Lessons

Lesson Info

Segment 12 - Retouch Menu and Camera Operation

Okay, moving forward, we're not going to spend much time here. This is the retouch manu, this is photo shop in the camera, and if you want to go through and play with your images, have at it most of these things, I'm just not even going to talk about. I will mention one kind of useful one is the nef raw processing. If you shoot raw images and you occasionally need a quick j peg out of the camera, you can go to your raw image and you can create a copy j peg image of that raw image right in the camera, without downloading it to your computer and going into photo shop or any other program. And so that's one very useful item in there, but there's a whole bunch of other things that you can do and tweak images, and you'll never harm an image by doing it. What it does is it creates duplicate images, so you never harmed an actual image. You'll just create a new image that has a monochrome look to it, for instance, and so this would be a airport time waster mode in my mind. All right, let's, ge...

t to the last setting in here, this is my menu or recent settings, it's, probably at recent setting, so anything that you've been adjusting and playing with you'll see here, but I prefer to have the set to my menu and the way you do that is you go down to choose tab and you select my menu, then what you want to dio is you'll want to go to add items, and this is where you get to scroll through and you get to pick five, six seven of the most useful items that you would use on a regular basis. And then when you come to this menu in the camera, it's going to show you that listing? This is kind of like setting the preset radio stations in your car, what I want to go back to again and again and again and it's your choice, whatever you use, and then you'll also be able to go to rank those items, putting the most this one's up on top or wherever you want him to be. And so it's, just a way for you to customize these. I forget how many there's like one hundred twenty different items in this menu system, and you get to pick a number of your favorites and have him right there so that you don't have to dive and get lost in the menu with anything that you really want to use, and so I highly recommend setting this up according to your own needs. Before I go into my final little section on operations, I'll just check back with jim to see if we have any quick questions in here we might just for fun throw in any of those comparisons here. Okay, that sounds perfect. So let me let me start with this eve wants to know some of the options in the menu are not able to are there not highlighted. Yeah, we talked to that. Yeah it's hard to address that's the specific one that you're looking at her butt for instance like I think multiple exposures might be great out if you are shooting raw images because it only uses jpeg images. And so if there's something set that's not allowing that operation that's what's causing the great out now the reasons things get grayed out most often is because you have to use j peg to use it and you have raw on lee set or there's something else. Let me just take a quick look through my menu system and I want to see if I can find something that is great out. And so I have hdr is great out on my camera and that's because I have to shoot that in j pick and so that's great out multiple exposures is great out time lapse photography is great out and I'm trying to figure out why would time lapse that creates a final video and let's. See who? It's a good one there. So you stumped the teacher on this one. So interval shooting, which is giving me see all the individual photos is fine and time lapse photography where it creates a final finished video and it might be because I have this set. Let me check the movie settings I want to see because it might have the movies directed to a card that doesn't exist in the camera. And so there's a number of these little conflicting things that do come up and it's hard to address what all of them maybe, but just try to think as logically as you can that may or may not get you there as to what would conflict with me shooting that. Okay, do you have any? Any thoughts? This is from sharon on the new twenty millimeter prime lens for use on the d a ten familiar with that new I am familiar with that lands and I would say that that lens is probably going to go up on the next time I teach this class because that's a new lands it just got introduced fairly recently, so I haven't had time to to put that one up, but it's it's, not one of the kind of the gold standard in lenses. But being one of the newest releases, I'm sure that they've calibrated it toe work quite well with this cameron so I would throw a pretty good recommendation behind that. Okay? And then christopher glenn we may have talked about this, but christopher glenn wanted to know if you've shown yet the total number of shuter actualization and civilizations where they can find that they cant okay now if you want to do a shutter count on this camera you're going to need to download and run, run it through some other program on the internet it will show you the number of pictures taken on that battery cycle. So how many pictures have I taken on that battery charge but that's just basically a little chip in the battery that gets reset every time it's charged okay, move along. Okay? All right. So, folks, that's it we're done well, I got a little bit more but that's it that's the entire camera we it's every button we went through every menu setting. Hopefully your camera is now perfectly set up. As long as you don't have a dead battery and you still want to take some pictures let's talk about actual shooting of the picture is putting this whole thing together you might say, well, first off I want to make sure your camera's ready to go charge that battery format that memory card make sure you have come to peace with raw and j peg and you know how your camera set make sure that you have the right settings you haven't done something crazy from the night before you were set up for a different type of photography and if you're going to go take a big trip, you know you're going to go to africa on a big trip of a lifetime go with a clean sensor don't go over there with the dirty sensor because it's going to be very hard getting that sense or clean in a hard location to work with on dh so just make sure you do that before a big job for a big trip or something of that nature. Now how would I set this camera? Well, there's camera has hundreds of modes and the ten that you really use on a regular basis are going to deal with exposure and focusing for the most part. So how would I set this camera up? Okay, the first option here is super simple. This is almost a ziff you're going to give the camera to somebody else in your family who doesn't know about photography to take pictures? What is the simplest set up that you can make on this camera and I'll remind you that for those of you who do have the class and you get the pdf, there is on the back page all of this right here so that you can see the settings and you can read a little bit about why the reason it is for having these particular setting so if you want the simple a setting possible, throw the camera into the program that's where the camera figures out shutter speeds and apertures don't usually recommend this but here in the in the simplest section I would just throw the camera into auto eso where it figures out the lie for you make sure that your exposure compensation that plus minus button on the top of the camera is at zero form eatery I would choose the matrix metering that's the button up on the top left shoulder of the camera that's got five little spots on it white balance the w b button I would leave that in auto white balance the camera does a very good job in that mode the focusing mode single remember on this one I'll do a little video a live demo here we've got to adjust that by pressing this little button here on the side and the back dial changes us between single and continuous if we want to go to manual focusing we would do that on the lands but this button back here and the dia was not the most intuitive way I sometimes called this the mystery button because it's got no label to it and you just have to know what it does the area mode that's going to be done by pressing that same button and turning the front dial of the camera camera choosing what area you want to choose, auto is all fifty one points it's going to grab onto almost anything it can find but it's the first thing it finds closest to the camera so it's not very specific and in nature of what it's choosing its just going after everything and so it's a very simple, easy mode but it's not as precise is other modes all recommend in a moment and then as faras the drive mode, which is this collar and the top left of the camera. Remember, we have the little release lock up here and I'm just going to leave that in the single mode so that when I take a picture it just shoots one picture at a time. So that's the super simple mode but let's get involved in some specifics. Let's start with landscape photography, you're going to go to a national park, you're gonna want a big grand landscape shot with everything in focus, what are we going to do and what's important in a shot like this? Well, hopefully you're working off of a tripod and this is where you have a little bit of time to set exposure yourself so I would set the camera to em for manual exposure my first setting here would be to set theis oas lowest possible, which is sixty four in this camera next I would run a determined in most cases my depth of field and I'm probably going to want a fair bit of depth of field and it's going very according to the scene in the lens in the composition but at eleven sixteen twenty to thirty two would be common numbers shutter speed is not going to matter in the landscape shot if I am shooting on a tripod and there is nothing moving in the scene and if I am setting f excuse me f sixteen and in s o of sixty four, I am undoubtedly going to have a very slow shutter and so it's probably likely to be something down around an eighth of a second toe one second we're not going to use exposure compensation because we're in the manual note I'm going to stick with matrix metering I think it does a great job under a wide variety of situations I'm probably going to have my camera and auto white balance unless it's giving me funny colors and then I'll switch it over to something else here is where I definitely want the camera in the single focusing mode because subjects are not moving I wanted to focus and stop as faras the area I would probably choose a single point I might move that point around depending on how I have my camera setup, I also might manual focus using live you and the image magnification and as far as the drive mode, I would use either the single mode or the mere up mode depending on what shutter speed I was at and as a little bonus, you might even use that elektronik first cutter shutter curtain to reduce all vibrations possible, and so hopefully that makes sense for the landscape set up next let's switch gears and do portrait photography so you're photographing a subject that you want in focus you might want the background out of focus and there is some movement to be aware of and tio take precautions against here I like to be in manual exposure as well. I like to have very specific control of all features of my camera here. The first setting is I'm probably going to want to shoot with very shallow depth feet. Well, if I have one of those fast one point four lenses, I'm likely to want to use it here I'm going to want a little bit faster shutter speed because I need to stop my movement handholding of the camera as well as my subject that might be moving around a bit and then finally I would like to set as low of so it's possible and if it's dark, I will raise it as necessary we don't use exposure compensation because we're in a manual mode I'm fine with matrix metering I'm fine with white balance at auto so long as there is nothing wrong with it focusing mode as long as my subjects are not moving towards me or away from me I'm going to be in the f s for single mode and as far as what I'm going to focus on I wanted to be a very small point because I want to focus on the nearest I of my subject and as far as the drive mode single is fine also might want to have it in continuous mode if they're changing expressions or having different gestures very quickly but a lot of times I'll just put it in single so that is my portrait set up let's do action photography and there's a number of changes we need to make here because we have subjects that are moving much faster and we're going to need adjustments in both focusing and shutter speeds so here I like to work in manual is well and here is where I go after shutter speed first I'm going to need a good fast shutter speed for human action five hundredth of a second or faster next up this is where it really pays off to have a fast lens like a two point eight lens you're going to need that if you want a fast shutter speed in a low so and while I would like to shoot it sixty four one hundred the reality of the world is that with a fast shutter speed you're probably going to need an esso of four hundred or higher for fast action gonna leave it at matrix metering going to leave it at auto white balance and the focusing mode very important this is my first change is how did that get to manual that's not supposed to go this is the one thing in the class that did not work I apologize folks how did it get to man that's just a name that's supposed to be on continuous I went manual focus action any more cameras more good we'll fix that in post I don't know f area mode that is one that is going to depend a little bit on what type of action you are shooting I like the nine point but other ones that worked really well is the group which is a five point area or the twenty one point and so I'm trying to choose a group area a group of focusing points about the same size as my subject and for the drive mode I'm definitely going to want to have it on continuous hi and so I'm going to be able to get up to remember my number here five frames per second with the camera in the standard full frame mode all right? My last type of photography is what I call basic photography it's not super simple, but just a little bit of manual control in here and so this is kind of my travel mode when I'm travelling around and I don't know what my next photo is going to be aperture priority allows me to shoot very, very quickly and get good exposures with minimal of fuss and here I'm going by default have a very low eso setting probably I s o one hundred if it's really good light, I'll go down to sixty four if it's low light, I'll go up to two or four hundred and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to set an aperture that's a reasonably fast aperture may be f four sometimes it's to wait, sometimes it's all the way down to faa just kind of a good generic aperture and then I'm keeping an eye on the shutter speed. I'm keeping the exposure compensation at zero unless it needs to be changed. I'm good with matrix and I'm good with auto white balance and as faras focusing mode, I would leave it on single so I'd focus on a particular subject and I can recompose and then as far as a f area I would choose just a single point it's a very small area, but you could be very precise about it exactly where you want the camera to focus and as far as the drive mode I would just leave it in the single mouth so that you take one picture at a time if you need to switch it to continuous there's fast easy controls for changing that over but that's how I set my camera oppa's I'm walking around a strange city or just don't know what my next photo is going to be so if you have followed through on this class all the way till here congratulations I now dean you a nikon d a ten expert so congratulations for finishing the class I think of as bonus materials we should actually provide a little certificate certificate diploma that you know you can sign in and say congratulations street of life had certificates in the early day jason happy's photoshopped classes had certificates that you would get an email certificate that you could print off on your own fantastic so john not atomic questions and you cover everything so thoroughly we just we don't have a ton in here right now but I'd love to chat with you a little bit about what's next for you I know we are potentially well I know I'm sure we're going to see you again here a creative live very very soon but you also have some trips coming up yes so let me go through my three little slights here first off if you've been watching this class and you don't own a d eight ten wow, good for you, but I have classes on a variety of other cameras and so on this list you'll see two cameras that I do not have classes for in case you are wondering yes, I will have a class on the nikon d fifty and a class on the nikon used me try that again, I will have a class on the cannon seventy mark too those classes will be sometime after the new year. I have a number of projects I'm working on and there in the queue, but they're not at the front of the line quite yet and so I will get to those cameras as soon as possible. And so if you are interested in classes or you have friends who need a class, this is kind of the largest warehouse of the most in debt classes that I think you'll find anywhere online. I do teach a number of other class is here at creative lives if you go to creative lives catalogue and you search for a gringo, you'll just pull up a whole bunch of classes. Some classes that I would like to make you aware of is thie photography starter kit if you just want like a quick little photography class it's ah very low price it's a fairly short class I think it's about four hours in length just to kind of get you a quick out the door start on photography. If you want the full the full deal, the what you should know class is the fundamentals of digital photography. This was a five day a class five full days of lectures and lot of visual explanations on how things work. I do have a specialist travel photography class, and I have a very recent class that I just recorded here on nature and landscape photography. And so those are some of the other classes. If you kind of like my visual style that's implemented in all these other classes.