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Camera Operation Overview

I'm gonna share with you one little final tip that's just kind of an unusual one, I don't know where to go with this, but if we look at the back of the camera, sometimes people get just a little fidgety. They're clean freaks and this eyepiece, here, does pick up a lot of dust. If you're wondering an easy way to clean this rubber viewfinder, it is with a piece of Scotch Tape. If you put a piece of Scotch Tape on here, it cleans up the viewfinder really nicely and makes it look brand new again and gets all of that dust off of there. So if you got a dirty, dusty, rubber viewfinder, use that Scotch Tape and clean up the viewfinder so it looks like it's brand new. Good little final tip for you there. Alright, our final section here is called camera operation. What we're gonna do here is kinda summarize the most important things that we've learned so far. When you go out on an important shoot, or you're gonna take a big trip, you're going to Cuba, you're going on an African safari. You wanna...

make sure that you leave with fully charged batteries. If you are traveling you probably wanna take about three batteries with you. Install and format your memory cards. You wanna make sure that they are fresh and ready to go. Just double check the image quality settings that it just didn't happen to be some place weird. In general, check the rest of your menu settings but it's the image quality one that's most important. Shoot a test photo at F22 of a white wall and look for dust, black spots, on the screen to see if there's any sort of dust on the sensor. It's easier to address that at home than when you're traveling or in the midst of an important shoot. The camera has a lot of different functions. The first level are the Hard Controls, the dials and buttons that you cannot change. These are usually for pretty important features that you probably don't want to change, that's gonna be the first place that you're gonna go for those things. Next up is you have your eight custom options, and these are the different buttons that you can customize. What I would think very carefully about is what are the next eight most important things that I change on the camera, and then plug those in to those buttons, because those are the ones that are easiest to get to. The next level is the Quick Menu, and there are 16 items that you can choose from, and it's somewhat limited as to what you can put in on those particular options. Be careful about your selections and where they are, 'cause you maybe wanna have the auto-focus ones grouped together, the image quality grouped in another grouping. Remember that the quick menu actually has seven sets of data. One of the best options for doing this is for either film simulations or image looks. Maybe you want a more saturated look, or one that's brightening the shadows, or like I, I have like three different types of black and white images that I like to shoot depending on how contrasty I want it to be. You could set those up as different one, two, and three in the custom settings. Beyond that, you have MY Menu, which has another 16 options, which may be different than the ones available in the Quick Menu, or different ones that's available in the Custom Controls. So those another 16 options. And then finally after that, you have the entire Menu which you don't have a lot of control of, and you just have to dive in to and control. I believe if you get the camera set up properly, you won't need to dive in to the Menu system hardly at all. Because there's enough other custom options that you can have those higher up on your priority list. Here is our Shortcut Review. If you recall there was all sorts of secret unlabeled shortcuts, unlike really any other camera on the market. You wanna see the firmware? Press the display back button, turn the camera on. Wanna format the memory card? Hold down the garbage can button for two seconds and press in on the Rear Command dial. You wanna switch cards? You press the playback button for two seconds, or you can press the focus switch when you are in the playback mode. I know some of you at home are rapidly scribbling down notes, right? Am I right? Am I getting nods? I think they're right. So in the PDF, I have an entire page that has all of these shortcuts on it, so you can fold it up and put it in your camera bag, or print it out smaller and laminate it, or whatever it is that you do with these things. Let's continue through the shortcuts, this is just a review. You wanna change the focus size? Press in on the joystick, turn the Command Dial. You wanna reprogram the Focus Stick? You press it in for two seconds and if you wanna lock it or unlock it, you can do it there. Changing the manual focus assist, you're gonna do that by pressing in on that Rear Control dial for two seconds and that'll rotate through, cycle through the different options. Zooming in on a focus area. If you're in AFS or manual focus, just press in on the rear dial, and you can also do it in the playback mode, as well. If you wanna use the "C," Custom Exposure, you're gonna do that on the front dial. Just turn the dial but if you wanna lock it you can press in to lock or unlock it. The function buttons, the eight of them, can be pre-programmed by pressing and holding the display button for two seconds. If you wanna customize the Quick Menu, press the Q button for two seconds to access that entire screen. Locking controls can be done with the menu button for three seconds. You wanna get in to the menu, you gotta hit the menu button and then the playback button. Activating the playback menu can also be done when you're in the playback mode by simply pressing in on the Focusing Stick. Lots of different shortcuts on this camera. See if you can remember all of those. Some key settings on the camera. We have our exposure controls, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, these are physical controls. We can see where they are set on most all the settings. Makes it really easy to work with the camera. We have our very physical exposure control dial. Looking on to the back of the camera, we're gonna have our drive setting. Then our white balance is currently set to the number five function button, you may change that. You may choose to have that in a different spot. That top button is the AF mode where we get to choose single, zone, and area. These are features that I think most people are gonna go to, so I'm gonna talk about how you would set these up for different types of scenario. Then the focus mode out in front is very important whether that's on M, S, or C. That has a big different on the performance of the camera. So first off, I'd like to just go back to the very simplest setting, full auto. If you were gonna set this camera up for somebody who maybe didn't know how to really use a camera. Put the ISO in auto, shutter speed in auto, apertures in auto. Make sure the focus mode is in single, not manual. Drive mode is in single and make sure that you have the basic multi-metering set on the camera. This is gonna allow the camera to be shot in a point and shoot mode, as simply as possible, with no other controls that you really need to get in to for basic picture taking. For those of you who wanna take things just a little bit further, let's go through the specific settings that I might recommend for a variety of scenarios. These are our, kind of, key settings in this camera. A simple mode is gonna be setting the shutter speeds to automatic. Let the camera figure it out, let the camera figure out the apertures as well. We'll let the camera figure out the ISO. So it's figuring out the entire exposure formula. You can leave that exposure compensation on zero unless it needs to be a little bit darker or a little bit brighter. That's something that you may wanna jump in there and change. The ISO is gonna be fine at auto, most of the time. Change if necessary. Focus mode on single so it focuses on a subject and stops. Allows you to recompose the subject if necessary. AF area, the wide tracking area looks over the entire scene and uses all, I would say the number 353 focusing points, and chooses what it thinks is the best one. It'll generally do a pretty good job. Then finally, our drive mode being left on single. If you wanted to shoot landscapes, we want more depth of field, and we don't need to worry about action and things moving around, so here's how I would set my camera for a landscape mode. The first thing I would think about would be the best ISO setting. ISO 200. I often want a bit more depth of field so maybe eight, 11, 16, something in there. That usually ends up at a slower shutter speed. That will depend exactly on what the lighting is. We don't use exposure compensation because we're in, kind of, a full manual mode, right now. I'm gonna leave it in white balance unless I see that there is a problem. Since there's nothing moving, I'm gonna leave it in single focusing mode. For focusing I'm gonna wanna be very precise about where I focus, so I'm gonna use the single point and I'm gonna move it around to where I think the focusing point is best set. Then the drive mode is in the single mode here. Just as a bonus I might have the camera on a tripod and be using the two second self timer. Next up, how would I shoot a portrait with the X-T2. In this case, a lot of times I'm gonna wanna shoot with a shallow depth of field. If you want that shallow depth of field, dial that in first. It's nice to have a 1.4 lens, for that. Next up is you're gonna want a shutter speed that is gonna ensure that you're not getting any blur with your subject or yourself. 125th of second or faster but 125 would be a good one there. Then I will set whatever ISO necessary, but I will try to keep it as low as possible. We'll go ahead and stick with auto ISO, or auto white balance, excuse me. Generally does a pretty good job. If our subjects are not moving around, it'll be single. The AF-mode will be in single because I wanna be very precise about where I'm focusing on their face or on their eye. You could possibly put this in one of the continuous modes but most people will be fine with it in the single mode. Once again, if you are scribbling, trying to take notes on this with the class, this is all part of the PDF handout. All of this, this whole graph, as well as the little paragraph explaining it, is supplied in the class materials, which is listed on the course page. Let's do some action photography on this camera. Obviously, we're gonna need to change the focusing system a little bit, to track action, and we're gonna need a faster shutter speed. It depends on what sort of action you're shooting but you're probably gonna need a shutter speed at least a 500th of a second. From there, it's gonna be very handy to have one of the faster lenses, so that you can isolate your subject against the background. As much as you would like to use ISO 200, you're probably gonna be at something higher like 400 or higher. Don't need exposure compensation, we'll leave it in auto white balance if it's working out well. The important change here is the continuous of the focusing mode, so that the camera can track action coming back and forth. The focusing mode will depend a little bit on the subject and the action size that you're using. I would prefer the zone and, maybe, looking at one of the 3x3 or 5x5 options. Something that was about the same size as my particular subject. This is where I'm probably gonna put the camera in either continuous low or continuous high, depending on what sort of frame rate I felt was necessary for my subject. As a bonus, you might wanna make sure that the power management has the performance boost turned on, so that you have the faster EVF rate, and a little bit faster focus acquisition. Here's a good last one to finish the class off with, and it's just what I call basic photography. Its where you maybe just don't know what you're next photo is going to be, but you wanna have it set up to take good photos. This is where I'll let a little automation creep into the system. We're gonna let the camera choose the shutter speed, and we're gonna choose the aperture. I like to choose a moderately wide open aperture like 5.6. If I need more depth of field I'd probably have the time to stop it down a little bit. I like to leave it at ISO 200 unless I know that I've gotten into darker environments where I'm gonna need faster shutter speeds. I'll be more than happy to bump that up when and where necessary. Be careful about that exposure compensation dial on the top. Make sure that that's at zero as a default position, and adjust as necessary when you need to. White balance, once again, auto's pretty good but be aware that you do need to adjust that from time to time. Most of the time I'm not shooting action moving back and forth, so I'm gonna leave it on single. I like to be very precise about where I'm focusing so I'm gonna choose a single point. Now remember, you have five different size boxes, choose whatever works best for you. Then in the drive mode, you could leave it in continuous low, but in single shot you can raise your finger up and down and take several picture pretty quickly. So that's how I would set the camera up for basic photography. So what do we got here? When reviewing an image on the back screen, is there an overexposure highlight warning like Canon? Yes there is, but, and if I'll show you on the back of my camera real quickly, it is in a very small image area. Let's just playback an image, one of these had some highlight problems, maybe this one. You have to hit the display button, and get to this image here. You'll see the blinkies right there. So it's on the small screen, it's not a feature that you turn on and off, but you can get to it by hitting the display button. If I recall correctly, you might be able to get to it, also, by using the up button because remember, this cycles through different modes as well. So it's not really an on and off, but that's where you can see it.