Lessons

Lesson Info

Mode Dial: Program, Aperture Priority, Manual

all right, continuing our way around the mode dial. Let's, uh let's get up to the good stuff program. Okay? This is very similar in many ways to intelligent auto in that it is setting shutter speeds and apertures for you. The difference is, is that the child safety locks on all the other features of the camera are turned off so that you can now get into control. I s so you can control more details about how your camera focuses and so forth. And so program mode is a very good mode for people who quickly want to put the camera into an automatic mode. But maybe there's a little manual adjustment that they might want to make as they go along the lines in there. And so when you put it in the program mode, as I say, it's gonna give you automatic shutter speeds and apertures. But if you having studied up on photography, have decided, you know what, these settings aren't for me. I would like to change them. You can do that by turning the back dial, which is called program shift, and let's go a...

head and do a little live demo here. Let me put it in the program mode and just something I kind of passed by and I'll just detail real quickly. There is a lock button in the middle of the mode I'll here, which prevents it from turning. And so if you knew that you wanted it in the program mode, you could press the lock dial and have it totally locked in there. I like to leave it unlocked because the indents, the kind of little not settings, are very distinctive, and it's very unlikely that you're gonna bump. This is so I think this camera has a really good feel to it. This is exactly the right tension, depending on how big they make these Indians on the camera. Some of these they slide a little bit too easily, and it's nice to lock it in, and so it is a nice option, but normally I just leave it unlocked. So in any case, I was going to show you something with the program out. So let me put it in program, and we'll put it in our live you here so we can see what's going on through a little. Let me adjust my focusing area just to get everything. All the brackets. All right? So where are we focusing? Let's focus on this lens right here. All right, so we're shooting at 1/60 of a second at F 2.8 down here. I don't like this. I want to change it. So what do I do if I turn the back dial of the camera? It's simultaneously changes, shutter speeds and apertures, and all of these will result. Let's go and take a couple of pictures. 30th at F four will try 60th. That F 28 will go down all the way to the extreme of this. I got it on a tripod so I can shoot really slow. Here's F 16 at 1/2 2nd Let's play these images back. Playing back. We really playing back. We are so on this case. We have the F 16 image. Nice looking exposure. I forget. This is like the 2.8 image. Good exposure. All of these are nice exposures. Let's pull this up so we can see exactly what our exposures are. So there's the F 16 version, the F 28 F four version, so I'm getting even exposures on all of these, and I just get to choose very quickly by turning the back dial. And the beauty is, is that as I change the camera to a new position, it's gonna automatically adjust the shutter speeds and apertures. And so it's very quick and easy to work with. The problem with it is, is that as the light changes, the numbers will change. And so perhaps, if you're focused on a person and somebody with a black shirt walks in frame, that black shirt is gonna throw off the light meter, and that might change your shutter speed. And so, for someone who wants to take really strict manual control, the program gives up some of that control. But for somebody who wants to operate the camera in a very simplistic, quick mode, it works with darn well. And using that program shift will enable you to get to those shutter speeds and apertures that you may prefer over the recommended settings. Now the front dial, the other very useful dial, will allow us to do exposure compensation. So an example on that is, if we take a photograph and we're thinking maybe this would be better a little darker. Maybe we wanted a little lighter due to that scene that were pointing at. You can do that by simply adjusting the front Niall on that. When you do that, you will notice down at the bottom of the frame. They'll be a little exposure compensation indicator telling you if you are one stop overexposed or two stops overexposed. Or if you're over on the minus side, you'll be under exposed by a stop or maybe three stops. Normally it's gonna be left here in the middle. And so we do a lot of, like live demos here. So let's do another quick live demo on this. I'll just point it over here in our lenses. And you know what? We were getting good exposures before here at 60th. Let me get my focusing point on the right lens. There we go. All right, so that looks like a good, normal exposure. Now, if I want to make it darker, I'm gonna turn the dial so that it goes more to the minus side. It's pretty small on screen, so you may have to look in your own camera. Each little notch indicates 1/3 of a stop and it gets a little bit bigger when we go to a full stop and so you can actually see in camera. I'm down to a full to stop. We'll do a bracket. Siri's here. So I'm gonna do the next one at minus one of the one at zero. You could see we're moving 1/ 2 3rd a full stop overexposed. And we'll do one more at a full two stops overexposed. And they were gonna play these images back. So I'm gonna hit playback. And here's our most recent image, which is and we can actually see this ups touch screen. I got to be careful of not used to using it. All right, so it says plus two right up here. Previous image was plus one. There's our normal image or minus one and R minus two, which is a really good looks like we turn out the lights in here. We need new lighting in here, and I know some of you are asking, and I'll just tell you right now that blinking thing right there that's showing us overexposed pixels, and so that's areas that are too bright. We're not seeing any details in our little hand out in front of us. And so in order to make sure that we're getting the correct exposure, I would probably shoot this image at minus somewhere between zero and minus one. And so, if we go down to the minus side, I guess we're seeing the shadows in there. Okay, so that's kind of a way to manually bracket now. Most important thing, this is super important. Don't forget this, folks. Is when you are done with exposure compensation, please reset it to zero. You don't want toe head off taking pictures at minus two, you're gonna end up with some very dark pictures. All right, so that's exposure compensation. Now, the program we were controlling program shifting back and exposure compensation. Right? And as I said at the beginning of this class, this camera is highly customizable. And if you said But John, I don't like those dials. I want the exposure compensation in the back because my previous camera had it in the back, and I really like that, and I want to do program shift in the front. Well, you can go into the dial functions within the custom menu, and you can re program which button or which dial does which function. In fact, you can even change which direction it turns and so highly customizable. If you don't like this system and you want it to match maybe the other camera that you are using, you can do that on this camera. So one of those neat little features, and that's the shortcut on where to find that in the menu system. All right, let's work our way forward to aperture priority. This is one of my favorite modes for travel, photography or kind of quick shooting. You get control over the aperture by turning the dial in the back of the camera, and you can then do exposure compensation just like we talked about before with program. The same is in the front and so very simple control. Do a quick little vibe demo pointed at our lens here, and we're at F 22. That seems like it might feel but more depth of field than I would like. And so if I just turn the back dial, I could go all the way down to F 2.8, which is the maximum aperture on this lens shoot it at shallow depth of field and think, Well, maybe I need a little bit more depth of field changed to F four. And so one of the things to take notice of in the back of the camera is items in yellow are items that air actively available for being changed. So the F four that could be changed because we just turn the back dial zeroes over to the right of that. That's our exposure compensation. That's something that we can actively change. What else is in yellow our touch shutter so we can use the back of the camera for taking pictures. So things in white or general information things in yellow are ready for active control, making changes and so forth. So that's aperture priority. And if I want to let you in on a little secret, not that it's a secret at all. But most serious photographers Onley use two modes on the top about Diallo their camera, and that is a for aperture priority. An M for manual so showed a priority is kind of, ah similar type mode, aperture priority. It's where you get controlled. The shutter speed in the camera will figure out the aperture. And a lot of photographers don't like shutter priority because we have this long list of shutter speeds, and we only have a few apertures that we can match up to them. And so if you choose a shutter speed, it may not have a corresponding matching aperture for proper exposure. And so you're opening yourself up to potential exposure problems with it. It's good in a few specialized situations, but most photographers either stick with A or M, and so let's just move our way right onto em because that's a lot of people's favorite mode gives you full manual control. You'll have shutter speeds in the back, you'll have aperture control in the front, and then you will, of course, have your light meter. And so, for getting the proper exposure, you're gonna look at the light meter, and you're going to see if it's to the minus side or if you're going to see if it's to the plus side and you're going to somehow figure it out, how to get it towards the middle. So I'll do a quick little live demo of that. Let's ah, let's shoot the slap slot wall over here a little bit darker here. And so right now and I got the camera a little bit of an angle. So right now we're at 3.2 seconds. I know it's 3.2 because we have the double little hash mark after it, and that means it's in full seconds F four and I am way overexposed so far that it is blinking at me. So I'm gonna just my shutter speed in the back of the camera and I'm just gonna keep turning the style. And there is even exposure, which is 1/6 of a second at F four. But I would prefer to shoot this picture at F eight, so let's change it to F eight. Why? I'm just making stuff up, folks, and I will change hope, wrong direction on the dial because it's blinking at me. That means I've gone way off the end of it. Let's change it to zero, and now I'm at even exposure on. I'll take the picture here a little bit longer shutter speed there, But let's take a look at our image on history. Ram looks good. Image looks looks very good there, and so that's how you set the manual exposure on it. And the nice thing about this camera is that you're going to see virtually identical display in the viewfinder of the camera as you do on the back of the camera. And so it's got a what I call a heads up display. It's got all that extra information right there with you ready to go. So one of the things about manual control is that use how you can go into the custom functions and you can start controlling a lot of the functions. So the dials on the camera or normally used for program shift and exposure, compensation and you can change that. As I said before to doing different things, you can swap them forward and backwards. You can change the direction that they go. You can have in control the flash exposure compensation rather than exposure compensation so you can have them control different things. And so when you get into the manual functions, one of the things that I don't like and let me let me show you a demo because I'm gonna tell you how to fix this later in the class. But I'm going to show you something that drives mean nuts. And let's get the camera pointed at something we can kind of see here. And let's make sure we're in manual. All right, so let's see the back of the camera. And where is? Let's put something dark. I need to find something dark. There we go. So now we can see our see our light meter down here in the bottom, right of the screen. Okay. Now watch which direction I'm turning the dial and look at what direction? Let me get this straight up. So you guys can really see this? Make it dark right there. Okay, So watch which direction I'm turning the dial. And what direction are the indicators going? And you'll notice that as I bring it, they're going in the opposite direction. So as I turn the dial to the left, the indicator goes to the right. And that makes no sense to me. Why is it going the opposite direction? Anybody from Japan, please tell me because I think they do things right toe left and the dials. And it's not just this camera. Every camera from Nikon Canon, All the dials are exactly the opposite. of what is intuitive and visual. And you can flip that when you get into those dial functions. And I'm gonna show that to you. And I'm gonna recommend doing that when we get into the menu section. So that is the mowed down the can. Am I supposed to check in with you on questions? Absolutely. Check in with me on course to check in and see if there's anything that we can address it. This point. Well, I did have a question that just came in about it. Does the viewfinder also highlight settings that are currently changeable using the control dial? Yes, that does great. So it'll be in yellow if it's a changeable feature that's ready for change. Awesome.