the cost of the camera would be more and so if you want to record the entire soccer game that goes on for two hours, you're going to have it broken down into thirty minute segments the information button on the back of the camera, which we will talk a little bit more about later, it is a good way to kind of click in cycle through different groups of information. Sometimes when I'm shooting video, all I want to see is this screen that I'm looking at, no other technical information cause I want a good view of composition other times I'm concerned about shutter speed in aperture and I so and I want to see some of that additional information in there so you can cycle through that with the information button cannon has introduced some new letters to us s t and m, which stand for stepper motors in these air is a designation of a type of motor in a couple of new lenses that cannon has introduced. That is especially good for quiet, focusing while shooting movies. Now they only have two lenses out at the time of this recording of this, and they do help out a little bit if you plan to shoot a lot of video with this now, as I said before, this is primarily a still camera. If you do have it in the movie mode, you can go ahead and press down on the shutter release at any time and take a picture, which is one of the nice things because you want to get that still shot it's always available, you don't have to flip it out of the video mode to do that. All right, let's, jump back to the top of the camera. Next up we have the mod dial, which is the big dial with all the little icons on it on the top of the camera. So this is controlling the shutter speed, the aperture, the whole exposure system on the camera and we need to talk a little bit more carefully about this because there's a lot of stuff going on on the style, all right to start with the little a plus mode what this is is thie seen intelligent note before it used to be in the automotive, but now the camera can recognize different types of scenes, and it starts adjusting the shutter speed, the aperture and other camera settings to what it thinks is going on. This is a mode if you have watched this entire class you should never use again, okay, the on ly reason that you should use this mode is when you're going to hand the camera off to your friend who doesn't know how to work your camera and you want them a to take a decent basic picture, and you don't want them to mess up all your settings, ok? One of the things that's going on in the a plus mode is that there are what I call child safety locks on a lot of the features in the menus of the camera. This means that you can't get in and change the so for instance, or you can't change the motor driver, the white balance, and you're probably not watching this class because you wanted to have the camera do everything for you. And so I just kind of warn you, if you come up to me, you know, you see me traveling around shooting pictures like, hey, john, I took your teeth for I class loved it fantastic class. Chances are I'm gonna look down at your camera and look at where you're dial's turned just because I'm curious is how do you have your camera set and I don't want to see it said on the a plus melt hopefully you're going I want to get into the camera and do more than it has to offer all right one of the most annoying things about the a plus mode is that the flash pops up whenever it thinks it needs a flash so if I was to put it in the a plus mode right now and take a picture well what of that we have enough light in here because I have all the lights in here but normally it would pop up in most situations if you went into a museum for instance and so if you want the exact same thing is the scene intelligent mode without the flash you can turn it to the flash mob but everything else all the child safety locks are still on the camera there is a creative auto mode which is cannons creative way of trying to teach you about how to use the camera you can use the q button on the back of the camera to bring up a little menu which kind of guides you to faster shutter speed slower shutter speeds more depth of field less depth of field it's not the most intuitive learning system in the world but if you I couldn't watch the rest of this class and you want to play around a little bit in a kind of a safe play area you could play in in that area there's more information in the instruction manual we're going toe learn how to go way beyond it in this class below that we have a bunch of icons portrait landscape close up sports and a couple of new ones handheld night in hdr backlight these air all modified versions of the scene until it they're selecting shutter speeds, apertures, motor drive metering systems and so forth and they're slightly tailored mohr towards those situations they're slightly better than these scene intelligent mode, but they still have a lot of the child safety locks on him so it's not something I can recommend to an aspiring photographer you might say there's just too many restrictions my general problem is the child safety locks getting into a just something and they don't tend to go far enough in in what they do. For instance, the landscape mode generally designates to have more depth of field. The problem is is that they don't give me as much depth of field as you possibly can get, so if you if you know what you're doing, you can do much better the camera can there is nothing the cameras doing automatically that you can't manually out do so long as you have the knowledge to do it so let's get into those areas where we can play around with the camera p stands for program this is where the camera sets the shutter speed in the aperture for you very much like the scene intelligent mode the main difference here is that the flash won't pop up and you don't have the child safety locks so now you can get in and start controlling the features of your camera so every once in a while I just need to take a quick picture with my camera and I really don't care about the shutter speed er aperture I know that seems strange but every once in a while I just throw it into the p mode and I know it's going to be a quick safe shot and so that's what I would recommend for most of the viewers out there if you just want a quick shot, throw it into the female just bang off your shot and you're probably going to get something that's pretty close to being right now one of the things that you can do is the main dial on the top of the camera so right on the top the camera right behind the shed release is a dial on the camera you can go into this style and do what's called program shift so you can adjust shutter speeds and aperture simultaneously the camera's still figuring out the exposure to get a faster shutter speed or for salaried up the field you could go for a slower shutter speed and more depth of field depending on what you wanted and this makes a pretty nice what I would call disneyland walk around vote you don't know what your next picture is going to be you wantto a sports picture just point the camera a couple clicks in one direction you want more depth of field it's a few clicks in the other direction and so this is a quick, easy way to just have your camera in one mode with just a few clicks away from any type of picture that you might want to take and so not a bad mode for just very simple use next up we have the time value mode and so this is where you get to choose the shutter speed so now by turning the main dial on the camera you are adjusting the shutter speed the camera will figure out the aperture and so I'm going to do a little audience participation here and so students in class I want you to put your cameras on the time value mode all right? And if you look in the viewfinder or you could look at the back of the screen I'd like you to dial down let's go real safe here let's do one thirtieth of a second so you going to turn the main dial two u c one thirtieth of a second and I want to go ahead take a picture of me or anything else that's in here and take a look the picture on the back the camera and did it look like it came out properly exposed let's pop the flash down let's not use flash for this so go ahead, take another picture without the flash did you get a result? It was very dark. Very dark. Yeah. Really? Okay, well, it's just you know it's for mine. Okay, so maybe we have a camera set it different. Okay, well, let's just say I went down to one eighth of a second. What is your, uh well, I was up in four hundred we haven't got the eye, so some people don't know about I so we can't talk about that yet. Just drop it down to one eighth of a second eye and take another picture and so if we drop it down to an eighth of a second these air reasonably bright lights but not overly bright lights, you should be able to get a reasonable result. But if you were to jump up and say, shoot it at one five hundredth of a second, you're not going to get a good picture, take a picture, take a picture at one five hundredth of a second and describe what it looks like black very dark all right, so what's going on here is that you are telling the camera I want you to use a particular shutter speed and at five hundredth of a second the camera doesn't have the resource is, you might say with the right aperture to get a good picture, and so the time value mode isn't for everyone because you can make a mistake if you're not really sure what you're doing, so you have to have it really in the right zone. There are a few special circumstances where I can recommend time value, but I think for a lot of photographers I would just pass right on by time value and go straight to aperture value, so if you go to aperture value uh my students in class, you can set it to any aperture want and take a couple pictures, change it to a radically different aperture take some pictures and you're going to get reasonable results as far as the amount of light that's coming in so it's hard to make a major mistake with aperture value and so it's my favorite mode, as is a lot of other photographers for a fairly quick mode it's kind of like the program mode, but now you khun set an aperture and it stays there. One of the problems with program is that if you decide you want to make a setting of, say more depth of field you set your camera two f sixteen have lots of depth of field you set your camera down for just a about ten seconds the camera resets itself back to it's kind of middle of the road setting which is often around f five six and so the cameras constantly resetting itself in any time you want to set up for a shot and you're going to take several shots because you want to get get it right so you going to shoot ten or twenty shots of a particular situation you'd have to keep resetting your camera in the program the appetizer mode when you make a setting it stays there the camera is adjusting the shutter speed though on the back it if you do want to take total control of your camera this is when we go to the full manual mode now we can control the shutter speeds in the ap pictures and they don't change unless we tell him to now the main dial that we've been introduced to I changes the shutter speed that's kind of the default main thing it does now one light little complaint about this camera but it's tradition of rebel cameras is there's only one control dial on the camera all right, so this one controlled I'll has to control shutter speeds and am pictures so in order to do the apertures there's a button on the back of the camera called the a v button so you need to press that in with your thumb and then turn the dial at the top so you need to be able to quickly take your thumb on and off to change the aperture versus changing the shutter speed and having used this camera last night, playing around with it, it's very easy to figure out once you get used to that system, it would be kind of nice to have an actual dialling the camera, but to be honest with you, there's, not a lot of room in the back of this camera to add an extra dial. So that's, the way this camera work and that's the way I do most of my photography, because I like to have things set and have him be consistent and stay there. And so, once you get set upon a situation, I highly encourage you to start working with manual. All right, that takes us back to the to the top of the camera, the shutter release. Obviously you're gonna be taking pictures here, but beyond that, your camera likes to nap, okay? It likes to arrest battery life is very important. If the battery doesn't work on this camera, you're not taking pictures so it's always trying to conserve power. So as I sit this camera down, it's already gone to kind of a a little nap mode and in order wake the camera I just pressed down halfway on the shed a release and so sometimes when you're working in the camera, the display disappears on you just waking up by pressing down halfway on the camera also that starts the media ring and starts the focusing as well. Another thing about the shutter unit this is how they kind of rate the durability of the camera the camera is rated at a hundred thousand firings of the shutter unit and so that's kind of like the mileage you can expect to get out of the camera. Many people go well beyond that on their camera, but that's kind of how long your camera is estimated in its life span hundred thousand firings we've already been working with that main dial, but that's the dial that we're going to use for a lot of different things for going through the menu system for changing, focusing points and obviously changing those major settings like shutter speed aperture and I are so we're going to be using that main dial talking about s so we have a variety of esos to choose from the I s o stands for international organization for standards but it's basically it's like the film speeds it's the sensitivity of the sensor in our camera the base setting on this camera is one hundred that's where you're going to get the optimum resolution best results on this camera is that I also one hundred as you step up, you were making the sensor more sensitive to low light, but a problem with that is noise it's not as good as picking up that low light levels, and I've actually done a little bit of a test here. I don't do a lot of testing with different cameras. This isn't a camera review, but just to get an idea of what's, different settings look like on the camera, you can see, I didn't even go up to the very top one in this in this test, but at twelve thousand eight hundred, there is a lot of noise on that picture, and you wouldn't want to go up there unless you absolutely had to. So most of the time I leave my camera, I also won the reason that you change your camera from aya so one hundred typically is that you need a faster shutter speed, and so if you need a faster shutter speed because you're shooting, say, a basketball game in a gymnasium that doesn't have a lot of lights, you might need to be a but four hundred or eight hundred sixteen or thirty, two hundred, and you're just going to kind of need to make that balance between shutter speed and I esso, and actually I was adjusting mine. Presentation just to include some pictures I took last night. So last night I was down on the waterfront in seattle and I didn't have a lot of time to shoot with the camera, but I just shot a quick shot here and I wanted to shoot it at a bunch of different ice owes to see how it did. So I'm going to enlarge the area in red here and you can see what one hundred s so looks like, nice and clean. I was using a tripod. This is not handheld, so I didn't care about shutter speed and you can see that twenty five thousand is a little course you might say this is the new edition from where the t four I had, and I kind of wondering if they've just kind of tact it on and didn't really do much with the quality, and so I wouldn't go there very often, you know, possibly shooting a picture of bigfoot at night might come in handy. So it's it's, nice to be ready for that situation. In my honest opinion, I think everything up to sixteen hundred looks pretty darn good. Thirty two hundred is still pretty acceptable sixty four hundred. It really starts to fall apart in my opinion, but you can make your own judge with your own tests on that. So that's, what the issue is now, if you were going to change it, what you do is you press the button, that feature becomes active for about five or six seconds, and then you turn the main dial, and if you do that right now in your camera, there's a good chance that you can't see anything higher than twelve thousand eight hundred and don't forget you sometimes have to press the shutter release on your camera toe, wake it up, and then you compress the ice so button, and then you can make a change on it. So right now, my camera does not have the twenty five thousand six hundred there's, a special little feature in the menu system will get to that you need to turn on in order to get to that it's called eso expansion. All right, as we move around the camera, we have a flash unit that we're going to talk about when we get to the flash button, so there is a little built in pop up flash that in the automatic modes will automatically pop up, but in the more manual modes, you need to press a button to get it to pop up, we have a hot shoe where we can use e x siri's of cannon flashes. Now, why would you add on a flash if it has one built in I mean, you got a convenient one. Well, the problem with the built in flash is that it's in the worst possible spot to have a flash, which is right next to the lands to get these very awkward shadows with I aa flash mounted on the top of your camera, you can move it around, you can bounce it off of ceilings, and with this camera you can even use it remotely, using the built in flash to trigger the off camera flash and so that's the way you can get much better lighting is getting that flash off the camera. If you do want to get a flash, I do highly recommend the cannon flashes. They've introduced a new one for their little dios m system, which is very, very small and pretty much duplicates what the built in flash well, do they have a slightly larger to seventy? That is still pretty close to the built in flash, so I can't say that I recommend that one as well. Now for somebody who wants a kind of a medium range flash that shoots video, the three twenty it's kind of interesting because it has a video light that you can turn on, that stays on steady. You know it's not the most powerful light the world that's only good for probably six to eight feet at the most, but it does add a little bit of phil light, so if you're going to be filming in a very dark living room, were out at a nightclub and you need a little bit of phil light in the eyes, that flash is one of the only flashes in the world that will be a still flash as well. Is a video like this? Well, for most people who want to use and expand their flash capabilities, the four thirty e x two, which sells for around three hundred dollars, would be my life you have number one recommended flash for this camera it's considered an intermediate level flash it's going give you quite a bit more power than the built in flash it's going allow you the versatility to bounce it off of walls and ceilings, and so I think that's probably the best intermediate choice the six hundred e x artie is cannons top of the line flack, you're probably not going to want to put that with this camera works perfectly fine, it's even more powerful and has more manual functions if you were going to do professional photography if you're going to be photographing events on a regular basis, the six hundred is a good flash for that but at the price of six hundred dollars it's coming close to the price of the entire camera. So it's probably a little overkill on this particular camera. All right, moving back around the camera. There's. A little kind of goofy symbol kind of looks like saturn or possibly a little ufo etching in the top. Your camera. This is the focal plane, if for some scientific reason or very precise focusing reason, you needed to figure out where the sensor was in the camera, how far from the lands that's just letting you know where that issue probably never need it new on this camera is a stereo microphone it's, one of the first cameras from a major manufacturer that has a stereo microphone built right into it. Now, if you do want to shoot video and get better quality sound, I would recommend an additional microphone. But at least we are getting a little bit better quality audio in this camera than in previous cameras.