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Left Side Buttons

Next up, right below it is what is known as thie bracketing button. We talked about exposure compensation where we take a lighter picture and a darker picture. The bracketing allows us to take a serious of pictures were the camera adjust the exposure for us automatically. So all we have to do is just hold down the button and boom. It takes three pictures or if we want, we can have it take five pictures and you can set up how many pictures and what sort of increment that you want this to be at. They could be third stops, full stops is you see here you can make everything lighter, you can make everything darker. This is something a lot of landscape photographers will use for a variety of reasons. Number one just to get the right exposure. This was a lot more popular back in the days of film when you didn't know what the right exposure was going to be. Not so many landscape photographers, eh? Maybe product photographers do now because you can check the back of the camera so easily. But it...

's, very popular with hd, are high dynamic range photographers where they shoot a syriza pictures three, five, sometimes more another cameras, and they take all those images, and they combine one image that uses the tonal values from all of them combined into one and it creates an image that looks a little different like different than normal images because it's grabbing wherever the camera was best able to grab the information from whether it was the light image or the dark image. And so it's something some photographers use on some people's cameras this never gets used now what you're gonna do is you're just going to simply go in here with exposure bracket and hit the button and the attorney that the front dial or the back dial to dial in the two options, which is thie increment rate third stop two thirds one stop and how many frames and basic options are going to be either zero frames, which means it's turned off three frames or five frames and that's exposure bracketing now we work our way down to the bottom, where we have a button in a collar around it the color around it is an auto focus manual focus switch and nikon has had an auto focus manual focus, which here since day one of the auto focus cameras but they are in a bit of transition and they're starting to put and auto focus manual focus switches you might be able to see on this camera here in front of me over on the lens and so you have this complicated thing where you have an auto focus manual focus on the lens and on the camera and so what I would recommend is leaving the camera one in auto focus one hundred percent of the time all on all the time if you do want to manually focus all the current lenses will have a manual focus on the lands and you can adjust focus there if you have older auto focus lenses they may not have a focusing switch on the lands then he would use this to go to manual focus down here but I think long term in the future we're going to see this disappear in the camera and you'll only see it on the lenses but that's just kind of a long term process that they're changing next kind of hidden and completely unlabeled it's the most important button on the camera that has no label at all on it and there's a lot of people who have a camera like this that doesn't do they don't even know that this button exists and so there's a button in here and pressing the button well frankly it doesn't do anything you gotta press some other buttons with it so let's talk about the focusing mode that it controls so what you need to do is you need to press the button and then you're going to rotate the back dial on the camera and it changes the focusing mode and here are your options single focus and we saw this before when we were talking about live you you focus on a subject and as soon as it figures out it stops focusing this way you khun recompose and put your subject off center if you want the exact opposite of that is a f c this is continuous focus where your camera constantly adjust and if you have your cameras motor drive turned on which we talked about earlier you can capture a siri's of pictures as a subject is moving towards you or away from you and these air two very different modes that you need to be very clear about which mo durian for any given situation. Now there is a third option in here, and it is known as auto, and this is where the camera automatically switches back and forth between the two mouths. You know when you have your camera in the full auto green super simple mode, it's in the auto mode and in everything else and you need to choose whether it's in single or continuous. Now for most people with most types of photography it's f s single focus, you focus on the subject and it stops its there. But when you're shooting sports or action photography, you want to be in continuous focus and my recommendation is to not use a f a the problem with faa is it is unpredictable and sometimes it doesn't understand exactly what's going on, for instance let's say you're shooting basketball our players moving or not moving well they're moving a large percentage of the time but occasionally they stopped too defend somebody and they're not moving so your camera might lock onto that focus and stop focusing when they start moving again and so in that mode you would be much better off in the continuous mode so it continually tracks whether the subject to stopped or not and so I don't recommend faa for most people most of the time and specifically when you get into sports and action you want to go to kfc and so that's one of those things that you just need to be very sure about where you are and where you need to be and so that is the focusing mode now the other way that you could adjust your focus is with the front nile and this is the area that you're focusing on and in this we have many, many different options we start off with the single point these air the fifty one focusing points within your viewfinder you can choose a single point that you could move that around anywhere you want you can choose a group of nine this is one of my favorite for sports and action it's a target size that's about the size of my subject this is a very good one for sports another good one for sports is the dynamic twenty one point area now, as you'll notice where it says d nine and d twenty one on screen right below it says a f c only you have to be in the fc continuous moto access thes moz, you cannot be in the s mode, which I recommended for a lot of shooting. So these d nine and d twenty one, our force sports shooting, you might say the d fifty one mode. What happens here is that you pick one area, one focusing point as kind of the starting point, and it follows the subject around the entire area. This works out quite well for subjects that have no interfering problems. For instance, if you were to photograph a bird that's flying around in the sky and there's no trees around, wherever that bird is within those fifty one points it's gonna pick up the problem with fifty one points when you're shooting. A typical field sporting event is that you have other people crossing in front, and as soon as they cross in front, the camera might want to re focus on it. And so you have to pick the right focusing pattern for the subject that you're doing, john, you read the minds of few people are tyrants, really? Casey was asking about what focus money would recommend for shooting fast moving birds. Thank you for answering that on dh then to go back a little ways just while we're still in focusing love my, uh, weimaraners. I don't know if I'm saying that kind of dog, you know, the dog weimaraners, right? Okay, I wasn't sure if I was pronouncing that correctly. I love those dogs. Uh, there's your screen name love my whiner risers asked in the chat room I purchased this camera and have problems with the auto focus. For instance, I was trying to take a pic of a bird in a tree and the camera would not focus on the bird on ly the leaves. Can I tell the camera what to focus on? And then can you give an example of how to force or override the auto focus points? I'm still confused as to how to make it focus on a bird and not the leaves, right? Well, there's a lot of hopper yeah, there's a lot of options for focusing because there's so many different types of situations that you might have to deal with ah bird on in a tree that's maybe obscured a little bit by branches, and so far you would be best served by the single point focusing and get that one single point right on the beak of that bird and it should be able to focus on it the problem that she probably had is that she probably either had nine twenty one or all fifty one points on, and when you have it on all fifty one points, it stops at the subject that is closest to the camera. And so, you know, for the camera right here in front of me here in the classroom, if this camera had a fifty one point focusing system from this camera, it's going to focus on this camera because that's, maybe closest to it, or maybe even the desk it's not going to come back and hit me, and so this is where you would use the single point focus. Let me just kind of go through these other ones here and will go through a couple scenarios. The camera also has a three d mode, and this is where the camera has its own little brain trying to figure out what's moving in where it is, and I haven't tested this a lot. It seems like it's, you know, it's it's, the artificial intelligence program of the camera, trying to figure things out. Ah lot of sports photographers don't like it because it's a little less predictable on what it's going to dio the final option is auto, which is just choosing all the points. All the time it's on ly different than the d fifty one in that the d fifty one you have one point as a starting area, so if you wanted to choose the far right hand focusing point far right for you guys ah, far right focusing point that's where it would originally look and then if the subject moved it would follow it. Where is in the auto area? It just picks whatever's in any of the spots and starts whatever's closest at you and so sometimes let's see if I'm shooting a field sport where you have a bunch of people on the field there's a ball and a goal and they're trying to do something okay, is that described like pretty much all sports right there? Uh, cricket, football, soccer, baseball, something like that. I would think nine point focusing would be pretty good because you get this interfering with subject's moving around each other and you can keep yourself your target on your subject. I was out at the velodrome here recently shooting a bike race and as the cyclists were coming down the track, I wasn't focused on a particular cyclists. I wanted whoever was in league in the lead of the race to be in focus and so in that case I could use the auto area or the d fifty one area just whoever is in the front of the race just focus on them and who's ever closest. And so it depends on what's most important to you whatever's closest to you or a particular person that's in focus. And so choosing the right focusing point for the right event in your lens and where you're r is very important, it could be a little challenging narrowing that down. But for general photography, I like single point because I want to be very specific about what my cameras focusing on. For instance, when I'm taking a portrait of somebody, the closest thing to me is often there now, so and I don't want to focus on the nose. I want to focus on the eyes, and so I'm going to put the focusing point on the eyes in landscape photography. I may be choosing a specific distance that I'm focusing on, and so I'm not a big fan of the fifty one point or the auto area. With the exception of the bird flying in the fairly open sky worked pretty good at the velodrome. It depends on what type events, and so I like the single point for most stuff, I like the d nine for most sporting events, especially field events where there's interference with people coming in front of your subject matter. And occasionally going to the all auto area or the d fifty one area so those are some of my favorite modes there now I will mention that if you do choose thie single point or the dynamic nine or the dynamic twenty one you can move where that selection is with that mouse on the back, your camera a little multi controller and so in some of the modes you can kind of move it over to the left and up and write which is sometimes nice because you want to frame a subject other someplace other than the center of the frame a few more questions in here confused about f from ballard can you talk briefly about the autofocus point rap size? What does it d'oh and what do the different millimeter settings and mean the rap signs rap size there is something called wrap but we're going to wrap a little later in this class there's a mode that you can turn it on and I'm not sure what the second part of their question wass but hang on I got a clear thinking I got I got more auto focus stuff coming around awesome awesome and I think we have a question in class go ahead yeah yeah noticed I used the single point focus a lot, but for example, if I'm all the way on the right side and I'm finding I want to move the focus point takes forever to get to the other side yeah is there is a way around it okay it's called rapping on and that's a dream will wrap later in the class think they trust me I will be wrapping later I I want to see this here in the hometown of macklemore ian brat video last night hey apparently caused chaos of the city doing a rap video here in the city perfect day for this, isn't it all right? I got more out of focus stuff let me go dive back and show you some more technical we're going to get a little geeky here so everybody get on your geek classes or whatever. All right, so you got fifty one focusing points and each one of these focusing points is a little different than the other then you might say some of these are horizontal line sensors and what it actually comprises is a couple of lens is looking for a horizontal line now if there's a vertical line, it doesn't see it because it doesn't register it on both lenses and no matter where that len that line falls on this horizontal line censor it just doesn't work and what happens is horizontal lines that are not in focus appear to be broken and the camera sees this and goes ah ha these two lines are supposed to be together so we'll turn the lens this direction and fix the problem now sometimes on cameras they have vertical line sensors and all they do is look for vertical lines and if they're broken or out of focus they know exactly how to fix them and so some sensors or some focusing points or vertical some or horizontal next up some focusing points are rated as an f two eight focusing point which means you need a lands of f to eight to make that focusing pointe work some focusing points are classified as f four maybe an f four vertical which means it's on ly looking for vertical lines and it needs an f four lands you might see an f five six cross type center and this is a rare type of sensor that is actually looking for both horizontal and vertical lines. And so the best of the choices that we see here is thie f five six cross type sense or cross type because it's looking for both types of line's vertical and horizontal and five six means it's going to be good on my lens that goes to five six it's going to be my good on my lens it's enough for and it's going to be good on my lens it goes to have two point eight I know we often associate lenses their quality with how fast their aperture is but it's kind of the inverse when it comes to focusing points we want focusing points the ultimate focusing point would be a multi cross type sensor and f ninety nine because then it works with all lenses in all directions. All right, so having that base of information let's, look at what this camera has in focusing points. The left and right areas are all horizontal auto focus points, so they're looking for horizontal lines and they'll do it with all lenses that are f five, six or faster. And right now, all the lenses that nikon offers straight out of the box r f five six or faster so they will work just not work real well with vertical sensor with vertical lines. Now, the entire grouping in the middle is great because it is an f five six cross type f points, so these middle ones are the best focusing points on your camera. And so for shooting sports, you can select the grouping over to the right, but just remember, they're not quite as good as the ones in the middle, and so that's going to be a little bit of a balance for you as faras composition and technically getting the shot. Now, in addition to this, the one in the center is actually good down to f ate now, nikon doesn't make any faa lenses, but if you were to take a lands like there five hundred millimeter f four and you were to put a doubler on it, it becomes a thousand millimeter f ate lens and you could still auto focus, but only with the center point on the camera. And so the center point once again, like in every camera prior to this, the center point is the most sensitive and the most accurate. In general, they're all accurate, but it's the most sensitive under different light levels with all the different lenses, and so feel free to use whatever focusing point you want. But just remember the better, more sensitive ones or turns the middle of the range. And so just in summary again, remember to activate all these changes it's that little mystery focusing button over on the side, you'll use the front dial to choose where you focus, and you'll use the back dial to figure out how you focus. And if you do choose a smaller area, the one the nine or the twenty one point you'd select whereabouts in the frame by using the multi selector in the back of the camera. And so this might be a good time to catch up and see if there's any final q and a on auto focus, because we're just about at the end of it, of this. Okay, um we have a specific scenario from someone in the chat rooms they ask I was taking photos at a motor cross race and my camera was focusing on the people in the background and not on the writer directly in front of me. What did I do wrong there you were saying that it focuses the lens focuses on what is closest but not in this case, right? And so I don't know exactly because I wasn't there, but my guess is that if it didn't focus on the motorcyclist closest to you for some reason it and so it just went to the next subject that it could focus which happened to be in the background, and my guess is that you just needed toe point the camera mohr accurately on the motorcycle or they are the cyclists may be choosing a smaller area rather than choosing the fifty one points, just choosing the nine so that it would only look at the nine and put put those nine right on the engine block because there's a lot of contrast the lines right on that engine block off the motorcycle. I think that would do a pretty good job because in its there isn't any focusing points at all to focus on the stands in the background it's all on the motorcycle if it can't focus, it'll just keep trying to focus on it and so there is a technique to shooting sports where you have to get very good at landing those focussing points on your subject. I was as I said, I was at the velodrome and these cyclists are doing like upwards of forty miles an hour and I am tryingto panis smoothly as I can to get my keep my focusing points on the cyclist cause I don't want to get the track behind him where the people behind him in focus and it's a challenge because with a long telephoto lens it's magnifying all your movements and you have to be really steady. And so this is why one of the reasons why sports photographers use model pods is itjust enables them to keep the camera maur stable but still fluid in its movement so you could move back and forth and so a mono pod might help us. Well, we have a question in class, so the sensor itself for the autofocus is technically, in a sense, looking for like a little square on the object that you're focusing for because of those horizontal and vertical lines. So if there's something that you can look at on the subject, you're looking to focus for that's, you know, kind of fits that that scenario that's where you're going to get the focus from whether it's jack behind are closest to you that's just what it's seen right, for instance, if you had a track and field athlete and this doesn't really happen, but if you had a track and field athlete that had a very plain white jersey and they have no numbers, no anything on it, that would be a very tough place to focus on. And so maybe on the face there's lots of contrast in lines on the face, but usually athletes are wearing numbers, and that helps in the focusing for they're wearing multi colored jerseys in those sections help in focusing and does that also like, is that auto focus affected when you're too close to the subject? Almost like an a macro situation where you know the camera's not being able to pick up something? Because it is, I don't really know how to explain that there are cameras will have a problem if subjects get too close, all lenses have a minimum focusing distance in most cases, it's going to be around three feet, some cameras or money or some lenses, they're much closer somewhere further back, but in general, even closer than three feet is going to be challenging to focus, and that can be affected when you're like zooming, and maybe they were zooming into you if the camera is way out of focus, it needs to move a lot till it narrows it, and it gets really close. Okay, uh let's get through this. Okay, over on the left side we have a vibration reduction on the lands this is going to help you hand hold the camera with low shutter speeds I in general would leave this turned on most of the time you're hand holding it does use up a little bit of battery power but not a lot. It is important to turn this off if you are on a tripod though I've talked a little bit about the autofocus switch if you do want to switch to manual focus this is where I would do it on the lands leave the one in the camera in auto focus all the time nikon has us a collection of lenses out some haven't auto focus and emmanuel focus and it's pretty clear as to what's going on and where the lens is. Some of the fans here lenses haven't m a option, and what this means is that you can manually override the auto focus if your camera hat if your lens simply has an a you aren't supposed to grab the manual focus ring and start turning it. If we have the camera on this camera here in front of me, the lens on here is the eighty five one point eight g and you can see it says m a on the side of it and I can auto focus or I could just grab the focusing ring it's got a special clutch and I could turn it any time what so the higher in lenses have the a and that's right would flip it to manually focus but I can auto focus if I want to there and so it's kind of a nice back and forth on it so that's what's going on with that part of the lands there's a little white knob there that kind of indicates on where to line up the lens when you are mounting it on the camera over on the side of the camera we have a bunch of little rubber doors where we could plug things into the camera the first thing is a microphone input nikon makes an emmy one stereo microphone and if you shoot a lot of video you want to get good quality sound you need to get the microphone out of the camera because the camera hears things like you holding it and zooming and focusing and everything else and so these types of microphones often have rubber shock mounts which reduced the amount of noise they also record just plain old better quality sound because they have better microphones this sells for about one hundred fifty dollars there's a number of other companies that make good ones once that I like are road and sign heizer they make some very good small mikes that mount right on the hot shoe of the camera next up we have our u s b port where you would download to your computer if you want to. We also have other accessories from nikon. We have wireless transceivers so that you can trigger this camera from a distance you'd have to purchase a transmitter and a receiver in order to do it. There's also a little smartphone wireless adapter, a little tiny plug you can have stick out of the side of your camera. You can transmit pictures from your camera to your phone that you can immediately upload which is kind of a cool little device. Now you are limited in how far that distances it's about fifty feet and I think you are limited in the size of images. You're not gonna upload raw images to this it's going to be smaller j peg images, but that is a cool little option that you can add to the camera. The hd my port is if you want to play back to an hd tv, you can also plugin a hd mic cord and record un compressed movie live you footage out of here. And so if you want to record with an external video recorder, you can do that on this camera. There is a remote and gps option in here. The gps gp one unit from nikon sells for around two hundred dollars and we'll record your gps coordinates it sucks up a little bit of battery power and it's not got the strongest signal in the world, but it does work pretty well if you wantto do product photography or architectural photography or landscape photography you want to put the camera on a tripod and when you fire the shutter you don't want to be touching the camera because that's gonna cause vibrations. The best way to handle this is with the m c d c to cable release and this allows you to fire the camera from a distance with precision it's not going to be moving the camera and it's going to be able to trigger the camera exactly when you fire it. If you want to do long time exposures, you can also lock it in the forward position and do bulb exposures where you're leaving the shutter open for a long period of time. So that's a handy little device that one's going to sell for only about twenty five dollars so that's a pretty cheap one for most people and then finally you have a headphone jack and so if you are recording video and you want to record audio and you want to monitor it as you're going along you khun plug in your standard good old headphones right into the headphone jack and listen to what that sound is like and adjust the sound if need be in a manual mode that you'll see later on