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Button Layout

Lesson 3 from: Canon Rebel T2i / 550D Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

3. Button Layout

Get an in-depth guide to all of the functions and features found in the buttons of your Canon Rebel T2i DSLR camera.

Lesson Info

Button Layout

all right, This is the button layout where we are going to be looking at the camera from all angles and talking about all the different features associated with the different buttons on the camera. So we're going to start on the top, so top of your t two I, we're going to start with the most first and simple basic button the power switch. So obviously, if you want to have the camera on to take a picture, the camera needs to be turned on. One of the things, though, is that when you turn the camera on, it kind of turns itself off. After about 30 seconds. There are timers built into the camera that we'll eventually get to in the menu system, But for the most part, your camera is using a bit more power when it's on and ready to go. And so it kind of powers down to a sleep mode. And so if you have your camera on for quite a bit of time, you can't just press the shutter release and instantly get a picture. You need to press down on the shutter, release halfway to wake it up the dial that kin...

d of dominates the top of the camera is going to be the mod ill. And there are a lot of options on here, and we're gonna want to take a little bit of a closer look at the mode dial. So to start with the green autos AutoZone auto mode that I had your camera had you put your cameras at the very beginning of this class. This is the dummy mode when you don't know anything about photography, you put it here, and the camera figures everything out for you. I do not like this mode because, well, as I say, the camera enlist some child safety locks on features of the camera. It won't allow you to do certain things, and it forces you to do things in a certain way. And so I don't recommend using the auto the full auto mode. If you are willing enough to take a class like this, you're probably interested in learning how to use it. Manual in. This is not the mode for you anymore. The only time I could see putting it in this modus. If you have to hand the camera to someone else to take a picture of you, and you don't want them to screw anything up. There is a non flash version of it. It's exactly the same as the full auto. It's just that the flash won't fire. And so if you're in a museum or a place they don't allow flash photography, it's a quick way to turn the flash off. But have everything else automatic. I'm not gonna spend a great deal of time talking about these other icon modes. The portrait landscape close up in sports. What's happening is that the camera is making very slight adjustments with the I S O the shutter speed in the aperture and even the focusing in some cases in the Metarie to slightly gear your camera for a little bit better situation in those. If you knew nothing about photography, these might be valuable. But once you're taking a class, you can outsmart the camera very easily, and I expect that you will be able to do that by the end of this class. There is a video mode which is way down at the bottom of the dial, and this is, ah, position that some people don't like, because if you do want to shoot video on this camera that does need to be to turned all the way down to the video mode. That is the only way you're camera will shoot video it. Also, I will make some other changes on your camera. We'll talk about when we get to the menu system. And so that's one very valuable mowed down in the automatic section that you do have access to. And despite the fact that it is in the automatic section, there are some manual controls that you have over shooting video. So as we turn the dial and go back up to the more manual side of it, we do have a creative auto mode. And that's what See a moat stands where we're not going to spending too much time in here. This is designed for people who are not willing to take a class but do want to learn about the camera. They kind of have their own built in learning system with their own graphics on the back to help you understand depth of field and shutter speed in it. It's mildly helpful, but not as helpful is actually taking a class on photography where we get into the real fun is when we get up into the more manual mounts. And despite P for program sounding very automatic, it is somewhat manual because it does open up the menu Systems P is essentially the same as the green AutoZone. With the exception that it's turned off those child safety locks. The flash won't pop up automatically, and that's about the only other feature one of the modes. One of the things that I don't like about the full auto mode is that if you set your camera to shoot in the raw mode and we will talk about Ron Jay Peak in a little bit. But if you set your camera to shoot in raw, you turn your camera to full auto. It's gonna shoot in Jay Peak because it wants to keep things as simple as possible. And so you can see some of the problem with these child safety locks trying to steer you into the safest thing possible. Next up is TV stands for time value. If you are with another camera manufacturer, this will sometimes be called s for shutter priority. Now, when you have the camera in this mode, you will turn the main dial. We haven't talked about this yet, but it's right up there by the shutter release, and you will turn that dial to adjust the time value or the shutter speed. The next mode is aperture value, and here is where we get to control the aperture that we just looked at in that photography basics. We have that aperture changing and to change the aperture once again, we will change. Make that change with that Maine dial right up in front. So we've used that dial to change both the shutter speed and the aperture, depending on which mode we're in. Finally, my favorite mode manual, you get direct control over everything, but with only one dial, what's it going to change? Well, when you have it in the manual mode, its default is to change the shutter speed primarily to change the aperture. You're going to need another button that we will talk more about, but this one is on the back of the camera, called a V aperture value. You need to press that button in and turn the dial so you have to have two buttons, two fingers pressed on the camera kind of at the same time. So hopefully your fingers are very dext areas and you could make those movements. And so, for manual, the default is changing shutter speeds. You press the button in to turn the dial to change the aperture me quick questions on the mode dial at this point cause we're gonna kind of move on from the Modi. Also, if anyone online will give them a moment, anyone in classroom have questions on the mode Ill. Pretty straightforward and pretty simple. Yeah, I think the question. Most of the questions that came up for one of the difference between auto and P mode. So Okay, explain that. Yeah. And so in the p mode, it just opens up menus that you had closed off and doesn't pop the flash up, which is probably one of the most irritating things about that green AutoZone. And don't sorry. One more question. I'm not sure if he answered this from just Max in the chat room. May I use close up mode without a macro lens? Will it be effective? Absolutely. The close up mode is one of the goofiest modes, because what I've been able to figure is that they want you to shoot it at an aperture of F 5.6, as if F 5.6 is the magical aperture to shoot macro. And it's not necessarily it's equal with any of the others. It depends on what you're doing. Eso no, they the close up mode. And this is kind of where an exception is if you have a point and shoot camera, the close up mode on those cameras will often change aspects of the way the lens works in here. It's not really making any changes on the lens. It's just adjusting shutter speed and aperture. All right, so moving on oh, forgot about the last one. The a depth mode, kind of an unusual mode, automatic depth of field mode. This camera has nine different focusing points that will talk specifically about later. When you point your camera at a subject that has objects in it at different distances, with those eat nine points, it's going to try to figure out where all those distances are and said a depth of field so that everything that is within those points is in focus. And it's kind of an interesting theoretical mode. But I think once you have a good understanding of photography, you can simply use aperture, priority or manual and achieve the same effect on your own and maybe even to a better extent. So we're not gonna be using that one too much in this class. So let's get back to the top of the camera and the next button, which is of great importance. And it is prominently put on your cameras. The I S o button eso, in case you're wondering, stands for international standards Organisation. Okay, is boring is that is you can forget it now. It's basically the sensitivity of your sensor on. And if you are going to struggle with this at all, this is where I once again recommend a photography class because we're able to were only able to touch on it just a little bit. Here. The, uh, the standard setting if I had to say there was a standard setting is I s 100 It is the lowest numbered setting that we have as an option, and this is where you want to set your camera to get the best image quality, at least to start with You may need to make some adjustments to this and move up if you need to change shutter speeds and apertures, and we will kind of deal with that as we move along. So the range on your camera. If you press that button on the back of the camera, you will see the display and will come up as 100 to in various steps. There is also an auto setting. It is my, uh it is my choice that I don't want to use auto. The camera will randomly choose. I suppose it's not quite random, but it feels like it's random. Randomly choose different ISOS according to how much light there is, and you are a much better judge of what you need than the camera. And so I would highly recommend never using auto again Once you've completed this class as well as some basic photography class. Now some of you may or may not have an H showing after the 6400 and there is a custom function that allows you to go up to 12,800 I will show you how to turn that on later. So you can actually set it up at 12, Now, A little bit more on I s O some picture examples. If you shoot, it s 0 100 And this is a very close crop of an image. You're going to get very fine detail as you bump up the I s 02 800 to 3200. The quality of the image goes down in what looks like grain from the old days is noise. And it's noise caused by the sensor not getting enough information and having to make up information because it didn't receive enough light. And so when you shoot the camera at 12, it's gonna be very low quality. And this is why I recommend trying to keep it at I s a 100 or as low as possible. There is a balance, though, between shutter speeds, apertures and I s O. But the simple thing to remember at this point on eso lower is always better quality for the image on the sensor question in the audience, we have a question in the audience. So they're gonna grab the microphone from the Nikon guy. Sure, um, a Nikon. You can do things like, say, do auto, but make sure that your shutter speed doesn't go below a certain a certain thing. Yeah, and so auto becomes kind of useful. At least I think it does. Is there anything like that here? There is something like that here that will allow you to put a top limit on how high the I s O goes. I still believe maintaining manual control of I s O. First off, it's fairly easy. And secondly, it puts you in control of the quality of your pictures and you stay fully tuned in as to what's going on. And so most serious photographers I know will only use manual I S O and specifically said it where they need to. And once again, if that seems foreign to you, if it's hard to understand, you need to practice with the camera. You need to learn more about photography to become more comfortable with it. Because once you become comfortable with it, it's a very simple aspect of control. All right, so that was so we'll move on to the next one. Unless we have a question. Just as a quick clarification question. Was there a change in the firmware for this camera? Somebody in the chat room is saying that, um, their lowest eso is 200. They may have a setting on their camera. Already adjusted. I have a feeling. I know. They probably turned a little something in the menu on and off. Okay. And I will explain that as we get to that. Okay. Thank you. Because you can kind of force yourself into different areas. Okay. Thank you. I have one more question from a manual. That room wanting to know the maximum eso for video. But all videos to get out to say is it's the same as still pictures. Yep. Thank you. Very good. Okay, So we've gone through the power switch, the Modi, all the I s. So obviously the main dialled up on top is the main dial you used to change features. We've already used it. Change shutter speeds and apertures. We will use it to change features when we get into the menu system selecting different things. If you want to make a change, that's probably the easiest way to make a change. Just turn it left and right. The shutter release. Obviously, where you take the picture, what may not be completely obvious is that this has a two step process. You need to have a somewhat sensitive finger to press halfway down. It's a very light touch, and that will activate the focusing system on the camera, and it will activate the metering system on the camera and then beyond. That is where you will actually take the picture. And that is the quickest and easiest way to wake the camera up from its sleep mode, as we talked about When you turn it on, it often goes to sleep after 30 seconds. Depending on the metering system, you could have a go to sleep as quick as every four seconds. Then we have the flash, and we'll talk more about the flash when we get into the buttons in the menus on the flash. But that's right up on top. Then the hot you and this is where you would mount a flash and you'll notice that there's actual pins in here that communicate with the flash. And this is one of the reasons why you do not want to put a Nikon flash on the canon cameras. The electron ICS air in a different place. The communication is completely different, and it could potentially damage your camera if the Elektronik circuits got hooked up to the wrong circuit. And so this is where I recommend using a cannon flash. And it's also a good place that you can put accessories like bubble levels to make sure your cameras level or microphone. If you're shooting video, there is a little marking over on the left hand side. Some people wonder what that's for. That's the focal plane of the image sensor from time to time. Actually, it's kind of rare, but from time to time you may need to measure the distance from your subject to the focal plane. You've probably all seen behind the scenes in movies where they're actually measuring the distance from an actor's face to the camera. And this is the mark that they're measuring on the camera for exact focus, moving to the back side of the camera. We have a lot of controls back here, and let's just go through. Um, first off, the main LCD that you have on this camera is a really good quality screen. This is one of the areas that in comparison with Nikon, we're not gonna do a Nikon Canon comparison. But at this price level, Nikon has a higher resolution screen. The Nikon. It is about 400 d. P I. And if anyone has an IPhone four, this is slightly higher resolution than an IPhone four on the back of the screen. So you have a very good screen for live viewing or reviewing your images. Right above that is an LCD sensor, And what that does is that when your eye gets up close to the screen, it turns off the back the main LCD so that it's not on when you hold it up to your eye and shining in your face. And so it's a nice little feature so that you don't have a bright light in your face when you're trying to look through the camera. Next up is the menu button in After lunch, we're gonna be diving into the menu, going through everything in there, so we have a full part on the menu coming up. The display button is a handy button in all different types of modes for changing or turning the display on or off, and so we'll use this when we're using live, you will use it in the video mode will use it in the playback mode to give us different information. Sometimes we just want to see the image and other times we need to see information about the image shutter speed, aperture I s so and so forth. And the display is something that we Cantat goal to turn on and off that extra information right up by the corner of the eye piece is a Diop ter, and this allows you to adjust the focus in the viewfinder for your eyes if you wear glasses. If you have slightly different eyesight, you can adjust the turning of that dial so that it is clear for you to look through. And when you adjust this, you hold it up to your eye and you would look through the camera and try not to look what the lens is focused at. What you want to focus on are the brackets in the viewfinder because that is what you're trying to focus on is the ground glass. And so focus on those dots in those brackets and make sure that that is sharp, and then it'll look nice and clear when you look through the viewfinder. Right next to the viewfinder is a little camera icon with a red dot next to it. And this is the live you or movie record, but and so, if you are in the video mode, that is what you oppress to start recording. But for the rest of the modes, it takes you in to live view. And for that we need to talk a little bit about more about what this camera could do in the live view mode. First off, focusing can be rather difficult in the live view mode. Okay, so we're here in the live mode on the camera. So I have the camera in manual exposure and like working in manual because, as you can see, I can change my shutter speeds right here on the bottom. I can change my aperture as well, and you can see the picture getting lighter and darker. Appropriately. Now, one of the things about live you is the focus isn't very good. The standard focusing in this Cameron requires the mere to be down because it's using a meter instead are focusing system that uses the mere in the downward position. When it's up, it has a couple different ways to focus, but it's not nearly as fast, and so it's very, very difficult. And so let's ah, let's focus on something right here pretty close to me and you can see the brackets I have right in the middle and that took, you know, a second in half. And as I pointed at something further away, it's struggles. It is not nearly as fast in this mode. And so if you were going to be shooting video, it is highly recommended that you focus before you start shooting, and you have one focus point for that entire shot. If you want to change focus while you were shooting well, you can shoot live. You can shoot video and adjust, but as you can tell clips, we actually took a picture there, and we're having a little bit of problem with her feet here. But this is a very unprofessional look to your video is having that focus go back and forth that can be used from time to time, but for the most part you don't want to include that, and so that's what's called live focusing that uses this box on screen. And it's got a nice because as you press the the cross keys and back, you can adjust where that is off to the left or off to the right. So it's kind of convenient for focusing the next motives called quick mode, and I'm not gonna bother changing it for this. But what happens in is the camera will switch back to its normal mode, where drops the mere down it focuses, and then the mere pops back up. And it's a very jarring system because you can't see what you're focusing on because the mere needs to pop down. Ah, and so that system doesn't work out too well. They also have a face recognition mode where it will recognize faces, and that seems kind of interesting. Um, and it couldn't work for some people in some situations, but it's gonna have to be a very peculiar situation to that. You want to choose that you see, and so I think we're going to switch back on the TV on, and I think that's a far as I wanted to go with live you at this time the other points that I want to talk about as's faras the video mode in the live mode because they're both very similares in the video mode, the camera has a four gigabyte limit as to how much video it can shoot at one time, up to 30 minutes. And so, if you're gonna be photographing a soccer match that last two hours, you're gonna need to press start again after 30 minutes and after every every 30 minutes. Now you can use a much larger card. You could use a 16 gig card and shoot two hours of video. It's just that your camera's gonna turn off after 1/2 an hour, because that's as much as it can handle at one time. Once again pressed the display button for more information. So once you have it in the live mode and go ahead and do that and you can press the display button and you can see how different amounts of information will pop up on the screen and we'll talk about some of the information that you can get on there later on, if you are shooting stills, this is primarily a still camera, and even though you may be shooting video at any point. If you want to take a still picture, you compress all the way down on the shutter release and take a picture. And so if you are shooting a video and you take a still picture in the middle, what's gonna happen is the camera is gonna take those two video sections and stitch them together, and there will obviously be a gap. At some point, they'll be a kind of a frame jump when you took that still picture. But you'll get a still picture and the video when you do that. Now, when you are looking at the LCD in the back of the camera, the camera is typically going to try to do what's called an exposure simulation. It's going to show you the lightness and darkness, and this is a feature that can be turned on and off, and we'll go through that in the menu system and in general, in video, everything that you shoot is gonna be auto exposure. It's gonna figure out cheddar speeds and apertures, but there is a way to turn it manual that I will get into in the menu and so As I said before, the best technique is t focus and then shoot. If you're going to shoot video for the live mode, you can focus manually. You can use any of the focusing systems for just using the LCD for viewing live if you want, and this might be a good point to just see if we have any questions on the live you where the movie mode. We will come back to this as we encounter different aspects of this when we get into the menu system, for instance, is a whole group of menu settings on how to adjust different features for the video, and we will talk about that more at that time. But I just want to see if there's any quick questions here about live you or some of the menu or the movie moment. Excuse me. We do have a few questions. One online, first online. Okay, Digital Mitchell. I was asking about the 30 minutes straight. Talking about video video is only 13 minute blocks, but someone online had said that if you were at a lower, um, low resolution, thank you that you could do 30 minutes. I believe it is still limited at 30 minutes, but I could potentially be wrong. But at 10 80 it would be more like 10 at the highest at the highest resolution. It's definitely only 30 minutes. Okay, so it's not 13. 30 13. Well, I I actually may need to dive into the instruction. Really? I thought that it was 30. Okay, that's what I put down. But I could be wrong. And if somebody wants to investigate and let me know some correct my slide. OK, Well, Joey and the chattering was saying that at 10. 80 it's 12 minutes at 7 It's 30 minutes. OK, I could be incorrect. Okay. This is why you want to keep your instruction manual, Sandy, because I'm not perfect. Chat room is very good. Yeah, good resource. So we have an in class question and make sure you grab the microphone there so that people around the world can listen to your question right now. Right now, uh, again about the movie mode. So are there any differences between the tea to I in the 60 d And do they have 24 p? And can you adjust the exposure? Said it said it to Emmanuel exposure Or is it always going to auto? There is a manual exposure mode, and I will show you where to set that in the menu system. And it is very similar to the 60 D in capabilities. I believe the 60 d it may have an extra feature, but I couldn't tell you what that is right now. It's very smallest faras thief frame rate resolution. It's virtually identical between the two. And we have another A couple more questions in class, too. Quick question there. Um, so live you. What would you really use that for? Like on a tribe live you is one of those features that when it first came on the camera, I said, This is stupid is nobody needs this at all. But actually, I will show you. I'm gonna hook this back up, and we're gonna need to go back. Live on this because I'm going to show you a very, very valuable tool for live you, And not sure if we're going to need to hook this TV back up, But we're gonna show you. I find that is very handy. Did you to use when you were working on a tripod eso if you're doing a set up landscape seen Ah, and you are not needing to be right at eye level. You've already kind of got your camera position. It's It's a great system for viewing that. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use the TV for focusing now. Remember how I told you focusing was really difficult with auto focusing. I love manual focusing here. Now, if I just manually focus, I'm gonna focus on this old movie projector and it's a little touchy trying to get the right focus. And it's a little hard cause I don't have this on a tripod. So we do have make sure the stabilization is turned on here. But what I'm gonna dio is I'm going to press a button that I haven't told you about yet and I'm going to zoom in. I am five times magnified and I can adjust focus so that it is critical. Now I can actually go up to 10 times magnification, but I can't hand hold it that steady. But this is at five times I can be super super critical about my focusing. And so when I'm really, really nit picky and I'm on a tripod and my subjects not moving. I could get the focus absolutely perfect, absolutely guaranteed. And there's nothing like walking away from a shot knowing it is perfectly focused. And that's even better than auto focus, in my opinion, because you've actually looked at it 10 times magnification to get it right. And so if you work from a tripod, I think that's one of the greatest benefits. And if you work out in the bright sun, it's very difficult. And sometimes there are loops that you can get to block out all the light and magnify the back of the camera. And so that would be, Ah, handy accessory to potentially have. And so we had another question on live you hear in class. Yeah, Another question, Um, is there any issues with a camera overheating when you're using live you overheating issues? This is one of the reasons for the limits in time, and so it's not the best video camera. It's not the best camera to have in live you for extended periods of time. It will shut down before any damage is done, so I doubt that you could do any damage to it. You could put wear and tear on it if you always used it in live you. But there's nothing I saw in the instruction manual about warning against using it too much, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. But it potentially could shut down on you if it thinks that it's getting too hot, John. One more live you question is, can live. You be helpful for live white balance life, white balance. It could potentially be helpful for that. Hadn't really thought about it in that way. But that's not a bad idea. And so yeah, yeah, sure. All right, so I think we're gonna move on Continuing Exploring the back end of the camera up in the upper right hand corner where your thumb often rests are two buttons, and they're kind of dual purpose buttons. The 1st 1 the meter lock, also known as Zoom Out. You'll notice that above it there's a little white ass trick, and below it there is a blue little icon that looks like a magnifying glass. The letters in white mean that it has to do with the shooting mode. The blue is a playback mode Aziz. You can see if you have looked ahead and seen where the playback button is. It's in blue, so features associated with playback functions are typically blue. And so this to function button. First off, it is a meter lock button, which means that if you have your camera in the aperture value time value program or any of the automatic modes, you press down halfway on your shutter release that activates the meter and reads the light coming in the camera. If you want to keep that reading locked in, you would press that meter lock button and back, and you would need to leave it pressed in. Actually, actually just makes it takes a touch. If you just precedent, it stays locked in until you take the picture, and then you can adjust where the camera's pointed and take the picture. And so, if you are using the camera in aperture, priority time, value or program, this might be a button that you might use somewhat frequently if you were in manual. It's not really going to do anything, because in manual you're controlling your shutter speeds and apertures manually. This is a way for you to lock it it Now, on the playback side of it, when you take pictures, you can play your images back and you can zoom out using that button and you want to zoom out because the button right next to it is the button that you zoom in on. And so one of the best things that you can do out in the field to make sure you got the right picture is to play an image back and zoom it in to see if you got sharp focus. And when you zoom back, you consume back to see the whole image. You can actually zoom back to C four thumbnails or nine thumbnail so you can more quickly scroll through your images. Now the button on the right is also your focus point selection. When you press that button, turn it here so the camera can see this. It activates the focus points. What you can do at that point is turn your main dial, which is right up by your shutter release, and you can change to any one of the nine points or you can select all the points. It depends on what style of photography you want to do now. This is one of what I think it's. The 10 most important features in the camera is being able to adjust those focus points, and there are reasons why you would want to select any one of those points. Um, for very general purpose stuff you can select all the points in the camera will just kind of work with whatever it sees in there, and it will focus on the first solid object. I prefer to use the center point because it is the most sensitive and the most accurate. It's got different types of sensors that are sensitive to both vertical and horizontal in there, and so I typically like to leave it on the center point. That way, I could be very precise about what I am doing, and they'll be more about these focus points as we get into the displays and some of the menu features on the rest of the camera. You can also use the cross keys on the back of the camera to change to the different points, and so there are multiple ways to change these points. It all depends on how you like to work with your camera. So next up on the cameras, a button that we have already explored a little bit, which is the aperture value exposure compensation button. And so the main purpose of this button, Let's say when you're in the program mode, where cameras figuring out shutter speeds and apertures for you is that when you press that button down, you are going to change the lightness and the darkness of the picture. And so we bring up a little picture example here. So if you take a picture and you're not sure if it would be better if it was darker or lighter, you could do ah, minus exposure for darker. Or you could do a plus exposure to make it brighter. Now you can go much further than one. You can go all the way up to minus five. I can't imagine that situation, but you can do it. So this camera is ball beyond your imagination. Ah, so that is the quick way to make your pictures lighter or darker. Once again, if you're in manual, you would just simply directly change your shutter speed and aperture so back to the back of the camera the next button down is the cue button. Now, as you seem, we've been working a lot with the back of the camera with this display back here, and the Q button will activate it so that we can actually work visually, using the back of the camera to change features. And so here will use the Q button and these cross keys to select different features. And then we can go in and change those features, and we're gonna be looking more closely at this quick menu. When we get to the display section of this talk, you'll notice a few little holes in the back, and that's where the speaker is. So when you play a movie back, that's where you need to keep your ear close to T hear what's going on now. Down below is where we have our cross keys. And these, like the main DIA, will be used for a lot of different functions going left and right up and down, going through the menu system. The top of these is a specific key for white balance. When you're in a general shooting mode and you press that button, it'll activate the white balance selection so you can get in to select a different white balance. Now, white balance options that you have are going to be listed here, and you go everything from daylight to flash and many other situations. And ideally, you should set this to the type of light that you are working in. And if you're new to digital photography, this is a little bit of an odd concept, because when you take a picture of your camera, doesn't know what the correct color is. It doesn't know what color snow ISS, and sometimes it may come out a little bit wrong. Light is measured not only an intensity, but is measured in color and that color is a Kelvin scale and different things on this scale, like daylight, which is around 5000 degrees. Cloudy around 5500 shade round or sell those air. Some natural lighting conditions, artificial lighting, tungsten lights, Whether they're the traditional bulbs of the new compact fluorescent bulbs are gonna be fairly low in color temperature. Around 3000 fluorescent lights have a slightly different color around 4000 and then flashes up correct. Daylight it around 5500 Now you can set it to any one of these settings, and you also have a custom setting. And the custom setting is kind of interesting that b'more of that when we get into the menu system is basically if you don't know what the lighting is and you want to make sure that it is really correct, you would photograph a white piece of paper and then you would register that with the camera as being light, and everything from there on out would be balanced toe that type of light. And so, if you're in a new environment, you can photograph a white piece of paper and have it calibrated perfectly for that situation. Now. I mentioned before that I'm not a big fan of auto, Uh, but the fact is, I kind of like auto white balance. Coming from a traditional photography background, I'm not used to setting white balance on every picture I take, and so I will frequently and on a regular basis have my camera in auto white balance. This also works quite well when I shoot raw and I will explain a little bit more about that later. But one of the great things about shooting Rob versus JPEG is that I don't have to worry about white balance. I could deal with it later in light room if the camera makes a mistake. And so my general practice is to leave it in on auto white balance and look at results as I'm taking them out in the field. And if I noticed something that seems, really, Sq, I will then make a change in white balance just cause I like to have good feedback on the back of the camera. But for general purposes, I'm fine with leaving that in auto. So next up the next button next to that to the right is the auto focus button. Now we already talked about the focus points. Now the auto focus. Well, that's something a little bit different. That's how the camera focuses. Make sure my camera is in auto focus here. Turn my auto focus on. We have basically three options in here. We have one shot AI focus and ai servo. One shot is where you press down on the shutter release halfway. You squeeze down, not a jab or poke, and you squeeze down and let the camera focus because it sometimes takes a moment, as we saw earlier in that live you in the one shot mode, it will find the first solid object, and it will stay locked on. And I think this is good for general photography, and this is where I keep the camera. Most of the time. The next mode is an automatic switching mode that will automatically switch back and forth between one shot and servo. Now what servo is is a constantly adjusting focus. If you were going to shoot sports, this is a really important setting that you want to make. You want to change your lens to adjust, focus for a subject that is moving, and so in sports you would move it to a I servo. This, once again is one of those really important features that you need to know how to change on your camera quite quickly. So most of the time, I'm gonna leave it in one shot. When I'm shooting action and a moving subject, I'll leave it in servo. I'm not a big fan of AI focus because it's using artificial intelligence to focus, and it doesn't always get it right, and it's a bit unpredictable on the results that you may get. And so I like to have something that's more predictable, and we will be changing that when we get to the end of the class. Next to that is the drive mode over on the left hand side of the cross keys, and this is determining what happens when you press all the way down on the shutter release. Do you take one picture? Does it take multiple pictures? The motor drive mode or continuous shooting is the second setting, and then it has a variety of self timer and remote modes. The middle mode, the self timer mode and the remote. You can buy an optional remote, and I'll tell you what model that is at the end of the class. When we get to the accessory section. Ah, you can wirelessly fire the camera from a distance, which is a nice ability to have. You could do a self timer with a two second exposure, and this is kind of handy when you're working on a tripod because as you have the camera set on a tripod, you don't want to press the button on the camera because you're actually gonna be moving the camera. And if it's on a tripod, you wanna have it very still. So you put it in the two second self timer, press the button. Actually, I need to turn that on. Yeah, well, set this year and take the picture. And so that makes sure that the camera is perfectly still. And so when you change these, you don't just move it to that mode. You need to press the set button so that it actually gets activated. The final mode, the sea mode is for continuous shooting. And this is what I recommend. If you're gonna take a group shot of you and your friends and what you can do here is you can select the number of pictures that the camera will take after 10 seconds. It seems to me that at least with my friends, somebody is always doing something stupid or they're blinking on the first shot. And so this gives you two or three chances to get the shot right? And so if you set that around four or five, you kind of have a good time with your friends. Stay. No, This is a good picture. No. Now this one's even going to be better now. This one's really the right picture, so you can get a variety of pictures of your group. And so that's how you change those and those air. Also a pretty important mood for changing in general photography situations. Down at the bottom is picture styles, and this is a button that I never use. This is because this is for people who don't have computers if you want to adjust the look of your images directly in your camera, in your printing directly out from your camera. This is kind of like using different films that have different saturation, different contrast with them. And I don't think this is too important to set because you can settle this and control it much better in a program like like like Light Room or any of the software programs. And so this is something that I will leave on on standard. And if you shoot in raw, it really has not a big impact, because this is something that you will adjust later in your computer, much better so it's something we're gonna pass by relatively quickly on this class. But there is a lot of custom modes in there, and the one that is kind of fun is the black and white mode, because when I am shooting black and white, I like to get the feedback on the back of the camera of what the black and white image looks like. Um, however, before warned, if you shoot a black and white J peg, you cannot turn it color again. Uh, so be careful about that. We have a question in class. Go ahead. Is there anything that the picture styles adjusts that is not undoable when you're shooting raw? Um, I don't think so. I think you you can undo anything in there. Um, so if you want to adjust it, you can. It's not really necessary, because in a good software program you'll be able adjust it, look at it on a large monitor and fine tune it much more precisely there. But if you have find that the pictures that you're getting out of your camera just don't have the colorful punch that you were hoping you could go in there and you can punch up the color if you want, so there are some adjustments. If you do want to make an in camera adjustment on That's this is how you would do it. All right. So in between all those buttons, of course, is the set button, which we've already started to use when we want to enter a feature. And so when we make an adjustment, for instance, on our white balance, my white balance suggested here you would press the set button to lock in that particular feature, and we will use that time and time again. Down at the bottom is our little blue playback button. So if you have a picture that you have taken on your camera and I think everyone here in the classroom at least has taken a picture and probably everyone as at home, you can play that back. Actually, let me let me take a decent picture of our students and our cameras set up here. So I have at least a sharp picture to play back. We can play back our picture. We can go back and use any of the other blue buttons. So, for instance, we had the zoom button. We can zoom back and look at all the pictures we've taken. If we want to zoom in. We can zoom in and see if we got a sharp picture, which is a nice feature to have. And so you can also pull up the display. And you could look at the shutter speed and aperture that you shot. You could look at the history Graham, which is showing you data about the exposure, whether how light it is or how dark it is various information, the date and so forth. Or you could just look at the image straight as itself. So you can just press that display button and cycle through the different features. The cross keys to the left and to the right will cycle through basically previous images and the next images and so just left and right to go through your images, zoom in and out, pull up the different display and then, of course, on those bad pictures. And I'm sure I've taken a few bad ones here in this class, you hit the garbage button, and that will give you the option of erasing that particular image. You will need to then move over to go to the erase and press set, and then that image is gone. forever. And so that's how you can delete images in the field. Now, right next to that garbage button is a little tiny light and that light when you take a picture and see if I could do it right here so we can see it comes on while the image is being written to the card. While that light is on, you don't want to take the battery out of the camera. You don't want to take the card out of the camera. You don't want to turn the camera off. I think if you turn the camera off, it's still going to stay on and continue to download the images. This may have a bigger impact if you shoot a series of shots like you were to shoot 10 shots in a row very quickly. It would take a while to download all of that to the card. And that red light is just simply a warning. Life not to turn anything off to take anything out of the camera, take a quick moment here to see if there's any questions on the Internet or life in the class before we switch over to the left side of the camera. There's a lot of controls on the back, and we will be exploring many more of these things as we dive into the menu system. So there is more to come on many of these features. But let's see what we got in questions. Anything in class, that's something online. It sounds like there's Yeah, there's a lot on the line. A excellent I'm gonna start with a comment first. John in the chat room had said picture styles for pictures is equals bad and picture styles for movies. Video is critical because you need to pull the contrast and sharpness. Yeah, he does have a point there on. One of the reasons is, is that when we get to setting image quality, whether it's J paga raw, I'm a big proponent of raw with movies. However, there isn't a raw mode for movies, and so when you're shooting movies, it's all compressed, and a lot of people don't have the control over color saturation. There are programs that do have that like final cut pro, but some people don't have those programs, and so if you are shooting videos a lot with this, that is something that you will want to take a closer look at. So that's a good point that they brought up. Thank you. Yes, I had a question from bail in the chat room. Does this was back from for the AI focus? Does a focus just switch between one shot and a servo automatically, depending on the conditions? Or is it a completely separate focus mode? It does switch back and forth between the two modes, and the problem that I have found with it is if you photograph sport like soccer, football, whatever you want. And a player stops for a moment on the field but then starts moving again. When you focus on them and they're stopped, it locks in on that position, and then when they start moving again, it doesn't recognize that that subject was moving. And so it's better to leave it in the continuous mode. And I found that most people are either shooting something that's moving or they're not. There's not a usually a lot of in between. There are some events, maybe like a wedding where you are shooting people that are standing still and then suddenly there, walking in that situation. It's probably a little bit safer to leave it in the continuous mode eso that you're always ready for the movement. The problem with the continuous mode when you're shooting a still subject is that sometimes if you want to reposition the camera, it's harder to lock focus in with one shot. One of the great things is that if you want to focus on somebody and then put him off to the side, you could do focus, lock you focus halfway down and let me do this right here with the camera, and I'm gonna focus in on something the camera gives me little chirp chirp that its focus. And then I could move the camera off to the side and take a picture in continuous. It's going to suddenly jump to the back wall, in this case, trying to focus on whatever the cameras focused at. At that instant, we have another question in class along those lines about the focus. Is there a way to do the one shot and then turn off focus? Because if you let go and then hit the button halfway again, it will refocus, right? Yeah, once you pick it, yes. How do you keep there's a slide. For that course, there's there is a, ah menu for that in the camera, and this is one of the finer points that beginner photographers aren't really sure about sometimes. But as people get involved, they start. They start to want to customize the buttons on the cameras, and one of the buttons that you can customize on the camera is this meeting button is. You can customize that to focus the camera for you and this button up here. All it does is take the picture and start the light meter. It doesn't do the focus, and it's something that people need to kind of grow into it in a just cause. It's a changing of the controls. It's like, Ah, stick shift car moving the stick shift to the other side. It's very awkward for people to make that change, but once they do that, it can free people up to use the camera in a more logical A. And so on my camera. I've made that adjustment myself. Ah, the adjustment where I will focus in back. But the shutter release will not focus, so that's Ah, flying to an adjustment, and that's One of the great things about the custom functions on this camera is that you can make these fine tune adjustments to make it work just the way you want it to. Then we will show you more about that when we get there. John, I have a question from Evangelina 18. How do you use the custom white balance mode on video? Will setting the custom white balance when taking a photo registered a video as well? I don't think I've tried that one. I knew there was gonna be somebody that did something that I didn't. In theory, it should work perfectly because you do need to set your white melons for video. And it could be very important with video, but I don't see what you You would take a still picture and you would register the white balance with that. And so I don't see a problem with that at all. I think that she worked fine. I haven't tested it, but it should work Fine. I have ah question in the chopper from can oniy in. Can I focus at a point and expose on another? Uh, yes. You can select any one of the nine points to focus on, and it's but firm eatery. It's always gonna be on the center point, and so you are limited as to which point the metering is taking place. But you have kind of unlimited control over the focusing point. Okay, thank you. One more question on white balance from the chat room. Where should I put a piece of paper to a dust? The white balance next to the camera and next to the object, which I want to shoot? Well, if I was going to do a white balance right here in this room that I'm working out, I would take my white piece of paper right here, and I would just say, Well, let's see lights all coming down right here. And then I would take it and I would fill the frame with the focus e and take a picture of it. And actually, I don't need to worry that it's in focus, but I just need to make sure that it's a relatively even exposure, and I would then register that in the menu system, which once again, we'll get to Can I just clarify one more thing? The question from our Julia in the chat room asking which focus mode you recommend. And I just wanted to read a iterated that it depends on what you're shooting. It depends on what your shootings for general photography for just walk around street photography, for instance. I would probably have it in the one shot mode. And if I saw somebody coming down the street that I wanted to photograph, I would hopefully be able to hit that button and then switch it to servo and take the shot. If not, I'm gonna have to focus on a point ahead of that person and wait for them to get to that point and then take the picture. If I was shooting sports, that is definitely lips. Want to get to the autofocus mode? That is definitely where you want to be in servo. You can try the AI focus and see how well it works for you. I, uh I made a mistake not too long ago, and I had it set there when I was shooting a sporting event and I was about to throw my camera to the ground because it wasn't focusing properly and it wasn't picking up on the athletes. It wasn't sensing their movement. It was sometimes looking at the grass and seen that the grass wasn't moving. And so it wasn't adjusting. Focus for the athletes. And I thought I had a problem with my camera or my lens. And then I looked at that. I went, Oh, stupid, Uh, so that could happen to the best of us. And so one shot or serve up is my recommendation. Can't really see you throwing a camera on the ground. I want it, But I felt like it. I have just one more white balance question from skier, and she's asking, Is there a way to actually preview that the image with the different white balances before shooting it and somebody else in the chat room said, Is that what use live view? You could definitely use live view. If you have a good view of the screen, are you can shoot a picture at different white balances and just review them. This is where you need to have a good view of the screen. Eso in bright light that's more difficult. White balance is not a big issue, and if you choose to shoot raw, which is what I encourage. You don't ever have to worry about it cause you can fix it later with no damage to the photograph. And so I highly recommend shooting raw so that you never have to worry about white balance. That's where I am. It's just it's a pain in the butt to deal with, and it's nice not to have that to worry about it all. So I say, Let's move on to the left side of the camera and there's not too many controls over on the left hand on the side of camera. Ah, but this is where we get into the flash mode. And if you are in one of the more manual modes program, time value, aperture value manual and you want to use the flash, you do need to manually pop the flash up. If you want it like that in the flash will part pop. So let's take a look at a couple of pictures, so first off, you don't have to use flash. You can use a slower shutter speed. The problem is, is that you will get potentially blurry pictures because you just don't have a fast enough shutter speed to stop your emotion or your subjects motion. Now, one thing that you could dio is you could just simply raise your eyes. So to really high I s O. So you have a fast enough shutter speed. The problem, then, is the grain or the noise that we talked about. So that's not the best way to take a picture in some cases. And so the camera does have a built in flash so you can keep your eyes so nice and low, and you can illuminate a subject that is pretty near in front of you now. Some basic things on flash is that the light built in here is not the most powerful flash in the world. It is good for tan to 12 feet under most situations that can go a little bit further, and so if there's something directly in front of you, you can illuminate it with a flash. The other thing that you need to know about flash is light fall off as light travels further, it gets weaker and weaker and weaker, and so something maybe brightly illuminated right in front of you. But as you get further behind, it's not going to receive the same amount of light. And so if you are photographing something with the flash, it kind of needs to be all flat straight in front of you to be evenly illuminated. I don't like using the built in flash. It just doesn't have a very good luck. And I highly recommend if you're going to do a lot of flash to get an external flash. This is I see an emergency solution to some problems. However, it can be very helpful when most people wouldn't think about it. If you're outside on a cloudy day, you can take a picture without the flash and get a reasonably decent picture. But if you add the pop up flash, you can add a bit of light. If it's done properly to fill in the shadows, in the eyes and in the face, and you can illuminate the face a little bit better and so fill in. Flash is a very useful technique, so any time it's daylight anytime you don't think you need the flash, it's a good time to potentially experiment with it Now, even on a sunny day. If you don't use the flash, it's a terrible time for taking portrait pictures because you have these nasty shadows and the shadows air very, very hard to deal with. Now. One thing is that you can just use that exposure compensation we talked about earlier. Enlighten your pictures up, but then you'll notice. Part of her forehead has become overexposed, and we've lost detail where the sun is, and so one option is to use the pop up flash, and this will fill in those shadows. But you could still have some of the highlights. So once again, when you least expect it a bright and sunny day pop up the flash outside for adding a little bit of fill light. Once again be reminded that this is not the most powerful flash in the world, and this is not gonna work over a great distance. So you probably want to be within about 10 feet or three meters of your subject. When you use this flash, some other kind of general notes on Flash First office that you cannot use all shutter speeds. Fortunately, in this camera, you can't manually select the wrong shutter speed because it will automatically correct you and not allow you to shoot it in incorrect shutter speed, but it is limited to 1 2/100 of a second. Also, as I mentioned, it has a limited range. There is also a flash exposure lock where you can do a pre flash, and if the flash is turned on the button that is used for flash exposure. Compensation can be used for doing a test flash where it locks in the exposure, and this is something that you may want to experiment with. We don't have the full time to investigate this, But if you're doing people photography, you could potentially do a lot adjustment with this by walking the exposure in pointing the camera centered at their cheek, for instance, and getting a light reading off their cheek. Pressing that and having the camera get locked into that exposure and then taking the picture after that and the flash will sometimes give you a slightly better output. You also have red eye reduction as something that we can turn it on and off. When the camera does that, there is a light that will turn on on the front of the camera and your picture when you take the when you press the shutter release. The picture is going to be delayed by about two seconds. So this is kind of a conundrum for anybody who's photographing kids because kids have a lot of red eye problems, but also they move a lot and change expressions really quickly. So if you use red eye with kids, you won't get red eye. But they probably won't even be looking at you after two seconds. So I'm not a big fan of the red eye reduction because that is something. Once again, we can fix in a computer without too much hassle, and it slows the response down from actually taking the picture and then, finally, flash exposure. Compensation is something that I will talk more about, and it's where you can adjust the power output of the flash because the flash output power is pretty well fixed, and this gives you a way to manually go in and override that. And it's something that I highly recommend, and I will show you how to do that. When we get to that on the camera kind of going on through some other things real quickly, we're gonna look at the lens more closely, but you have a auto focus and manual focus switch on the lens. I have the kit lens on my camera and you can see that switch right in here. And then right below that is the stabilizer for the lance. There is an index mount for the lands, and this indicates it's in E. F s lens, and it shows me where I need to be to mount the lens up. So I will find the white dot on the mounting rain in the white dot on the lens, match it up and give it a little bit of a turn. And then, of course, you saw me using the lens release button for taking the lens on and off. And then finally, there is the depth of field preview button. This used to be a really important button in today's cameras. I don't think it's that important because, frankly, you could just take a picture and take a look at the results. But what it is doing is in this little example, I have a short video on the left hand side and keep your eye on the left hand picture, and when you press the button, it's going to stop the aperture down to the working aperture, the aperture that you've said maybe f 22. And this is what it would look like on the right. You can see the picture changes to show you more depth of field. And you can actually do this very effectively with live view. It's probably easiest to do this in live you to show you what your depth of field is going to be when you actually take the picture. Because when you look through the camera as standard, the aperture is open all the way to let in as much light as possible. And so let me see if I could do a little test here. I'm gonna set my aperture two F 22. Actually, in this case, I could go to 29 Cool. And I'm gonna point this straight up at the camera and I'm gonna press in on the aperture, and hopefully that camera can see the changing of the aperture in there in the days of film. Before we had ah screens to see what we're actually shooting. This was a good tool that we'd have in the field for seeing if everything that we wanted in focus was in focus. Uh, and nowadays, frankly, it's a lot easier just to take a picture and look at the results on so that I rarely use the depth of field preview. But it was a hallmark for quite some time. Oven upper end or professional camera. Now over on the left hand side of the body itself, there's a little door that opens up and exposes some of the features and accessories that we can plug into the camera. The first thing is an external microphone. The built in microphone is monaural and sound and not positioned very appropriately for shooting video because it picks up a lot of noise of the cameras working and you holding the camera so on external microphone can be of help. There's a remote shutter release. I'll tell you which one to get if you want to get that at the end of the class. The A V out. This is where you would plug it into a standard TV and then the HDR HTM aiport for hooking it up to an HD TV set so you could do a slide show. The right side of camera is not nearly as interesting. This is where your hand is normally gonna be. But that is the card slot, and it uses SD memory cards, the front of the camera. Let's go ahead and take a look at that. We've already talked about some of these features, including the shutter release right there in front. Ah, and then next to that is the ready red eye reduction lamp that we just talked about. This is also a self timer lamp that will turn on if you take the If you set your camera to the 12th self timer, it will blink it You. But then it will go steady for the last two seconds so that, you know, in to jump up in the air. The red dot is the E f lens mount for E f lenses. This camera takes two different types of lenses. You have options you can take E f or G F s lenses. I'm going to describe those more closely when we get more towards the lens section. On this in this class next to that is your tiny little microphone. And so you want to make sure that my your microphone, uh, is picking up whatever sound you can. It's not the best microphone, but it's, you know, pretty good for what it iss our lens releases we've talked about before. Your depth of field preview. It's visible right there. Inside the camera are your Elektronik context. You want to make sure that these don't have a lot of dirt, grime or anything blocking it with the Elektronik contacts on the lens, they need to have a good, clean connection for the lens to autofocus in for information to pass back and forth between the two. We talked about this being a single lens reflex. The reflex part about this is the mere reflecting light, and you can see the mirror right inside when you take that lens off and then over on the right hand side of the grip is the remote control sensor. So if you get the wireless remote control, that's where you need to point it to that little spot on the grip. That's the receiving sensor for the remote control now in particular on the lands. I'm just gonna look at the kit lens here, and we've already talked about a couple of these features here. We've said it's an E. F s lens designed for this size of sensor. You have your stabilizer and your on off switch, and these are things that you may turn on and off. And I will mention here that the stabilizer is a very good system in this camera, and I would generally leave it on when you are handheld. If you were gonna put it on a tripod, that is the time that you want to turn it off. It would seem that having a stabilizer on and a tripod is kind of double protection. It's the belt and suspenders of photography, but actually, it's not a good idea to leave the stabilizer on, so you want to turn it off when you put it on a tripod. We have our zoom ring for adjusting our angle of you. And if you do want to manually focus but the camera in manual focus here, you would adjust the manual focus ring at the end of the lance. It's not the best manual focus ring on the kit lands, and this is one of the features of nicer lenses is that they have much larger, more ergonomic focusing rings. But at least you can do it, and that's a nice ability to have. This uses a 58 millimeter thread for filters. So if you want to use a UV protection filter or polarizer of 58 millimeters, the size you want to get for this size for this lens in particular, I should say you might also notice a couple little bumps on the outside of the lens. Three long slits their and that is where you would mount the hood. The hood is not supplied with this camera, and I would recommend getting one. They're not too much. Ah, and this will protect the front of the lands from bumps and dings. It also protects it from light, which will give it your image is potentially a little bit more contrast and reduce flare under bright light conditions. The focal link that you're set out is indicated right there. This particular lens will show you the minimum distance that it can focus down to, in this case, 0.25 of a meter or 0.8 of a foot. So it's pretty close and then, of course, the focal length of that particular lance. And so we have reached the end of the first half of this class, and so we'll see if there's some questions before we take a little snack break and ah, dive to the inside of the cameras. So now if there's any questions on the outside of the camera, wait outside. Always questions John. Any in the audience. Yeah, questioning class will get the microphone to them. Image stabilization work on video image stabilization does work in the video mode, and it's generally a pretty good thing. But it does make a little bit of noise, and the built in microphone is likely to pick up on that in quiet situations. So just building on that in the chat room, there's a question. Does using stabilizer on degrade the image quality only if used on a tripod? Okay, yeah, it does not degrade the image quality, and I almost thought you were gonna say, and I'll just address it anyway. Does it degrade the battery? It does use more battery juice, but I have found that it's really small, and it's probably worth just keeping on for most people unless you are in a battery critical situation where your batteries running low and you don't need the stabilizer. Yes, in class, they're reason why the stabilizer decreases the quality with the tripod, it's a little bit hard for me to figure out. The best that I can tell is that the stabilizer in the lens is has a lands or a group of lenses working on a pitch and yaw system, and for them to know what to do. They need to move to see if they need to move. And so what happens is it when it's the cameras rock steady, they're gonna move trying to look for movement to correct for ah, and that, apparently, is what causes the problem. And I have seen results from the field of a perfectly steady tripod, a camera on stabilizer and every picture slightly blurry. And so I've learned just to turn it off. And this is something that has been true on all the lenses, all the bodies, including different brands Gannon, Nikon and other systems. And there is, and I know somebody's on the Internet's gonna say. The exception to the Theo section to the rule is when you have a piece of equipment that is so large that it's actually moving on the tripod because it can't hold it steady like a big 500 millimeter lands, in which case you would turn the stabiliser back on in that situation. But for a relatively small set up like this, or two or 300 millimeter lands, you turn it off. But John Calley and the chat room would like to know what the best way to keep the camera when not in use for several weeks. If you should get the battery in or out, not in use for several weeks, I would say there's no special recommendations not in use for several months. I would probably take the battery out, but the batteries that are used in these cameras are lithium ion batteries, and it's the old nickel metal. It's alkaline batteries that would leak that could cause problems. Eso this. You could probably leave in the camera for 10 years and probably wouldn't have a problem. But I think there is a little bit of drain on it just for charging the clock battery in the camera. And so I would probably take it out over a long period of time like that. I have a question from Josh going back to when you were talking about flash and the your preference to not use the pop up flash. And he asked, Are there any accessories to defuse theon camera flash? And if so, will it exposed correctly if you mask it? Yeah, there actually are devices that you can mount in front of this to defuse it, to make it a larger source. They've all been a little gimmicky and not real practical. In my opinion, I've not found them very useful because the main problem is is that this is not a very powerful flash. And when you start diffusing it, the power goes down even further. Eso Unless the subject is really close to you, it's only gonna help. And even then, it's only gonna help marginally. And so if flashes that important to you, I would recommend getting an external flash. Okay, we have another question from Bush rat in the chat room. When using the back button for focus and all several mode, do you push it continuously? It depends on which Motor Inn for the one shot mode focusing is the same in the one shot mode. It's a squeeze and you wait till the camera focuses, whether that's what the back of the front button in the continuous mode you would need to leave your finger down continuously. And that's works fine when you're taking pictures because your fingers already down the camera will continue focusing as you take pictures. So it's a slightly. It's a similar technique, but slightly different. Okay, we have a lot of questions. You wanna let's do like a good solid five minutes and questions, Okay, and then we'll take a break. Then that sound good. Another question from just Max in the chat room. I don't know if you want to get into the memory card thing, but they would like to know about classes. What class memory card you suggest? Um, and what is? You know what is the lowest? There's a slide for that. So okay, later for that. Everyone a visual to go with a chain John from Leslie in the chat room. When you mention the lens hood, would you recommend the petal shaped one or the one that is in a complete circle? Oh, this is gonna get old real quick, but there's a slide for that. There's a very specific Canon Hood for it. It's It has one shape to it, and I will give you that number often at the guards at the end of class. Great. And are you gonna talk? Teoh recommending types of flashes to use with Dio. I have a slight for that for that. Hold your voices, everyone. Um, there's a slight for that. Just give this. I'm not sure if this is really a button question, but Wilbert said in the chat room, raw file seemed to have more noise on the photo compared to J. Peg when opened in light Room three. Even with the cannon software, they prefer the JPEG rendering of the camera. Is there a way I could get the J Peg rendering of the camera, but of a raw file? Interesting. Kind of tricky there. Sometimes raw files do come out a little raw, and they need a little bit of processing if he's using light room three, they do have a noise reduction section in the development part of that, and we don't want to get too far in the light room here, but they should. There's a class for that. There's a glass with that. That's the creative life we have. There's a class for that, Uh, so there is adjustment in there that you can adjust to tone that noise down. And so I would take a look in that development section, and I forget the exact panel that it is under. Um, it's I don't recall what it is right now, but it's it's in the development module. Okay, Um, J c. A shark would like to know. Is there some way to calculate hyper focal distance in the camera calculating hyper focal distance in the camera? That is something your IPhone four can probably hook up on the Internet. If you google hyper focal distance, there are online calculators. Were you input your sensor size? You're focusing distance your aperture your distance to subject, and it will give you this magic number about at this app. Attrit This distance. Everything will be in focus, so there's no way to do it in Cama. There used to be on the old manual cameras. We used to be able to do that 30 years ago because our lenses had a focusing scale, which this land's lax, and it used to talk about the distance that you're focused at in different apertures and used to give you a little scale right on the lens. And you don't have that because they've been trying to simplify the lenses and take off some of the market, so they're not as confusing. And so, unfortunately, that is a feature that I think they could very easily built in Canon. Are you listening? They could build a function in the hyper focal distance that would be able to figure all that out. And that would be a nice little addition that I think they could totally do but is not in the camera itself. So right now, either have to do it with a slide rule or ah, an application on your phone or some sort of portable computer. Or use that depth of field preview to kind of look at what you're doing. Having a fair bit of experience shooting hyper focal shots Once you do get in practice with shooting at those small apertures looking at your depth of field preview are looking at the images and reviewing them. You can get pretty good at making those adjustments in the field without any technical help. It's just by feel of this looks right on It Seems right at Ah, a little question from the chat room. J. Lo Price. Does the camera have to be off to change the letter camera does not need to be off. Um, it may recommend it in there, but there really isn't any disadvantage that I've seen. And I've certainly had the camera on and off are on when I changed the land. So not really a nesting necessary change. And for external flash to it doesn't matter. Cameras. External flash is totally fine keeping it on. Yeah. All right. Well, I think we're ready to take a break. So for our live on its, we're gonna go ahead and take a break and come back in a little bit. I'm not sure exactly what our time schedule is. Perhaps somebody else will pop on and tell you exactly what we're gonna come back. I think we're gonna try toe, play something while we are out. But thanks a lot for tuning in, and we're gonna come back in a little bit and dive into the menu system. So thanks a lot, everybody

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

CanonT2i_Handout.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

lblack
 

This is a great class. I bought a Canon T2i (used but in great condition) for my wife (I have a Canon 60D), and this class has been good for both of us. It served as a great learning class for my wife to move from a small point-and-shoot to her T2i DSLR, and for me -- well, what can I say. I thought I knew all about my camera, but this class proved I do not! I learned a great deal here beyond just the T2i specifics. I like the clear concise delivery of the subject material. Everything is organized in such a way to be able to digest each section before moving to the next.

a Creativelive Student
 

I really enjoyed this class. I've had my T2i for a while now, but I've only used it sporadically because I didn't understand many of the functions. The few times I referenced the manual was like listening Charlie Brown's teacher....LOL. John is really great at explaining things simply. I watched his Fundamentals class live and it was awesome. I'm hoping to add that to my collection one day.

user-eb008e
 

This was the best tool for me, as I am new to the world of semi professional photography. This is a great starting point before moving on to greater concepts. Understanding your camera is a must, and the switch to Manual shooting now is not as intimidating after this viewing this tutorial. I will definitely pursue his other classes.

Student Work

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