Lessons

Lesson Info

Introduction and Product Overview

All right so we got our live class here we got people watching on the internet or who knows when and where s o this class is on the nikon d eight hundred this is not a basic photography class this is not a review this is not a comparison between this and some other make of a camera we're just going to be learning about how to use this camera we're going to go through virtually everything that this camera can do we're not going to talk everything about everything because that would take too long I've been working with this camera I've been doing photography with sell ours for more than twenty five years and so I've kind of tried to home things down to what do people actually need to know? And for those of you on the internet who maybe you're watching this like the preview on youtube this is just the opening to a five hour class on how to use this camera and I know to some of the younger generations out there it might seem incomprehensible that it would take more than a ten minute video ...

tto learn how to actually use something but there is no way that you're going to learn how to use this camera in a ten minute video and so that's why we have the longer class here and for those of you who with who do have the paid download you will get the handout which has kind of all the shortcuts and menus and set ups that I recommend in the class for the camera so let's get started on this camera we got kind of a full day ahead of us here so the nikon d eight hundred has been a pretty revolutionary camera for an icon it's generated a lot of buzz it's bob buzzworthy camera from night gone on so this is how I've kind of laid out the class we're going to talk about a little bit of product over you we might have people switching from cannon two nikon and maybe it's the first time using nikon and so for those of you users who are experienced very knowledgeable long time users of nike I'm just kind of hang with us we're gonna go through some of the basics we got a lot of newbies with us and we need to bring him up to speed so that we can all talk the same language well talk about a little bit of photography basics to bring the it will be set to speed and then we're just going to go through the camera from the outside talking about every button what it's for how you would use it in practical day today photography and then we're going to go into the display system talking about the menus and how to get your cameras set up so if you follow this class along you'll be able to take the camera in your hand and just go line by line as we go through and set your camera, and so by the end of this class, you'll be walking away with your camera perfectly set up for the way you want to do photography, which I think is a good feeling being able to go my camera's totally said and there's, not something hanging up in there, that's causing a problem, and then at the end of the day, just to make sure you know everything, we're going to go through a little. I call it camera operation, but in reality, it's a camera test see just so that you know how to work the camera on how to make all those cities all right, so that's, what you kind of look forward to in this class now, what is kind of interesting is that this camera has the largest instruction manual of any camera that I've done a class on. This thing is nearly five hundred pages in length, and I figure a reasonable amount of time is two minutes per page. You could spend fifteen hours going through this instruction manual. Now this particular class, I'm going estimate it's going to be around five hours in length, and so how is it possible for me to cram fifteen hours of information into this little tiny short five hour class and the fact is I'm not that good there's tons of stuff that we're not going to go into. One of the things that I realized is that the's cameras air partially designed for people who don't own computers and who want to do all their processing of their images and post processing type work, right in camera and that's, not how a lot of people used the camera, and so my intention, the way I like to set up a camera and you can either agree or disagree with me now is I like to set the camera to shoot the highest quality possible format and there's some exceptions to that you'll see about those as we go along, and I just want what to shoot it straight and get it nice and clean in the camera and then downloaded to the computer where I could work on it later on. And so we're not going to talk a lot about post processing in the camera. We're going to talk about getting the best image quality out of the camera and so that's kind of my perspective on it. So for those of you who are kind of new into photography or just getting into it in some way or another, or maybe you don't even own a d eight hundred years. Watching this because you've got some other camera, you just want to learn a little bit about photography. This is not a photography class, I'm not going to teach you about depth of field. I'm not going to teach you about shutter speeds and all those hundreds of other things that go along with photography, we will cover that in a little basic section. This is on the d, a hundred in particular. So let's, talk about a little bit of overview of what you've got yourself into with this three thousand thirty five hundred dollars purchase. All right, so first off, welcome, too, the nikon club, you get to be the nikon user and you know, nikon is been around for a long time, and they are actually getting pretty close to their hundredth birthday, and I imagine that they're going to have some fun products that have the hundredth anniversary coming up. But they started back in nineteen seventeen, and they were a conglomeration of three japanese companies that were optical manufacturers and the early years all they did was make glass and binoculars, microscopes and surveying equipment, and they didn't bring out the first camera till nineteen forty eight, but things definitely started started taking a swing upwards in nineteen fifty nine because they introduced the f mt single lens reflex and that f mount is essentially the same let's mount that we have on this camera here it's the same size it works in the same way I'll be it it has evolved and made many changes since then so be careful about lenses and we'll talk more about lenses when we get to the land section nineteen eighty six saw big change because they introduced auto focus and that changed the way the lenses interacted with the bodies and that progress through the nineties until nineteen ninety nine the introduce is the d one camera now this is their top of the line camera and it sold if I recall correctly for fifty five hundred dollars and had to point seven megapixels on it so you kind of compare that to where we are now thirteen years later they have come a long ways in that time. So what do I think are the best features about the eight hundred? Well clearly that thirty six megapixel full frame sensor is the leadoff note on this camera but beyond that and I'll talk a little bit about this the dynamic range and the little light ability is pretty amazing. I've tested this against other competitors of similar price range and it is amazing how good it is and one of the things is is the dynamic range there was one particular test I'll go into but I was shooting a test subject at least let me get this straight I was shooting it intentionally, three stops overexposed and four stops underexposed and when I adjusted in light room to correct for my mistake, thie images looked really good and so you could blow an exposure by a fair bet and still resurrected you might say I still like to shoot it as best impossible in field, but it's got a fantastic, dynamic range where really comes in to help was pulling out that that shadow detail it's got a lot of reach, you might say into grabbing that out, it's got a really good autofocus system on it. Of course, we're introducing hd video, so if you want to shoot high definition video, great cop capabilities there, and then there is this optional d eight hundred e, which does not have an anti alias sing filter, which is used to correct for moray and some other little problems, and I'm going to talk a little bit about the difference between the two. If you have an eight hundred e, I could've called this class the eight hundred e class because they operate in the same manner. There are some other slight precautions that you need to take when you have any model, and in my class, as I like to say, there is a slide for that, that we will be talking about that there some giggles here in the class because they know that I often have a visual id love having visuals for things because I'm a photographer I see things visually I want to see things represented on screen all right? So one of the best things about being a nikon owner a d eight hundred owner is that you have a huge collection of cameras to choose from now you have chosen one of the top in cameras with the nikon system so there's not a lot to rise above this this is their top megapixel camera but if you're going to get your son or your daughter or someone else in your family maybe your mom or your dad another camera and you want to kind of matchup systems so you could borrow lenses well there's a whole collection of cameras from very inexpensive ones too very high end cameras like you have right here clearly the collection of lenses from nikon is incredible there's just about a lens for anything that you can imagine doing so there's lots of great choices there and they also have a fantastic flash system and I'll talk about flashes and give you some recommendations as to what I think is the best flash for this camera and so you're you're part of a big system which is ah good thing because there's lots of resource is there lots of camera stores there's lots of classes and waste to learn about the camera and so you're part of a much larger system now, as far as the d eight hundred itself, it is kind of in a unique position because it is their top megapixel camera it's, their highest resolution camera. But they also well, they still have that d three ex kind of hanging around, which is twenty four megapixel professional, pretty fast shooting camera, and I think that one's going to disappear pretty soon. But there is also the d for which is designed more for, I would say, the photojournalist and the sports photographer so mohr, interested in speed and rugged durability. There, the d eight hundred is based directly off the d seven hundred, which was their first. What I would say consumer, full frame, censored camera, and so thes, full frame sensors in these cameras are very expensive, and a lot of cameras are five or eight thousand dollars, and the d seven hundred kind of broke that price barrier and came down and offered a nice camera around three thousand dollars, twenty, five hundred dollars, and the one hundred. While some people like to say it's, a whole new camera is completely different than the seven hundred. It really is an advancement of the seven hundred it's, very much based on that camera, and the eight hundred is also also, obviously, the other option that comes with it as faras the the box that you get from the store what we don't actually have one here is we said there is it short supply we don't have a new one to play with but in here you're going to get the camera sometimes they'll package it with a lens but in most cases not it's just gonna be the camera body and there's a whole bunch of other little accessories obviously battery battery charger and then there's a a host of other little gadgets and so forth and I'm not going to really go into him too much I will just mention for a moment that it does come with software for downloading and working on the raw images I am not going to go into that in this class we could probably spend another five hour class talking about nikon software, but I have found that a lot of professionals that idea with don't use the nikon software unless there's a proprietary reason why they have to do it for some reason a lot of people are using programs like photo shop and probably most people's favorite his light room also popular is aperture and so these type of programs are also very good for converting the raw images. Now if you do ever actually crack open instruction manual, you will find a few pages in there's a karen handling section on it where it gives you all sorts of dire warnings about the camera and I have a new favorite warning, which is when adjusting the diop ter don't put your finger in your eye this isn't actually somebody actually probably complained tonight, god, I poked my eye and had to go to the tom address because of the dye opt er is right next to the eyepiece s o I think most of us get this, we don't need to go through this just don't be stupid with the camera dropping it and things like that, but very particular and word for word from the instruction manual. This product is not waterproof and may malfunction if immersed in water air exposed to high levels of humidity. And so what exactly does it mean to be exposed to high levels of humidity? Well, clearly, rain is the biggest issue that we're worried about, especially here in northwest seattle area, always working out in the rain, and so if I was going to be shooting, say, a football game for two hours, three hours out in the rain, I would not just take the camera out in that. All right? I would probably want to have a rain cover in it and just as a good visual example, cause I like visuals here is how I deal with a rainy situation, and I don't know if we can hear this. In class here. But they can hear it on the internet because you can hear it's raining pretty hard. But there's a shot I really want to get, so I got to go outside and get it really quick. Okay, here we go. Okay. Let's. See, uh, number one. All right, little closer to you. A little back top shot here, right about there. Okay, back to the car. Okay, so the idea is, is that you don't spend any longer than you have tio in direct rainfall on the camera. Now the camera does actually, through the next light here, have water ceiling on pretty much all the openings. Exactly. What does this mean? We'll nae ikon is not real clear about it, and they don't want to be held liable that it can handle a level for rain rainfall for thirty minutes. You know, there are weatherproof statistics that they can put on some cameras, but they don't put it on this camera. And so it does have weather ceiling and it's. Very hard to pin down exactly how weather sealed it is, but if you were out shooting in the rain I want attempt it for too long I would get a rain cover if you're going to be out there and you can simply use a plastic bag in some cases if it does get wet, the one thing that you can do is to get it into a dry environment into your car hotel room your house and then just open up everything so take the battery out take the open up the memory card door that wasn't good and then open up even though even pop open the flash just to let the camera air out as much as possible and hopefully after a couple of hours on the camera will dry out and be fine at that point s so that's what you could do if it does get wet there we go use of non nikon accessories could damage the camera and may void your warranty and so let's be obvious. Yes, nikon wants to sell you their accessories I have found I say I don't think I've ever known somebody who has actually damaged their camera from hooking up a tamron aura toki noora sigma lens in some cases they might make a lens that's more affordable or has something that nikon doesn't offer there is, however, things that the camera could do that communicates with the lens and it can fix certain problems, and it won't be able to do that if it doesn't understand the lens. So there might be a couple of features that you can't take care of. If you die an off brand linds, there are off grand flashes. But to tell you the truth, I would really highly recommend the nikon flashes flashes one of most complicated areas of photog, afi, and it just keeps it easier to keep it all in the same family. There are aftermarket batteries that you can get. They're typically not as good as the night cons, but I haven't seen him damage the camera. And so you'll have to make a judgment call as to whether they are worth the extra money or not, in that case.