Lessons

Lesson Info

Camera Operation

All right, so we're going to get into actually working the camera because actually all we've been doing now is just pointing out stuff in explaining what stuff does so we talked a little bit about setting up the camera and this is more of the full set up when you get a new camera, you will want to charge the battery for about two and half hours put the lens on like we did put the battery in but the memory card in but there's some other things make sure that you set the time and date actually what I jumped ahead one format the memory card we talked a little bit about this one went by format, but formatting the memory card is something I do on a regular basis make sure that you've downloaded your images and you backed him up because formatting and we'll get rid of the cards. But having said that and we have a group of photographers that is listening in, I want to tell you all a big secret if you're in a place where you're taking pictures and they I don't like you taking pictures and they...

say you are not allowed to take pictures say, well, I'll reformat my memory card and you can reformat your memory card and then you can get some rescue software to get your all your average is back and so don't let anyone confiscate your memory card take all those pictures, reformat it for the security guard, and then just go get the right software to get back so you can. Well, if you get the card out of your camera before they get there and replace it with a bogus car that that's a good thing. But I've had that situation at a concert where somebody was demanding that they give me that I give him the memory card and I would refuse to do that. I'm not going to give somebody my memory card or my camera, but in general formatting, the memory card will kind of clean off all the ghost files and set it up for knees. Make sure you set the date and time because that will be attributed to every photograph you take and it's better to have it right than wrong. Attach your black rapid strapped to the camera I just the doctor knob so that that's clear toe toe look through one of the first things that you want to set its make a decision on shooting robber he's a pig, and you should probably do that from the very beginning. It's not something that most people switch back and forth on a lot go through the camera, the full features, basically what we just did, setting your camera up the way you want it. To be and then finally, before you do something really important, you should shoot some test photos and look for dust on the sensor. So, for instance, photographing a white, a white wall at f twenty two will help you see any sort of dust on the sensor, and if you want to clean it off before you head off on a big vacation or in a big job, that's the time to take care of it. So these are things that you need to kind of go through to make sure that your camera is operating at one hundred percent. So now that you know all the features of your camera, it is time for your final test. All right, and let's, just kind of keep your cameras right in front of you and think about where all of these features are. And your cameras you might want to use your hands to just kind of point him out because we're gonna be moving in here pretty quickly so your exposure mounts the big old dial on the left. Where do you change your shutter speeds? That's the dial in the back of the camera, the apertures are changed by the dial in the front of the camera. The sow has an s o button on the back, you'll press that and turn the back dial. The exposure compensation has a button right beside the shutter release, but you need to press that and the dial on the back of the camera. Metarie hits the button right beside it. The dial on the back white balance. We go back to the back of the camera. The w b will press that button in the main dial on the back of the camera focus button. This is the button that is on the side. It is unlabeled. It is in the middle of that auto focus manual focus buttons so you will press that button and you will turn the back dial to change the focus mode. Now you will use that same button, but you will use the dial on the front to change the area that you're focusing the number of brackets that you are choosing. And then finally, the drive mode is thie, rotating color on the top left side single, continuous low, continuous high and so forth. And so these are the ten modes that most people are going to use all the time. And these are the ones that you really need to know where they are in a regular basis. So let's, go ahead and set our camera in a super simple mode, so follow along with your own camera. First up put it in the programme mode p for program we won't need to worry about shutter speeds or apertures but let's make sure our eso is set to one hundred so I'm gonna move mine down to one hundred next up let's make sure our exposure compensation is at zero you can check by simply plate pressing the plus minus button I'm a zero so that's good next up let's have our meeting at matrix metering and that is the little dot in the middle with the four brackets kind of around each corner so there's five spots in their white balance on the back of the camera just press that and look down at the bottom w b a is the white balance auto setting if it's not you can turn the back dial till you see the a focus mode that's the button over on the side and the dial in the back a f s s for single and then we're going to have your f area mode press the dia linn and you'll have an auto and all thirty nine points will show in the top lcd panel the drive mode we will set it single so just make sure it's on the s setting for single and this is a good setup for really really simple very basic photography so let's set the camera up for some other types of things this is how an enthusiast somebody who you know kind of likes photography and likes handling things a little bit more manually might set their camera so let's. Change our camera to aperture priority a don't need to worry about shutter speeds let's set an aperture of f four. If you have it on your lance, you may or may not have it on your lance, depending on where your lenses but that is the dial in front. Next up. Check your eyes so make sure it's at one hundred and was there for the last one. So it's there for this one. Check your exposure compensation that you don't have that set someplace blackie metering matrix I think is a great general purpose metering system, as is white balance in automatic, which is where last ones were focus at single, I think, is a good general place to be. And for f area mode. I would personally change that to single point. That way you can be a little bit more selective about what you have chosen to be in focus and then for the drive mode, keeping it in single I think it's a fine place. And for an enthusiast photographer, I think this is a good setup on the camera. Since it's good to just practice with this, we're goingto play around with some different ones here. All right, this is the old school retro style. And so if you're used to shooting olds old school this is how you might like to set your camera let's, go ahead and set it into the m mode for manual. We need to set shutter speeds and apertures now and just for kicks let's set a shutter speed of one hundred twenty fifth of a second. We do that with the back dial of camera one twenty five is one hundred twenty fifth of a second. Let's set the front dial toe f ate. Why are we setting it at f ate because thie good old standby. How do you get a great picture? F ate and be there. It's good old national geographic standard photojournalism standard let's, uh pump our s o upto one hundred just to play around with changing the eyes are excuse me, changing up to four hundred so you press the button on the back, turn the back dial. We're not gonna worry about exposure compensation, but let's go to center waited meeting because that's the way it used to be in cameras and that's going to be the tiny circle with the two brackets to the left and right of it white balance will just go ahead and leave that in auto that's fine focus let's turn the camera to manual focus and the easiest and best way to do it is on the lens switch the a t m if you have an older nikon lens you may not have a switch on your lens and you would do it then on the body but on most current lenses you will see it on the lens itself. We don't need to worry about thie f area mode but we will put the drive mode at continuous high that way they could be ready for action at six frames a second all right so these next two are just simply for practice in where all the buttons are on the camera so I'll try to go a little bit faster on this one nobody would ever set the camera up the way that I'm about to set your camera but let's go ahead and just do it for fun s for shutter priority let's set a shutter speed of a half a second very slow shutter speed I'm having problems getting down to a half second there we go it's going to be just the number two in there the camera's going to choose the aperture for you I s o sixty four hundred way up high this is like the highest I would ever want to shoot a picture let's change our exposure compensation two plus two so you got pressed the exposure compensation and turned the back dial til it says plus two next up we're going to change the meeting to spot metering that's just the tiny little dot right in the middle after that we're going to change the white balance the button on the back we're going to change that to the flash mode which is the lightning bolt the focus mode we're going to go to otto now this isn't just auto focus but this is the auto focus mode if that makes sense makes sense to me but you have to turn the auto focus switch on the lens back on that's the first step and then you have to press the focus button on the side of the camera turn the back dial til it says a f a because then it will automatically choose whether it's going to focus on something that's still or something that's movie it's not where I would normally recommend leaving it but for this practice it's fine the area mode let's go to nine point so when you go to nine point you press the focus mode you turn the front dial and you will see nine points it's a smalls set of squares in the lcd right in the middle of the focusing brackets and on the drive mode let's put it in the quiet mode and listen to it now if I'm losing some of you good. That means I'm going fast enough. We'll try another one here. Try to follow along on this one test number two all right, let's get the exposure mode set at p for program we don't need to worry about shutter speeds or apertures let's put an I s o n of eight hundred tile that in next up exposure compensation let's put that at minus three so we're going away back down to the other side minus three meet oring let's put this on center waited metering that's the dot with the two little brackets to the left into the right let's try for white balance incandescent press the white balance the incandescent what is the incandescent look like? It looks like where is it? A little light bulb it's actually right next to the a and between the a and the fluorescent light bulb and so it's got a bunch of light rays coming off just the bottom of it for focus mode let's go to continuous focus so that's that focus button on the side of the camera a f c and for the area mode let's, try three d tracking it'll say three d below the focusing brackets and then finally in the drive mode let's throw it into the continuous low mode where it shoots at a slower frame wake but still pretty quick now, as I said, nobody's really going to set their camera up quite like this? So let's start looking at surreal photography now that you know where all the important buttons are. So let's talk about a landscape photograph, all right, a couple of examples of landscape photographs, so kind of the idea that we're talking about here are things that aren't really moving very much. They might be blowing a little bit in the wind, but they're not generally moving around a lot. You might have a little bit of time to get the shot you might be working with a tripod, and in general, depth of field is pretty important. You want a lot of things in focus. In fact, you might want everything in focus, so depth the field is going to be one of the primary changes you're going to make now this is my own personal recommendations. I like shooting in manual in this type of mode, I have timeto work with the camera in my subject, I can be very particular about shutter speeds and temperatures. Now, if I'm on a tripod and things aren't moving, the shutter speed doesn't matter, but just for fun, let's, go ahead and set a shutter speed of four seconds just so that you can see that when you turn the focusing dial. Exceed the focusing dial the shutter speed dial in the back of the camera to four seconds it'll say four with a couple of little of hash marks beside it but we want depth. The field is what we really want here and so this one's important and I'm going to set at f sixteen now maybe your camera can go beyond this maybe could go up to f twenty two or maybe beyond but just for the for this purpose we're going to set it at f sixteen, which would give us lots of depth of field for I s so I would like that to be set a ce lowest possible so let's, make sure that is down at one hundred so we'll press theis so and lower that down next up, we're gonna want to make sure our exposure compensation is at zero so nothing else is getting adjusted it's not really going to affect us in manual, but we don't want to have that messed up because we were playing with that in the previous one now there's different styles toe working I prefer to working in matrix and so let's change it to matric and I will leave the auto white balance at the white balance at auto because I like to shoot raw and I don't have to worry about white balance and I'll deal with it later in software if necessary for focusing, I'd like to have it in a single point, focusing so I could be very selective about what I choose, so I'll press the focus button turned the back dial til it says a f s the area mode I want to be very precise about what, what I choose, so I want the single point, which is just the one dot in the middle of the focusing brackets and for the drive mode, I will probably just leave it in single cause I can take one shot at a time, and so this is a good way to set your camera up for landscape photography. All right, so let's change things around and let's shoot a portrait, so when we're shooting portrait's of people or dogs or animals or things like that, one of the things that we need to be concerned about is having a fast enough shutter speed to stop their movement as well a stopping our movement, these types of shots are rarely done from a tripod, and so you're going to be moving a little bit there, going to be moving so you need a fast enough shutter speed for that, but also just kind of a good look two photographs is a shallow depth of field, so the focus is on your subject's eyes what's in the background is out of focus and not nearly as important so depth of field is once again important, but we want a shallow depth of field here, so once again I'd like to work with in manual. I'll talk with the person, can I take your photograph? And they'll kind of expect that I'm going to work for a couple of minutes to take the photograph. I'll set a shutter speed, and it depends on the light levels, but just for fun. Let's set one hundred and twenty fifth of a second, this would be a suitable handheld shutter speed to use with most lenses for the aperture I would want to shoot. It depends on the type of the picture, but a very shallow depth of field. Most likely so if you have a lens that goes all the way down to one point for which I don't have, I will go down to f three point five cause that's as wide open as the lens that I have on here. I'll go, but said it as wide as your lens will go for the so I once again want tohave it as low as possible. I'll check that it's at one hundred it's a one hundred I know I'm getting the best quality information off my sensor is possible. We're not going to worry about exposure compensation, but you may need to and you take the picture. Matrix metering is is good for general purpose as well as auto white balance, so that is something that's not going to change with a lot of these photographs for focus, though we need to be very careful about the focus single focus is good here if our subjects are not moving around too much, if we're asking them to pose for us and they're not moving, we can focus on their eye, their cheeks, their face and be very precise about the focus, which is why we also want to just focus on the one point so we can be very precise about where we're focusing. For instance, here you don't want to choose the nine point focusing because you might focus on the person's nose and not their eyes, which may be at a different distance and you don't want their nose and focus and their eyes out of focus. It's more important to have the eyes in focus that that's why you want the single point activated? And for the drive mode I actually like to have it in continuous high that way. As the subject's expression changes or their gestures change you can just keep firing down on the shutter release if they have a great look and you want to fire off a number of shots and allows you to take a lot of pictures very quickly of the scene that looks great okay let's try taking a blurry picture why would you want take a blurry picture? Well there's lots of good reasons to take blurry pictures and so whether they're waterfalls or a panning shot of something moving blur can be a great little aspect to still photography and so here shutter speed is key choosing the right cheddar speed once again I prefer to shoot in manual on this and the key is choosing the right cheddar speed and that's going to depend on your subject uh for fun let's set one fifteenth of a second so it's just going to say fifteen and as far as the aperture it's going to depend on the light level it's not really important for this so were not going to set it the so well that is good equality as possible so that will be at one hundred metering once again matrix and white balance will stay at auto so those have not changed the focus mode I'm going to go into manual focus I like to do these things manual focus if I'm focusing on the waterfall I might use live you and then magnify in to check to see that it's in focus if I'm focusing on the panning shot the dog running, I might manually focus on the ground where they I see them coming and I know they're going to pass in front of me that way. I don't have to worry about the autofocus working or maybe not working auto focus doesn't always get it right every time, and if I manually focus pre focus on the spot they're going to go in, I could be guaranteed that it's going to be properly focused and so it's just a way for me to guarantee I'm going to get there. The shot I want we don't need to worry about the auto focus area mode, but the drive mode for at least the panning shots. I'll put that at continuous high so that I could get a syriza shots as they go past would not be important in the waterfall shot, though all right, let's do a more traditional action shot, so we're going to go to the sports were going to shoot something, some sort of action, something that's moving, something that's coming towards us, moving away from us and one of the things that you want to kind of. Work on here is getting close to your subjects either with a big lens or physically getting close to your subjects it's very difficult for your camera to focus on a small little bird flock flying around across the street from your house it's just not big enough in the frame for most things so you need to get close to your subjects so your brackets have somethingto lock onto so in in action the other important thing is that you need a fast shutter speed to stop the motion now I like manual for this as I do many things and for action a five hundredth of a second is a good place to be you might need something faster it depends completely on the action that you're photographing sports photographers really like lenses that go down to two point eight so if you could go down two point eight get your lens down there and this is ah reason why a lot of photographers like some of those more expensive lenses that go down to two point eight if not you may just need to open your lens up as wide as it can go s so this is where you're probably will need something more than one hundred so go ahead and set s o four hundred that's a good starting point once again it completely depends on the light levels. I think matrix metering is fine and white balance an auto is fine as well focusing this is really important here. You set this to continuous so it's the focusing button on the side of the camera. And remember in our last subject, we had switched the lens to manual. So you got to switch that backto auto focus, press the focusing button and goto a f c for continuous. That way it will continually adjust for the subject as it moves. And you may want to try different areas from thirty nine points to twenty one points to nine points just for fun. Set it at twenty one points, which kind of looks like a big circle of dots. It's going to totally depend on the types of composition you have and the types of sports that you're shooting as to which one is the best. And then finally, for the drive mode would of course, set that it continuous high so that you could get a cz many pictures as possible when the right action happens. All right, couple of other types of photography I call this just maximum sharpness. So these air situations where there's nothing great of depth of field that you need so there's no tremendous step the field there's. Nothing really moving around, but you just want to get the sharpest possible picture now this usually is going to require a tripod. On a cz we set the camera up, this is kind of with a tripod in mind. First off, I'll be in the manual exposure mode. Shutter speed doesn't really matter, but let's, just for fun set a two second shutter speed just to practice setting shutter speeds in a four on a tripod. As I say, cheddar speed doesn't matter. The sharpest place on your lands is somewhere between the smallest opening and the largest opening it's, the middle of the range for many cameras it's going to be around f eleven? It does totally depend on the lens that you have on that camera s so you will definitely want it one hundred so in our sports mode, we were at four hundred, so we've got to dial that back down to one hundred I think matrix metering is fine and white balance an auto is fine if you're shooting raw for focus mode here's, where you want to change it back to the single point so your camera can focus on one solid object and then stop and then this is where you want to change back to the single point modes that you could be very precise about exactly where your camera focuses, so the one focus bracket in the middle and for the drive mode, this is where you would use the mere up mode. And preferably a cable release so that when you take a picture and what's going to happen here on this camera in front of me is I'm going to press it once and the mirror is going to go up and you can hear it go up listen and then I'll press it again to take the picture and it's got a two second exposure that I said so I will do this once again listen mere up that's the opening shutter and that's the closing cheddar and so I would have a cable release if I was to do this properly and that's why you have those cable releases or wireless remote so that's how I would set up for a number of different types of photography but let's do one last one just to leave the camera in a good position and I would just call this basic photography where would I leave the camera if I'm just walking around and I don't know what my next picture is going to be and I just wanted to be ready to take a basic picture I've set manual on pretty much everything but this is where I will actually go toe aperture priority just for a little bit of speed I'm not going to worry about shutter speed but I am going to open my lens up so that it's at a pretty reasonable opening in this case I'm going to open it to f four if I need to close down for more depth of field, I'll do that at the time. But if something's happening fairly quick, I know this will give me a reasonable shutter speed. I like to have my camera said it s a one hundred most of the time I will bump that up as necessary according to the light double check here exposure compensation make sure that's not set in some funky place you want to have it set at zero to start with and then you will change it as needed from there. Matrix metering is good auto white balance is fine for focusing I will be in single so a f s for single that way I can choose one but spot for it to lock on to and I will choose a single point that I have very good discretion on where that point is this is a person's eye, a cart coming down the street and for the dr modi will just usually leave it in the single shot mode. So I think this is a good general purpose setup mode on the camera just for being ready for the next shot whatever that may be, so we'll take a look at some questions and see if somebody has questions on concentrate on setting up their camera for shooting pictures in any particular modes um yes, there are questions another question from shasta can the focus point to be set in clusters to follow action? If you use the auto or the three d tracking modes, they can track movement within the group of brackets and three d mode it once again, these are things that are highly particular to the types of action that you're shooting, and so it might work well for certain sports photography, but doesn't work well for kids running around a playground or vice versa. So you might want to play around with those different modes to see which one works best for you. Okay, parana had actually answered that in the chat room, but I just like tio, okay, I just like to hear what you have to say, a couple of questions on auto focus area one about how to choose the settings and can you explain a little bit about what they focus on? I know we don't want to go into it, probably too much detail, but so they're talking about the brackets that you can choose. Yeah, I believe so, right? Well, once again, that's the focus button down here on the side of the camera and it's the dial on the front of the camera and what you can choose somewhat depends on what focus mode you're in right now, I'm in a f s and it only allows me to go from single point to auto everything if I go back over to single continuous then I can go into the three d mode I can go into the nine point twenty one point thirty nine point moats and so what you are focusing on just depends on how you work with the camera and this is ah learning set up that you're going to have to work with the camera this is why professional photographers will take their cameras out and practice to see which modes worked best for what they want to dio and so by all means get out there and practice with your camera to figure out which ones work best for you but it's basically choosing what areas you want to focus on and so keep your instruction booklet with you and try some different modes out and I'll get your neighbor's kid to ride their bike up and down the street a few times and take pictures of him or something like that. David r had asked is there a way to take these settings you're showing and tie them to the yuan and you two setting absolutely that's where the save settings are in the setup menu I believe where you can take these and you could make your own versions of him you didn't like one or two of the things that I did which is perfectly ok because this is all you know, seasoning to flavor as you like it and so you could adjust the settings if there's something you do on a regular basis and have him as your you one and you two setting well, because veggie had asked earlier if these things you're showing our options in the camera and I had said no there you'd created these and you have to do the work in the camera but you can't kind of set it up you can set it yourself. Yeah, you still have to do the work oh, the original once yes once. Okay, you have to do that that's a pretty good deal do it once and it's done automatically for the rest of the life of the camera. That's not bad. Can you copy one memory card to the other and camera? Yes you can, which I think is one of the coolest things ever that's awesome because I have been wanting to copy things on one memory card to the other and I would ask what's the least expensive item where I can copy things. And the least expensive item for the longest period of time was a laptop computer which seems rather large and expensive just to copy information from one memory card to another. And then there's became smaller portable hard drives that you could do that on but still it's nice to be able to do that in a camera by itself um passi passi jer, I'm not really sure how to pronounce that name said if you asked if you could talk about setting up the auto exposure lock and auto focus lock and the best uses those that depends greatly on how you use your camera in the back here camera is this auto exposure auto focus lock button and if you use aperture priority shutter priority or program and you are focusing and re composing a lot and you want to lock those exposures in, it becomes a very important button it's a button? I don't use it all ever because I shoot in manual exposure I will figure out what shutter speed and appetite I want and then I could point the camera anywhere I want and the shutter speeds and aperture stay exactly the same and so it depends totally on the workflow as much as I hate that terminology, it depends on how you use your camera if you use your camera program aperture shutter priority mowed a lot of the time and you use spot metering, which I haven't talked much about once again personal style then you would use that button more and so it's it's a personal style issue I think with digital cameras and the feedback and the history ram being able to look at all this stuff, I'm much more comfortable shooting manual checking the results on the back of the camera, making sure things air right, and then proceeding into the real part about the shoot and so a style issue, right once you get more and more comfortable, you're gonna want that control right? Thiss questions come up a couple of times from the one from angel angel ad about shooting raw and j peg at the same time and I think I must have missed this, but you can save the raw on one card in the j paige on the other that's correct? Yeah. So now her kind of along with that, can you? Once the rock artist full, can you tell the card? Okay, I just want to shoot j paige, and it will just save to the second card or you could do that. That was one of the things that I was about to talk about. Anyway. After I heard that question is let's say you stick in a couple of sixteen gig cards, you should brought a one in j peg to the other. There, the rod is going to fill up a lot quicker than the j p well, as soon as that rock hard it's filled up, your camera stops firing, even though there's plenty of space on the smaller j peg card, you might say you would have to maybe either switch slots that they're in or sweet that more importantly, switched the designation in the menu system about how you're storing images and so are you. You have to be a little bit careful about that about the sizes of the files and get that squared away before you do that too much. Okay, thank you. Um vessel had asked if if you're damaging the camera by shooting lots of continuous high picks and they said they're concerned shooting what again, lots of they say continuous high picks, high pictures, maybe they're talking about using the continuous high well, you know, the camera's durability, how long is the camera gonna last? And the only real statistic that they put out is the number of shutter firings because that's probably got the biggest wear and tear on it, and so just needlessly taking pictures is probably not good on the camera. This camera, although I haven't seen it stated, I'm pretty sure it's probably raided it around one hundred thousand firings, which is a pretty long life for most people your camera could die before that it could go on for several hundreds of thousands. It just depends on a lot of other factors, but it's not necessarily putting it in the high hide dr mode are shooting lots of pictures at any one time the camera's designed to process lots of images but just shooting the fire shooting firing the shutter release a lot does put wear and tear on the camera and will eventually break I had noticed someone in the chat room earlier had said for this camera one hundred fifty could it could be one hundred fifty minimum one hundred yeah that's a lot mean when you think about it I've had my digitalis are for five years on and I'm just over sixty thousand I mean except unless your wedding photographer and you shoot three thousand per wedding and you know that you're doing two of those a weekend, right? I mean, for some people thought this is not a professional camera, right? I mean it's a professional may be perfectly happy using it, but it's not designed it professional standards which go up to two hundred and beyond thousand two hundred thousand firings okay, this was ah question that's come up several times so I'm just going to ask for janice e janice? He asked. I read that if I don't change my settings from auto focus to manual focus and then move the focus ring, I'll damage the camera and or lens is this true? Maybe the answer is maybe it depends it depends on the lens nikon has been going to aa evolutionary change on their lands is now the kit lands here it doesn't say so this isn't something that's just kind of doesn't have big label on it this lens has a special clutch motor in it the camera is in auto focus and I can turn the focusing ring and it's basically completely disengaged from the camera. There are older manual focus lenses and typically they're ones that have apertures on the lens itself on those lenses you don't want to be doing that because it's basically the drive shaft in the camera you are foot forcing that motor manually when that should only be turned by the motor inside the camera and so if it you are in auto focus and you go to the focus ring and you turn it and it feels kind of stiff don't turn it um if it's an auto focus and you turn it and it's smooth it's not going to hurt it but it's not going to do anything either. And so you do have to be careful on certain lenses and in general trying to think that there's a lens designation to where if it's an a f s or an f islands, you don't have to worry about it on previous auto focus lens is you do need to switch it on the body into manual focus so as not to cause a problem on the lands and so if you have an older manual ends, you will need to switch this on the body if you use newer lenses this switch on the body she pretty much always be it. A f it's, just for older manual nikon lenses. Good question, though. Perfect.