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Lenses

Lesson 8 from: Canon 7D Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

8. Lenses

Lesson Info

Lenses

I would like to talk a little bit more about lenses can't stop talking about lenses always good stuff talk about lenses and if you're new to the canon world or just new to photography, we like little letter coats because they can describe all sorts of things and so to start with cannon uses what are called f lenses elektronik focus lenses beyond that you're going to see a number of other different types of letters elyse special different type of cannon lands it's their luxury leads it's kind of their pro series of lenses it doesn't mean the lenses are perfect, but it means they're really basically as good as can cannon can make them and so that's really the highest inland lenses that you confined something else you'll see is I s, which stands for image stabilizer. Many of the lenses have stabilizer systems built into it which allow you to shoot at hand held low shutter speeds like a thirtieth or fifteenth of a second thes stable isis is systems have been getting better and better so ne...

wer ones are better than older ones and it's not on all lenses so you don't have the option of getting it with or without that there are a few lenses that have come out that have not had him in the past and now they have with their current lenses, so look for that it's a nice feature tohave sometimes you'll see a roman numeral number two this basically means it's, a second generation lens it's the second version, they have that lens so you could distinguish between the first version of the lands in a second version that might have improved optics. For instance, in the early days of cannon auto focus, they came out with what was called ultrasonic motor focusing, and it was a very quiet, fast focusing motor and virtually but not all, of cannon lenses have an ultrasonic motor in it, so you'll probably see a little us him on the litter codes of most of their lenses these days, and we had spent a little bit of time before our break talking about thie f s stands for short back focus, so it's designed for smaller sensor cameras, so you might think of the ss being small, and so these won't work on on full frame cameras like the five d mark to five d mark three and so forth, and so you're f s lenses are kind of limited to the middle and lower and cameras now on some of the lenses you're going to have a variety of switches on some higher and lenses like this seventy two, two hundred two point eight, you'll have a focus limiter, and the reason you might use this is that let's say, you're photographing a soccer game and at no point in time are you ever going to shoot a picture of somebody closer than ten feet to you because these people are out on the field you could limit the focusing too things ten feet and beyond that way when the camera is searching for focus it doesn't bother checking at three feet two feet away it'll only search the distance and so normally I leave that on the full range but in certain situations where I know they're not going to be close like unlimited on the lens you'll have an actual focus which returning the lands on and off in the manual focus in auto focus you'll have a stabilizer switch for lenses that do have the stabilizer and on someone's is some of the higher inland says you have two different modes for stabilizing one is standard normal handheld photography and number two is pani your camera can actually detect which direction you're holding it and as you let's say you hold the camera horizontally like this and you're panning from side to side it turns off the horizontal stabilizer because it might try to correct for your movements as you're panning back and forth if you were to do it vertically it would turn off these which are the vertical stabilizers and so if you're doing panning type shots which I love to dio you want to use mode too but then mode one for everything else all the normal stuff and then just getting really esoteric here if you ever want to shoot infrared with your camera, you could put on a special really dark filters and on your lenses is this special little red dot which indicates where you would focus if you were using infrared photography and so you're going to using a special filter potentially you might even have a camera that has been altered for infrared photography and you focus a little bit differently because infrared light focus is in a different area then standard light and that's what that little red dot on some of your lenses means new john all these little funny little things have importance and meeting on your camera you just gotta know john all right, so the kit lens that a lot of people got with this camera is thie eighteen to one thirty five three five two five point six lands nice good starter lens for somebody who has a camera like this some things that you're going to find on this lens you'll find your little white box for your effects and mount index where you're gonna mounted up on the camera and lined it up on the camera. It has a stabilizer system just an on off switch for that if you want to manually focus it, you haven't f m f switch there you'll have your zoom ring which will change your angle of you if you want to manually focus you can turn the focusing ring, but your camera should or I should say your lens should be in manual focus for this, and I will mention at this time that higher and cannon lenses have a special clutch in the focusing motor that allows you to focus at any time over the autofocus system. Not all lenses have it. If you turn your focusing ring it's kind of stiff, don't turn it you're burning the motors on your lands this land's you're not supposed to turn I know some people here do have the special clutch in there. There is no letters, no indication on the lands basically, if it's smooth it's probably okay if it feels rough and stiff, don't turn it now each lands has its own filter size. The kit linz is sixty seven in size. If you want to get a uv polarizer or other type of filter, you want to check out there's a little circle within x through it just like the symbol before the six seven. That means diameter and that's describing what size of filter you would have and the fastest, easiest way to know what size filter you take is look at the back of your lens cap, it says right on the back, your lens cap, what size filter it fits next up most lenses, they're going to have little little notches in um and this is where you can mount up lens hood or lens shade now each lens has its own unique lens shade the one for the kit lanza's this e w seventy three b cells for about twenty bucks and it's really good for blocking extraneous light so if you've ever walked outside on a bright sunny day and held your hand up to your eyes to block the light that's exactly what the lens shade is doing so that's the standard kit zoom lens and there is thie, another popular kit that you can get which has an eighteen to two hundred leads and these air once again pretty good starter lenses another lens from canon that I really like is thief fifteen eighty five now it's still just a three five to five point six lands so it's not what we consider a very fast or super high performance lands but I like getting down to fifteen because that's a little bit better wide angle and I really appreciate those wide angle needs and so the fifteen, eighty five himself for a little under eight hundred bucks the eighteen to two hundred if you bite on its owner's around six hundred dollars and so there's a lot of different routes you can go with lenses and one of the things that I like for just kind of a standard lenses I like a fast lens that has a faster aperture now unfortunately can it only has one choice when it comes to general purpose fast lenses for this camera and that's the seventeen two fifty five it's a two point eight aperture it's two point eight whether you're at seventeen fifty five or anything in between and that lens is going to sell for about eleven hundred bucks there are a couple of other good options if you don't mind using another brandolini so for instance sigma sells a seventeen to fifty and this land sells for a little under seven hundred dollars and it's got a very similar zoom range at the exact same aperture and then in our audience we have a couple of people who have a tamar on seventeen two fifty two point eight as well and these are stabilized all actually all three of these are stabilized sis which make for a really nice general purpose lenses I think they're really good for people and doing sort of like travel and nature photography so they're very good if you want an upgrade from the standard kit lenses this's the direction I would for a first look now something that we have to deal with with the smaller crop sensor is wide angle lenses they are not as many to choose from. Kanan has one really good choice for wide angle lenses and it's the ten to twenty two millimeter lands unless lens is going to sell for between eight, nine hundred dollars and it's a little bit slower on the aperture and it's a good basic wide angle lens now this is not the direction that everyone needs to go but if you do want wide angle for your seventy there are some other choices the least expensive choice is gonna be one from tamron it's a ten to twenty four millimeter lands sells for a little under five hundred bucks my personal favorite of of all these options is the toki no eleven to sixteen first officer really good quality land's secondly look at that aperture it's an f two point eight lens and so you can shoot it at two point eight from eleven to sixteen I know it doesn't have very much range but you're mainly getting these wide angle lenses for their wide angle settee but if you want the widest lens that you can get for it sigma makes an eight to sixteen millimeter lands not as fast on the aperture but even wider angle for those who want extremely wide lenses all right let's go up to the telephoto side and look at what we have to choose from here if you're looking for a better quality telephoto lens the seventy two two hundred f four is one of my favorite it's an l lands so it's a luxury high quality lens on and you'll notice these lenses are white they're trying to reflect light so that they're not us hot under sunlight now we're gonna have to give you three different choices here seventy two two hundred f four which is a reasonably fast aperture if you want a little bit longer you're going to africa on safari you wanted three hundred it's a four to five six and then their biggest one is the one hundred four hundred zoom this this little group here is a much bigger lens and I think for a lot of people the seventy two three hundred would be purely sufficient for for long lin's work on this camera the seventy two three hundred is quite a bit smaller and I think it's a bit sharper than the one hundred four hundred but the one hundred four hundred have been around for quite a while and is very popular now these lenses they're going to sell for around twelve hundred fifteen hundred dollars it varies from wednesday lands and then I decided to put one more group of lenses together and this is just the best bang for the buck if I was dealing on a budget and I wanted some lenses that weren't a thousand dollars so in the four hundred to six hundred fifty dollars range here are the five or would I have for five best lenses that you could buy first off the plane old fifty one point four works for a great portrait lands if you want a little bit longer portrait lindseth e eighty five one point eight eighty five's gonna sell for about four hundred bucks so nice cheap lands for macro work yes, canada has this beautiful one hundred millimeter l lens, but they also have their their old one still around, which is still very, very sharp and so good macro work for under six hundred dollars and this is probably the most amazing deal in cannon's lens options it's the older version of the seventy two, two hundred before they did it with the image stabilization. So no image stabilization on this, but you get an l quality land's that's pretty fast and f four and the lens is only six hundred and thirty nine dollars and so very good deal if you want a professional quality lens with really high quality optics and well built and well, whether sealed as well. All right, so we're gonna get into kind of a big section here. I don't maybe maybe we should just take a moment for any specific lens questions that might have been popping up. I think we should take a break. Yeah. That's perfect let's. Start in with some questions. That question from brindisi similar in can I leave the twenty four two one o five in a f mode while shooting video? Yes, you can, because when you're shooting video, the camera is not focusing unless you are shooting video and pressing down on the shutter release button as you're shooting video and you have a special thing turned on that we'll talk about when we get into the menu system so in general know you'll shoot you'll start shooting video and the lens will not be focusing it all unless you are activating that thank you, petey is wondering if the quality of a uv filter matters quality of a uv filter does matter there are different brands of filters out there that have different clarity levels in general it's not something that you're going to see very easily but one of the things there's a couple things that are different number one I prefer higher quality filter like b plus w it's a german company they make really nice filters they're a bit pricier it's b plus w there from snyder optics and they have very good quality uv filters and so one of the areas where you'll notice poor quality filters is when you point your camera towards a bright light how much flair you get from it poor quality filters will have much worse flair. So if you're looking to do flare shots you know for artistic value go get like three or four chief filters and stack them on there, you'll get tons of flair uh the other thing that people don't even consider in many cases is the ring that the filters air mounted it and on this particular lands I actually have a b plus w filter and came to trial experiment here when it if you just listen to it you can hear it sounds like a really good quality metal cheaper filters have a very tinny feel to it where it just feels like it's super lightweight metal and that light weight if you were to say start turning it on your lands and you gotta cross threaded a little bit you'd start deforming that medal this has a brass ring on it and so it stays in shape much easier so if I'm taking filters on and off which I frequently do to put a polarizer on you want a good quality brass ring on there and the better quality filters have a harder middle and all they have to do is spin it on a counter especially a glass counter at a camera shop and you can really hear the difference between a cheap filter and a good filter question from the first house roy is there a major difference in image quality between five hundred five hundred millimeter one point four and the five hundred fifty on the fifty one point two if both are shot at one point four so we're comparing to cannon lenses that I have I have both had a chance to shoot him and the fifty one for while it is a great value is not terribly sharp at one point for the one point two is not terribly sharp at one point to either stopping it down to f floor is a little bit better and I would definitely say the fifty one point two is going to be better at one point four than the fifty because all lenses are sharper as you stop down and so it's also just a better quality lens to start with and so it's got a couple of advantages on it uh lionheart is wondering if you can rape that twenty four to seventy two point eight I s lands cannon does not make a twenty four to seventy I s lands if you go to the cannon rumors website for the last four years they've been rumoring that they're coming out any day with it but they've been wrong every day for the last four years and when nikon came out with their second version of the twenty four to seventy it didn't have I s on it and some people were like oh you know you were disappointed that it wasn't there but tamara just introduced a twenty four to seventy with what they call vc vibration control and so if you do want it that way cameron lens that I recommended earlier would be the way to go for twenty four to seventy that has that now I will say that cannon does have a twenty four to one o five that does have stabilisation that would work that would be fine so speaking of image stabilization and apologize if you did already talked to this question from hoop in southern california I turned off the image stabilization when I shoot on a tripod because I've heard that it is diocese constantly searching for movement and because I'm on the tripod it won't finding a movement and then it creates shake is that true that was very well said that perfect I mean yes you're right you're absolutely right well said would you like to be my cost from brian does a seventy have auto focus during video mode? The camera does have auto focus tree in video mode you should have been paying attention because we talked about the live mode the life face mode in the quick mode now the quick mode doesn't work while you're in video so you do have either face detection or you would have this lens that slowly kind of hunting back and forth and it's just not something you want to do for good clean quality video as I recommended focus before you shoot and leave it set for the hole shot or have somebody changing the focus manually very carefully while you're shooting cool maybe one more lens question and that is um just it and this is from ed music with the toe kina eleven to sixteen millimeter two point eight is the count in cannon mount for the lens and on an e f mountain or in s mouth well, that lens is in a cannon. Mount it's, what's considered it e f s mouth cannon calls it f s and that's their letters, toki no doesn't use cannons letters. They have their own letters.

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Ratings and Reviews

C.Welsh
 

Excellent class. Lots of great info demonstrated in a very easy to follow presentation. John is superb at slides, and little details. Thanks for a great day of learning. I love my 7D even more :)

a Creativelive Student
 

If you already shoot with a Canon that is not a 7D, a lot of it you may already know, but it will help you get to know your way around the 7D's features, such as its autofocus system which, with exception of the more recent 1D MK4/X and 5D MK3, is one of the most advanced in the Canon DSLR range - this means it can take a little while and practice to get used to. The course is probably best suited towards the beginner and possibly intermediate users - and maybe someone coming from another camera brand such as Nikon and Pentax, etc. More advanced users will find it basic, although there is some good information on how to set the camera up, and setting the more advanced custom functions. Conversely, this is not a workshop on basic photography, so a little basic photographic knowledge will help you understand the topics being discussed (but that's not to say that a beginner won't get anything out of it). At the time of writing this review, cL have bundled this course with another of John's courses, "Fundamentals of Digital Photography". So I would recommend you take advantage of this special price if you are starting out.

user-795fef
 

Very useful. Picked up some good tips even though I've had my 7D for around 12months. I feel a lot more confident in using the camera and love the back button focusing set up for when I'm composing images using a tripod. Love John Greengo's relaxed, unassuming style and his openness in sharing his knowledge and experience. GT New Zealand

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