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Lesson 7 from: Canon 7D Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

7. Q&A

Next Lesson: Lenses

Lesson Info

Q&A

I know that when you turn off the camera the sensor cleaner happens is their problem with doing that too much do you recommend leaving the camera on for long periods of time rather than turn it off to conserve battery life and thus also the number of cleanings that happened there is no harm being done to the camera by doing a sensor cleaning and so turning this camera on and off well that actually takes about three or four seconds for you to go through its sensor cleaning and if you like press the shutter release it kind of kicks out of that mode when we get into the menu section we're going to be able to manually turn this off if we wanted to but I don't think I haven't I haven't heard of a good reason anywhere as to why to turn it off and how long do you leave your camera turned on when it's actively out shooting and so just you tend not to want to make a lot of adjustment changes if they're not necessary and so if the camera's out you're going to be shooting with it leave it on the ...

camera automatically goes into a sleep cycle pretty quickly and so it's not using much battery power at all if you leave it on and say leave it in your camera bag for a week it's gonna use very little battery power good question the question from the internet there's a lot of questions about what focus setting to use and in what situations? Well, I'm going to be running through the very end of this class, we're going to be setting the camera up for, like, portrait and sports situations, and so I'm going to be going through that a little bit more, but what? I'm going to ask the internet and we may not have time for it now, but just kind of get your questions down is what very specific situation, not just I'm going to shoot sports or I'm going to shoot soccer, I'm going to shoot basketball and I may not have the right answer, but I think I can probably steer you towards the right direction because, you know, to really know how to set this camera for shooting basketball. You should to basketball on a regular basis, but things to think about or something that I'll be able to help him kind of guide you towards. All right. That's, great wait uh, question from fly up high about focus and recompose does that change the focus plane, resulting in the photo being out of focus, especially in a shallow depth of field? Well, it gets a little tricky it depends on some lenses and we might get a little complicated here but okay, let's just take russ out here because he's pretty specific distance what are we thinking about twelve feet, maybe ten feet twelve feet let's say twelve feet? Well, if I focus on him, most lenses have a curved to feel the plane and so is I focus on him twelve feet he's still twelve feet on that focus plane really hasn't changed. There are some macro lenses that have flat, uh, focus planes and that might adjust there for so for most people it's not going to make a difference at all? Uh, some people do prefer rather than focusing and re composing, they will use the left or the right or one of the other focus points and that potentially could be a little bit more accurate if you're dealing with a super shallow depth of field. So if you're using like an eighty five one point to your two feet away and you're focusing on someone's eye that little turn you may have a little bit of movement in there where it's adjusted focus by a quarter of an inch and that may make the difference between the right shot in the wrong shop a question from gen rina in high speed continuous shooting does the camera refocus between each shot if the camera is in the servo focusing mode, the camera will track focus and adjust at eight frames a second. Yes, it will change more questions. Ah, this is a common question from alec's photo do you recommend to format your card after every download? Yes, well, no, I'll change it, I'll surprise people know I don't recommend deputy I do recommend formatting the card before about the new shoot, so sometimes just as a safety precaution I'll shoot a bunch of stuff I'll download it, I'll put the card back in the camera and then I'll just kind of put the camera away in case something happened to my computer or something got deleted right away I could just go back to that card because that card's not doing anything until I go out on another shoot and one of the standard things before I go out in a new shoot okays the battery good, let me format the memory card do I have the right lens on? Do I have the basic settings that I'm going to want to start with? And so formatting is one of those things that you initialize your whole photographic process with. Okay? Last question from bibi is it bad for my camera? If I don't use it for a few months, maybe you can give some tips on how to store it properly while not news sure, yeah back back in the days of mechanical cameras, they needed to have the grease lubricated on them and occasionally in some places you had to have it changed out the grease changed from summer to winter on your camera in extreme environments luckily with the modern cameras there better sealed they have better looper consent um and so there is very little maintenance that needs to be done on these cameras in fact, the only thing that really needs to be done from time to time is to have the sensor cleaned I'll talk about that uh the tools that you can use to to clean that censor other than that I sometimes will keep a little paint brush or toothbrush and kind of make sure things were cleaned up on the outside of the camera but other than that there's really nothing to do if I was going to store the camera for a long period of time, I would take the battery out of the camera. Hopefully you're not going to store the camera for more than five years and take out the time and date battery, but hopefully if you're going to start a camera for that long, I don't know what you're doing is probably some questions that we can answer on I'm gonna go in lenses a little bit further and then will break again for some lenses but let's just catch up on some of these questions that sounds great. Do you mind if we go back? I'll go back us away to the very beginning to tell all right, there have been several questions in chat rooms about if it is necessary to turn off the camera when changing lenses. I know that kanan recommends that you turn the camera off, but I haven't seen a lot of problems kind of the reasoning for that is that when you turn the camera off, it powers down the sensor and when the sensor is live there potentially be some static electricity, which would draw dust onto the sensor. But with the sensor cleaning system in the camera, it's not a problem that I've really seen and I have a numerous occasions probably taken it off it's one of those things that it's probably best practices is to turn it off, but it's not a big deal if you don't. I have a question from cat vet, and this was regarding the a lock button. Do I need to hold this button down while re composing? Well this button? It does change on a variety of cameras and every once in a while I do need to test it, but on this camera, if you hold it in or you just precedent, it becomes locked and it will remain locked until you take a picture and the camera will then reset itself after you take that picture, it'll reset itself if you turn the camera off and I think it'll even reset itself if you leave the camera, sit for about ten seconds so it's it's good for a little bit there's a number of functions on the camera that are active for about six seconds and so you gotta act somewhat quickly so sometimes people we'll know the first step of what they want to do, I want to change the so and they press the ice in the o what do I do now? And they forget what button they go to and then they go to the right dial and they start turning it and nothing happens and so you've got that little window of time to work with, uh, question from sam cox uh, to get the best results with a servo mode, is it important to use a single focus point rather than a field of points? I would have to say that I would disagree with that. I think for most things that are moving around sound it's difficult to track it with one single point, and so when I shoot sports, I'm going to want to use that expanded area or the zone area, which is the five points or the nine points it varies according to exactly what your shooting and so there's a lot of variety and that's why the camera allows you to set it up in any way that you want don't did you get this from relish and india did you talk about the evacuation? The kind of figure out the number of shitter clearings know that's not something that can in supplies with the camera but one of the things that some people would like to know is how many times have I fired the shutter? Because that kind of kind of mileage in your car and there are programs available out on the internet that you can download and run through your camera you hooked your camera to the computer and it'll tell you how many actuacion zor shutter firing your camera has gone through so as I said before your camera has a durability setting of one hundred fifty thousand does that mean it dies when it goes one beyond that not necessarily it's kind of like a car you know they estimate how many miles thie engine is good for and so I you know down like the local camera shop glazer's which loaned us this camera when you take in when they take any used camera they run it through a check to see how many firings it has on it and if it's one of the cameras they can check they'll put that on the on the tags so you know how how well used it is but there's aftermarket things it's not from canon directly cool and I apologize because there were several people to shout out who had that question so care dogs and dave dee and john in kansas. Thank you for that question. Okay, question from body elsie lacie when I shoot a lot at high speed, sometimes it gives me an heir and says it can't write on the card on my last picture is lost is that a problem from the camera or from the card? I have not seen that personally, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say it's, probably with the card, they may need a newer, faster card. Okay, this is a question from wayne underscore w p g exposure, noise reduction, highlight tone, priority, et cetera affect j peg styles? Do any of those affect the raw file in general of all the special features and settings? What actually affect the raw file? No, those features do not affect the rock is the rock is the straight data from the sensor they affect j pegs, and we're going to talk more about that as we get into the menu settings and and how they met and how they match up and what the effect. But in general, the draws the raw, and that hasn't changed thank you, uh, question from art minds and christine welch, how can you lock down that em manual setting I often bump the settings inadvertently during shooting and don't notice that I've done that until I review the images. Have they locked? Could you read the first part of that question? How did they lock down? Can you lock down the m manual setting? Um, I think what they're referring, teo is if you have your camera in manual, the back dial has a switch that can lock the dial on the back of the camera, but there is no lock for the top dial up here. And so I guess you just have to be careful about bumping it and being aware. And that has happened to me when you grab the camera, will quick and it just flips the switch a little bit and, uh, that doesn't have it. Very few cameras have a lock on both the shutter speed and the aperture. A question from in southern california. What is the seventy auto shut off time limit officially. And is there a required wait time to re start the camera? Well, the camera has a sleep mode that it goes into, and when we get through that in the menu when we get to that slide, you can adjust it as you want there's a number of different levels of sleep, you know when you just take a picture or you press down halfway on this release your camera will stay highly active for about six seconds, but it will still be on and then after about thirty seconds it'll kind of go into a sleep mode it's still on but it's in a sleep mode and so I guess your camera has different levels of taking naps sometimes their catnap sometimes there long naps and sometimes it goes to sleep. Question from reh fell in london, uk if you use the battery if you use a battery grip is, uh the camera as weather sealed as it is without the grip yes, the weather, the battery grip, the vertical grip that you get is sealed like the camera so it's no less, no more durable to rain or any other elements at that point back to when we are opening up the box, a question from guitar goddess who was our friend out in new york, she asks, how would the magnet damage the camera? Does it erase a memory card or the internal memory? The magnet correct does not have any problem with the camera it's with the memory cards. And so if you were to take this and set this on a very powerful magnet, you could potentially erase and or damage the memory on it just out of curiosity in the early days of digital going through the metal detector at the airport I took a memory card with him and just threw that to see if that would have any effect and it didn't have any effect on that it's not nearly powerful enough and so it's going to be something more under industrial uses that you might find those types of magnets so nothing with the internal memory no thank you uh d a talbot is wondering when you switch lenses does the basic weather ceiling changed based on the grate of the lens? Yes, that is something that does change there are some lenses that have a weather sealing this lens does not it just has a stainless steel bayonet mount and there are some people here in the audience actually that have lenses that have a little tiny rubber seal. Some of the el lenses from cannon are particularly notable toe having a little rubber seal it has a little bit more of a gasket that snugs up against the camera to help prevent water from getting in there question from crazy thirteen gs is the spot metering located always in the center of the light sensor or does it move along with the focus point? Thie spot metering is always going to be in the center of the frame and so you may be choosing a focus point off to the left or right but meeting is being taken place in the centre in fact we're going to talk about that it's actually outlined on the frame lines as you look through the camera thanks hi various is wondering um I read that one hundred sixty s o is better than a two hundred I s o seventy you know, I've heard a lot about this and it is mostly coming from the video side of technology we're working in one sixty increments yields better results, but I have not seen that proved, nor have I seen it in my own personal tests for still photography, and so I don't shoot enough video to be considered, you know, high end video guru, but from what I've heard one sixty three, twenty and those increments is where you want to shoot video, but I haven't seen that be the case in still photography cool press follow on that I had heard that that cannon was the ideal setting was right around two hundred as opposed to one hundred is that the case you said one hundred earlier, but just along the same lines of heavens one hundred is what we consider the native sensitivity of the sensor and so that's basically the lowest number of setting and there are a number of cameras out there that you can go below the native sensitivity and it's basically using computers toe refigure the light, but one hundred is going nowhere is going to be where you want to have the sensor for overall best image quality, I have not heard that as being two hundred it's kind of strange that it's perfectly at one hundred what a nice even number and that's, where popular film was and so there's probably similar tronics trickery going on behind the scenes that cannon and in the making of the camera. But from everything that I've seen best quality results start at one hundred and is that is the native at two hundred on icons. There are some of the older in icons were natively at two hundred, but nowadays there more and more commonly at one hundred. Ok, uh, maybe we'll just do a couple more questions. That second question from never too late does the seventy focus quicker than the five demark, too, and he's from glasgow, scotland. I'll be honest. I do not know the answer to that question because that's a very specific question now they had asked a slightly different question which they may have intended to ask, which is? Does it have a better focusing system? Yes, it's got more points and it's more versatile in the way that you can customize it. But with the lens out of focus and wanting to focus on one subject, uh, there's been a lot of complaints about the five d mark two and focusing system but I'll be honest with you I've been working with the camera for three years and it is very fast to focus if it has something good to focus on in the brackets and so I don't know if it's faster or not, but in general my opinion is it doesn't really matter because they're both so much faster than you or I can manually focus the difference is very, very subtle between it just capturing one object now follow focusing the camera shoots at eight frames a second and it can retract between those the five day march to shoots at half the speed four frames a second so it doesn't need to be able to focus as fast because it's not shooting as fast but we'll talk more about five tomorrow right? Hannah exposures is wondering uh either with the seventy or any other camera. Have you seen any difference in the camera speed too right to a eight gigabyte card versus a thirty two gigabyte card when both are four hundred x no if both those cards are four hundred ex they should right and read at that speed now memory cards do have a right speed which is when you take pictures writing information to the card and then they have a read speed when you're downloading it too to the computer reading it off of the card the computer's grabbing it and sometimes different cards will have different read and write speeds and so one might be faster and won and slower in another. I know in some cards when they first kind of come out with a large knew card it's not always the fastest card in the world, so you have to kind of take a look at those speed ratings if you were shooting sports because that's, where the camera's potentially could bunch up on you if you have a slow card and you're trying to shoot a large syriza shots and it's trying to download all of the shots, right? Uh, one more question about that and question from del fozie when I use a I servo mode, how do I know what I'm focusing or where I'm focusing? Because I don't see any focus red points popping up or does it always focus in the middle? So it's going to focus what wherever you have selected the brackets to focus. So whether it's one point five or nine it's going to focus on those points now, whether they turned red or not, is something that we're going to control in the menu system.

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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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