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6. Camera Operation

Lesson 6 from: Canon Rebel T3i / 600D Fast Start

John Greengo

6. Camera Operation

Lesson 6 from: Canon Rebel T3i / 600D Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

6. 6. Camera Operation

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Lesson Info

6. Camera Operation

All right, well, we got the big final big finally here, and so this is where all of you at home get to take your cameras out and start playing with the controls because we're going to set this camera for a bunch of different things. As I said, there's one hundred features or more on this camera, you're only going to use a few of them. So let's, talk about the few that we really need to work this camera. Now we talked about the simple set up before, so oh, but more about the full set up when I'm going to take a camera out, I'm going to do something really important gonna go photograph my friend's wedding or I'm going on vacation or I've got a big sporting event. I'm going to go to, we're gonna make sure the batteries charged out. I got my lenses with me, I've installed the battery so ready to go as soon as I need to take a picture, I've got a memory card that's in the camera. I'm going to format the memory card because all my pictures from the previous shoot are downloaded and backed up...

on toe to separate hard drives, if not three hard drives. I'm going to set the date and time especially if I'm traveling going to goto africa on a trip I'm gonna want to make sure that I've adjusted for the time and date of that location so that I know when I took pictures I'm gonna make sure my die after a job diop her job chapter na hop is adjusted so that my view through the view finder is nice and clear I'm going to make sure my image quality is set to raw I prefer that over j peg I'm gonna make sure that my features in this set up in custom and you are set to what I think is best for what I'm about to do with the camera and I'm gonna shoot it test photo and I'm gonna shoot for look for dust on the sensor I don't want to go shoot up big important event with a great big kalaba dust right the middle of everything yes, I can fix it later and post, but I would rather have it right from the start before I head out the door so those air some steps that I would do before you engage in any important shoot all right? So you're going to want to know how to change your exposure mode that is the big old dial on the top of the camera next up changing your shutter speed is done with the mod dial that's the main dial on the top of your camera changing your aperture is going to require you to press that a v button in the back in turn, in the main dial, you're isil has a dedicated button right next to that main dial. You press that button, and then you'll turn the main dial your exposure compensation, which will be used in some of your automatic moz like aperture priority shutter priority and program. You will need to press the plus minus button in the back and turn the main dial for that. The next one is your meat oring mode. This is where you have to dive a little bit into your quick menu to change your meeting mode. White balance has a button right on the back of the camera labeled w b focus has a dedicated button on the back of the camera as well called a f your focus points is that button in the upper right hand corner that has a box and five little dots inside of it. And that is how you change your focusing points by pressing that button and turning the main dial to adjust for one point. To all nine points and then finally the drive mode there's a button directly on the back of the camera it's the left hand of the cross hairs back there the cross keys it's got some box and a little timer and a remote control next to it and it's how you change the drive mode on your camera so what we're going to do right now is we're going to set our camera up in a soup for simple operation mode all right let's change the exposure mode to pee for program cameras, going to figure out shutter speeds and apertures so we don't have to worry about the next two columns we're going to switch over to s o and we're going to switch this to ottawa and so I don't like auto is so but we're going to put it here for the simple sl mode and I am going to unplug my camera from r h defeat so that we could maybe used the overhead because I want to stay on the key note here and I'm going to switch this to auto and said it somehow that just feels wrong but we're going to continue on all right let's make sure our exposure compensation is set at zero how do I do that the plus minus button in the back of the camera I can see that it has its little indicator set right there at zero army during mode is going to be at evaluate if how do we change metering? We go into the cube button the quick menu on the back of the camera I will then need to navigate down to the bottom row where there is some brackets, some circles and a dot that is set in evaluative metering. I could change it if I wanted to but I'm going to leave it in evaluative metering white balance white balance is most quickly set on the back with the w b button and I can see that I do have it said at a w b which stands for auto white balance the next one we're going to change his focus to one shot over on the right hand side of the cross keys is r a f button and I am indeed set at one shot right now I'll press set in the middle just to make sure that that is locked in focus points all points the way I could do this is pressed the button in the upper right hand back of the corner corner of the camera right above that little speaker and actually I can view this on the back screen of the camera and I can turn the front dial the main dial of the camera so that all brackets are activated impress set and our final setting in this is the drive mode which is theory left hand cross key set that mode in there, get back to a regular menu and now I can select our many different dr mounts and I want the single and so this is a simple set up for somebody who really doesn't know what they're doing with the camera for taking basic pictures, having taken this class and sat through as much of this as you have, you're going to want to do more than this, so let's, take a look and we're going toe start working a little, but pastor here, this is how I think an enthusiast might set up their camera rather than program they're going to want have a little bit more control, so we're going to go to a v for aperture value. We're not worry about cheddar speed, we're going to let the camera picked the shutter speed for us. We're going to choose the aperture in the aperture I would like you to set is f four so on our camera, you can see our apertures air highlighted, we turn the main dial and we go down to f four now, maybe your camera might not have that for you may need to adjust the zoom to get there next up for I so we're going to get back into the real world here, we're going to shoot it s o one hundred, so I'm gonna press theis so button and turn the dial overto one hundred impress the set and we're locked in at one hundred the best quality setting exposure compensation we're going to check to make sure that we're said it zero where we are so we're good our meeting is at evaluative and I can see down here the symbol looks right but I'm going to go down and check it anyway and you can see there that we are at evaluative are white balance should be at auto which is where we had it before and I'll just check it again it is there so we will continue on to focus one shot which is where we had it before check that it is still in one shot that's a good mode to have focus points let's go toe a single focusing point rather than having the camera just work all nine points we're going to be very specific and choose the point in the middle so you press that button in the upper right hand corner with your thumb and turn the dial and for our drive mode we will keep that set on single and so that's a good general set up for a basic photographer all right, so let's say you're old school and you like to do things the way used to be done how would you set your camera? Well let's go to manual so we're going to turn the mod ill to the manual setting on the model right on top and now we need to worry about shutter speeds and apertures and for shutter speeds let's set a shutter speed of one hundred twenty fifth of a second we're going to turn the main dial on the top of the camera till it says one over one hundred twenty fifth of a second and for apertures let's set it at f eight we have to press the a v button on the back of the camera and turn the front dial two f eight blight f eight because there's an age old saying in photography that says, if you want to take a great picture, how do you take it f eight and be there just a good aperture r I s so let's let's have some fun here and let's change our eyes. So up to four hundred we pressed the I s o button and dial up to four hundred press set exposure compensation. We're not going to worry about because we're in manual, but for me during traditionally cameras used to use center waited meeting so we're going toe used the q button to navigate to the media ring system and we're going to go all the way over to where it says center weighted average it's kind of awkward because it's got these brackets and nothing inside the brackets and that's the center waited metarie personally, I think it's kind of a funny symbol, but that's the way cannon does it next up our white balance is going to stay at auto, which is where it was before so we don't need to change it focus let's go to manual focus and how do you do that? Well, if you remember way back when we're looking at the side of the camera over on the side of the camera is an auto focus and manual focus switch on the camera so you can flip that switch back to manually focus and you can then turn the ring at the front of the lands to manually focus. We're not going to worry about focus points because we're in manual focus and let's change our drive mode to continuous, so I'm going to press the drive in the back and could use the cross keys to go to continue a shooting and press set. And so now I'm probably gonna get a dark picture because it's not the right shutter speed an aperture in here, but we're just setting shutter speeds and apertures for practice. All right, let's just do a random test here just to test how fast you are at moving this camera around set your camera to time value and I'm going to do this just about its fastest I can and present this let's set a shutter speed of one half of a second and I'm going to tell you that this is a bit of a trick because ah half second on candid cameras has kind of a funny display the display is zero quotation five and if you're not sure where it is just keep going to you find one second and it's three clicks away and that's a half second you gotta make sure going three clicks in the right direction we're not going to worry about aperture but let's change the esso to thirty two hundred I s o button thirty two hundred set exposure compensation plus two we pressed the plus minus button on the back of the camera we turn the dial to the plus side plus to the indicator is right below the two meet oring change it to spot metering oh my gosh where's metering it's in the quick menu quick menu and this is generally the only thing we need to go into the quick menu to change so it's right where I was before and we're going to go to the tiny dot in the brackets spot meter and tells you right there white balance let's change it to flash we go to the w b button on the back of the camera we navigate over to flash and we press set focus mode all right change focus and right now somebody is going to their auto focus button and they're trying to change it to a I focus but on the back of the camera it's screaming at him imf but I want this in a I serve a why is it doing this it's? Because we've got to change the switch on the lands backto auto focus so you got to flip the switch on the lens back to auto focus and then you go backto auto focus and make sure you're in a I surveil that's the sports mode focus points let's choose all points focus button we can either use the set button in the back of the camera or we can turn the main dial of the camera and for our drive mode let's set it at self timer continuous that's the one on the far right and we can set this to take three or more up to how many pictures ten pictures in a row you could set that up take ten pictures of yourself about that all right, let's do one more random test by the way you don't want to tune out right now because your cameras going to be set up really weird when we're done with this. All right, let's go to the program out not gonna worry about shutter speeds or apertures let's change to an isil of two hundred press the eye so button down to two hundred press set exposure compensation let's make sure we're at minus three on this one that's that a v button dial it over to minus three press set actually don't even need to press that on that one meeting press the cuban ongoing the quick menu we're changing over to center waited meeting are you keeping up or you falling behind if you're falling behind you need to know your camera better no I'm going pretty fast here all right let's change the white balance to the shade presley w b button on the back of the camera find the shade which is thie little cloud icon press set focus let's go to a I focus the focus that I don't like it's the one that switches back and forth between one shot and servo according to its own needs focus points let's choose the center point on the right hand side of the frame I'm gonna press the focus point button I'm going to turn the dial until I get the point on the right hand side right I can use theory goes in the back or I can use the dial on the top there's two different ways to get there and when I'm done I will just press the focus button again and will stay locked in dr mode self timer two second delay go to the drive mode this is the little self timer symbol with the two next to it now there'll be a two second delay and I'll go ahead and fire this camera just so that you can see what it's like and that's why I'd like to turn the beep off because I don't like that bp all right, let's get into some real photography here let's do a landscape shot with this camera. How would I set this camera to do a landscaping when I talk about a landscape? Typically I'm working from a tripod so I don't have to worry about the shutter speed as faras camera movement. I have something in front of me that I want lots of depth of field on I got flowers in the foreground or something in the foreground and something in the background, and I want to have it all together in this in the scene in photographs so depth the field is very important. I like to have my camera, emmanual notes are going to set my camera in manual I need to select a shutter speed what shutter speed? Well, that totally depends on the light level, but just for practice let's set one quarter of a second, so I'm gonna slit set one slash four that's a quarter of a second. Now I want lots of depth of field in my landscape shots, so I'm going to choose a relatively good amore good amount of depth of field, so f sixteen I pressed the a v button and I turned the main dial and I'm going to change that two f sixteen I could go more if I need to it totally depends on the scene this is not the exact settings for all landscapes this is just a good starting point I want to have the finest quality possible, so I'm going to set my eyes so at one hundred I esso button main dial press set I don't need to worry about exposure compensation because I'm in the manual mode you only use that when you're in the automatic moz, I want my meeting at eight evaluative so my metering button is in my quick menu I'm going to change that to evaluative metarie the white balance I think auto is fine because I'm shooting in raw mode so for white balance I'm going to go in and select that two auto white balance and for focusing one shot is going to be fine and so I'm going to move this with the auto focus button over to the one shot mode for focusing points are going to want to choose the single point in the middle last time I had it over on the right hand side so I can just go over dial back towards the center, impress the focusing button again tow lock in the center point the drive mode it depends a little bit if I have a cable release hooked up, I might use single shot if I didn't have a cable released with me I could use the two second self timer, so I'm going to set it on single because I like to have a cable release with me and so that's how I might set up a landscape shot kind of a good start you need you may need to make some adjustments as your need it's uh, require from there. All right, we're going to move on to the next type of shot. Ah, portrait. All right, so when you're taking a portrait of a person or maybe an animal, obviously you need to be concerned about your movement hand holding the camera. Most people are shooting portrait's handheld and you do also have to be concerned with their movement. How much are they moving around? So shutter speed is very important and on a lot of portrait say very popular technique is to shoot with very shallow depth of field, so choosing the right aperture is going to be critical in making that happen. So I like to do this in the manual mode. That way I have complete control over shutter speed in aperture, the shutter speed. I'm gonna want a reasonable shutter speed for hand holding the camera so let's, try one hundred twenty bit of a second, just cause that's a pretty good one to start with where we go next up an aperture depends on the style of look that you want from your picture, but in general, I want his wide of aperture as I can for many of my photographs. If I had one point four, I'd go to it. This lens doesn't have one point four, so I'm going to do as good as this lands can, so I'm just going to dial it down to the smallest number it has, which is three point five it's, good as I can do, and so I'm just going to leave it there. I s o I'm gonna want to have that set as low as possible, so I'm gonna press the button and make sure that that is set at one hundred, where it iss perfect not going to worry about exposure compensation army during was an evaluative, which is where we left it quite a bit, and we will leave it there for a bit, so we don't need to make any adjustment there white balance is that auto and this fine there our focus mode, let's double check to make sure that we're in one shot that way. When we focus on our subjects I which is what we want in sharp focus, it'll stay locked on there, our focus points in single and so the single point in the middle. Is the place to be, in my opinion, you might change it to one of the outside brackets if you want to shoot in kind of an off center composition and for the drive mode, I like to have this in the continuous mode that way, as the person's gestures or facial expressions change, I can change with them and continue to shoot very quickly. And so, that's. How I might set up for a portrait shot next up, let's. Take a blurry photograph don't we all like to take blurry photographs? I love taking blurry photographs, there's many good reasons. So we have a waterfall that has blurry because it's of its movement or I have a panning shot shot with a slow shutter speed showing motion, so these are some good reasons to show a blurry shot. Now it depends a little bit on what style you're shooting, but in general, I would probably be in manual so that I could really they control of shutter speed in aperture myself. Let's start off with a fifteenth of a second. This should be good for those dogs running blur those dogs. The aperture kind of doesn't matter, but let's, just go ahead and set an aperture of f eleven just for practice. Our isil, we're going to probably want to keep us lowest possible let's make sure that's at one hundred, which is where we are media ring is going to be evaluative and white balance is going to be at auto don't need to worry about those for this for focusing, you have some options here, you might manually focus, or you might use the one shot focus. It kind of depends on the type of blur shot that you're doing. I'm going to go to manual focus, so I'm gonna go over on the lens and switched it to manual focus. Now I can turn the front of the lands if you do set focus with one shot you might want to be in the single mote kind of depends on your situation and the drive mode. You do have some options here is well for the waterfall. You could do a self timer. Two second delay so you aren't moving the camera. If you're shooting the dogs running and the panning shot, you might want to be excuse me in the continuous mode and that's how you would set up for a blur type shot. All right, let's, do some sports photography here, some action, so in this case we have some. Subject in front of us that is moving around and we're wanting to track their focus, we're going to need to focus very carefully on them and have the camera track their movement. We're going to need a fast shutter speed to stop their motion as well, so we need I'm going to need to be a good judge of how fast they're moving and what sort of shutter speed we need once again, I like manual for this because I have complete control. Ah pretty good fast shutter speed is going to be five hundredth of a second, so I'm going to set one five hundredth of a second on my camera one over five hundred an aperture it depends on the light, but a lot of sports photographers like an aperture of two point it it I was in a pretty good amount of light allows you gives you a fairly shallow depth of field, which is nice because then your subjects really stand out from the background. Now this lens that I have here doesn't have two point eight, so I'm just going to do the best that I can and go toe f three point five, which he is pretty darn close to two point eight for action you're probably going to need ah higher isil so let's just practice changing our eyes so upto eyes so four hundred our media ring will stay at evaluative are white balance will be at auto and focus this is really important here we need to be in a I servo last time around I was in manual focus on the land so I need to change that to auto focus I now I'm going to go to the auto focus button and I'm going to go to a I serve a which is a continuous focusing system so the camera will continually focus on my subject as long as I leave my finger on the shutter release halfway down for focusing points it depends a little bit on the sports and subject that you're working with but I would go with all points so I'm gonna turn my dial until I get all points activated there we go there all highlighted press the focus points button again and also importantly in the drive mode I want this at continuous I want to be able to take as many pictures as fast as possible and so with a camera in that type of set up it's going to track and you can actually hear this maybe cameras constantly tracking for new subjects and it's going to be able to fire as quickly as possible and so that's a good action setting for the t three I all right just a couple more of these maximum sharpness you got a subject in front of you it's not moving it doesn't need a particularly great amount of depth of field, and you just want to take the sharpest picture possible. How would you set your camera? Well, part of this assumes that you're going to be working from much ipod. We're going to go with manual exposure, the shutter speeds not going to matter if you are on a a tripod, but just for fun. Let's set a shutter speed up to full seconds, so I'm going to go down to two seconds a long ways down there. There we go to with the little hash marks, the quotation marks afterwards and aperture the aperture he's going to going to be in the middle of the range, so this particular lands goes from three point five all the way up to f twenty two the middle of that range is going to be somewhere around f a to f eleven I'm going to go with f eleven now the exact shutter speed aperture combination is totally going to depend on the amount of light that you need these air, just theoretical shutter speeds and apertures our eyes. So is definitely going to want to be at one hundred for the finest quality, so I'm going to need to dial it down from our sports action mode back down to one hundred press set. Meet oring evaluative is going to be fine, and auto white balance is fine focus. I'm going to want to make sure that is an single shot, one shot so I have very specific thing that I am going to be focusing on and it's going to stay locked on. This is where I'm going to want to have a single point making that decision, and the center point is going to be the most sensitive to vertical and horizontal lines. So that's going to be the best bracket for focusing and then for the drive mode, you might want to put it into the two seconds self timer if you don't have a cable release that way, the nothing is touching the camera when it actually fires. If you have a cable race, well, then you could be in any of the other mounts. And so that's how I would set my camera to take the sharpest possible picture. All right, let's, get your camera set up here at the end for just basic photography. Just general, walk around the streets. You want to take some pictures? How do you want to have your camera set up? Well, I've been in manual most of the time and here's where I actually do a little bit of auto work aperture value. So I'm gonna let the camera pick a shutter speed and I'm going to choose the aperture so I'm not gonna worry about shutter speeds but let's choose an aperture that's wre relatively wide open f four is going to let in a fair bit of light if I need more depth of field I can just make a quick adjustment with the camera but if I need a quick shot the camera is ready to go I'm gonna leave my eyes so at one hundred because I want to be consciously aware of any time I make a change to that I would like it to start off at the best possible setting because if I can use one hundred I'm gonna go with it let's make sure our exposure compensation is not in some wacky place and it is in some wacky place right now because the last time we played with it we left it at minus three so let's get this turned back over to zero and boy that's going to be a shock to somebody who left the class early and went out and started taking pictures at minus three that's good for you to stay tuned in that's the benefit of it all right for me during I like evaluative metering I think that's a good general one and auto white balance we've had these here for quite a few for focusing one shot is fine check the auto focus I am in one shot for focusing points I'm going to go with that single focusing point in the middle I think that's a good tool to use for focusing and for the drive mode I'm going to set that into the single mode just going to be on the far left the one box so that I can take one precise shot at a time and so that's how I have my camera set up when I'm not sure what my next picture is going to be and if you've been able to follow all of that congratulations you're a t three I expert uh so hopefully that gives you a feel for how to set the most important features on your camera wow, that was a lot of information I think thank you, jon um we will take a few questions now. Yeah. Great. A question from scorpion sting is how maney actuacion cz can one typically take before the mirror mechanism needs repair or replacing? Well the camera is rated up to one hundred thousand firings which means it's tested to withstand that kind of as the minimum standard. You may get much more than that out of your camera it depends on how good your particular unit was built and how well you take care of it and some other factors said I don't even know all right question from mg hewitt should you always hold the camera down when attaching a len someone told me it lets in less dust but I shoot in a lot of dusty places is there a better option uh that's a good option so that when you take the lens on and off I typically will have the camera kind of pointed down I don't know that it's perfectly down less dust is likely to be sucked up into it or fall into it in that manner the only other better option is if you can get in an enclosed environment away from dust so I remember I was working in the sahara desert and there was blowing sand we would go back into the suv to change lenses because we could close everything off where the wind wasn't blowing in there so if you can go into a tent or a car or something like that to get away from it it might be worth it or maybe even have a friend hold their code up to help block the wind around it question from ali was all of those set ups were fabulous what do you think about food photography? Do you have recommendations? Well food photography would fall into the the sharpness one that we did maximum sharpness where your subject is not moving now the thing with food photography is sometimes you're shooting with shallow depth of field sometimes you're shooting with a lot of depth of field so I would definitely be in manual exposure lighting is big issue that's a whole that's a whole weekend workshop, right? They're not going to answer it in sixty seconds but I would be on a tripod. I would be in manual exposure if to be simple I might be working with some window light and I would be either working with a lot of depth of field or salad up to feel their whale that you could be all over the board on that one and turns out there's a class for that is there penny nailah santos created life and shop do you know when that one is that coming up? You know it was it already happened. Oh, so you can download the class that you can watch it anytime you want. That's right? Uh question from w r lee what again is the difference between a servo and a focus? Aye, aye. Focus is auto intelligent focus where the camera is trying to figure out whether you're subject is moving or not moving and it sometimes makes mistakes a I serve of servo a servo motorist means to move um and so servo is for subjects that are moving a I focus is this artificial intelligence thank you scorpion sting has asked aside from bracketing how could one maximus the dynamic range or does it not very well you want to pay close attention to your history? Graham and this goes a little beyond the scope of what we can get into in this class, but you want to make sure that your images are as well will exposed as possible, which means you are not clipping highlights or shadows cutting them off, so to speak. So you want to try together as much information at the time you saw the picture is possible and so using your meter looking at your pictures, looking at your history, graham and having that hissed a gram in general terms towards the middle, you don't want to have big spikes on the left or big spikes on the right. Okay, great. A j has asked, what is the use of lens hoods? And where can I find a good hoods for the t three I? Well, for every lens, there is a very specific hood, and so I know be being h photo has a great collection, they have all the hoods, they're so you want to look up, which lends you have, and if you look under the accessories, it'll tell you the lens, so that is required for that one lens hood, and what they do is they basically just shade the front of the lands if you've ever been in a car driving down the street. Into the sun where the sun is illuminating all the bugs in your dirty windshield and your dings in the cracks in the windshield and it's hard to see and then you drive behind the shade of a building it's suddenly much easier to see that's kind of what's happening when you get sunlight or bright lights coming straight in through the front of the lands it can cause flare ghosting and other aberrations we go back to the picture styles photo marsh is asking under which picture style should you keep it at standard urn control and what what is neutral? Well it doesn't really matter if you shoot raw and standard neutral is where I'm going off my memory here which is weak at best right now is where it's kind of taken all the parameters down very low so there's very little sharpening very little saturation and adjustments the standard are all zeros standard is where the camera has kind of a little a little bit of contrast that it's adding a little bit more saturation to it and it's kind of tweaking the image in some subtle ways to make it look a little better and in general it does look more presentable and so if I was going to shoot j pigs for some reason I couldn't shoot raw I wasn't allowed to I would probably leave that in the standard setting not the neutral setting great question from lax wings where in the camera do you set the sharpness over the preset purchase mode for sharp dennis you khun go into those on those picture styles and you can adjust the sharpness how much it's sharpened and the problem is is that over sharpened photos can look bad there don't have any visual examples here, but that was a big problem in the early days of digitalis people over sharpening images and it's not going to look good on a lot of people pictures for instance you're just going to sharpen all the pores in their skin so it's not something that you I want sharper pictures that's how I get it I know there are other ways to get sharper pictures with better lenses or better focusing or better technique or things like that and so I wouldn't play around too much with the sharpness. Next question what from vic isay? What is the difference between auto exposure bracketing an exposure compensation? I hope it's not a stupid question no it's I mean they're kind of the same button auto exposure bracketing is where you're going to shoot three frames and exposure compensation is were you selectively shoot one at a time and so bracketing is just a group of three together and compensation is where you said ok, I shot one right on I'm going to shoot one a little overexposed just because I think it might solve a problem or I might need it and so it's where you get to individually go in and select what you d'oh a question from kurt have you seen the technicolor sinise style for a movie making sorry that's okay vidin is asking tenuous shot how many at a time we can shoot at three point seven frames per second but it is limited according to whether you shoot raw or j peg and so right now I have my camera set to raw and if I look through the viewfinder I can see that aiken suit six images right away so this is what it sounds like this is from my manual exposure of two second exposure so let me change it to something reasonable. So three point seven frames per second for six shots I keep forgetting all the different setting sounds so let's change this to the continuous ending and maybe it will happen now let's change this ok and so now it's storing it's, shooting them in, storing them as fast as they can to the card but our buffer has filled up with the six shots now if I was to go in and change this to j peg my camera's still writing but it's about done I'm going to be able to shoot many more shots so if you're shooting sports a lot of sports okay, I'm stopping that's not the camera stopping if you're going to shoot a lot of sports, that might be a reason to shoot j peck is that you can get more shots off in a faster period of time. Great uh, question from ali is once you set your dial in video mode, how do you start and stop recording the video? Who's the shutter button sorry for the basic question that's a that's a simple question when you put it into the video mode there's the button on the back of the camera that is normally used for live you has a little tiny red dot next to it, and so you would press that to record you don't need to leave your finger on it. You press it wants to re card and then wants to stop recording. Thank you and one final question that's not exactly related, but a couple of people asked. It is, should we use a uv filter on lenses for general photography? And does that affect the picture quality? Somebody is trying to incite a forum riot of should you use you fees or not? U v s are a protection filter in this, which is what we got from borrow lenses sends him out with a filter, and the uv filter is analogous to insurance if you're the type of person that likes insurance because this is a relatively expensive lens it's about a four hundred dollars in this particular camera and this is probably a fifteen dollars filter and if I do something stupid and scratch that filter or bang it up in some way it's fifteen bucks to replace it if I do the lands it's four hundred dollars or maybe at the minimum two hundred dollars to replace and so if you don't want to scratch the front of your lands which is a very important element you might want to use the uv filter personally I do use uv filters on violence is I use fairly high quality b plus w that is b plus w filters uh they are very nice very good quality filters that's you might say like an extra insurance policy because they're just higher quality insurance well john that again amazing amount of information today and uh thank you for everyone for joining us you are oh, I have a final little just not much just no I just wanted to let you know that if you wanted to learn more about photography we do have the fundamentals of digital photography it's a ten week class but it's really about twenty four hours of information where we go through tons of information general photography there's very little overlap with this camera in that class and that is available from creative live also if you are interested in workshops or tours I am heading to myanmar later this year and I am looking for a few fellow travellers, we're going to keep the group fairly small. We're going between four and ten students and if you're not familiar with myanmar, it is formally known as burma. It is a developing country and it is a stunningly beautiful place to go a fantastic photographic destination and I am welcoming all levels of photographers I one of the differences in my trips among anyone else is is that I'm more than welcoming of a brand new beginning photographer who has tons of questions because I knew all the cameras. Well, I like answering these questions I like teaching and so this is about learning and traveling at the same time. So if you want to try to get the best of both worlds, take your brand new camera to a tremendous location and learn about it. This is a chance for us to go out, learn, and then we'll take their computers and download images every couple days review images, compare notes with what everyone else is doing and have a great time along the way. So if you're interested in this, you can go to my website and find out about that, and once again, my name is john gringo. You can go to my website, find out more about the fundamentals of digital photography you can find out about my tours or the other classes that I teach here in the seattle area so, thanks a lot for tuning in. No matter how you're tuning in live or on tape or anything else, appreciate it.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

CanonT3i_Handout.pdf
CanonT3i_Menu.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

TOnya
 

This was such an awesome class. It's nice to finally be able to figure out my camera. John is such an awesome instructor. I love his classes. I like watching the videos but also need to read the transcripts so I can take notes. It can be a little bit challenging but also very funny at some of the words that the transcription (software?) thinks they are saying. I really get a kick out of it. I have taken John's Fundamentals of Photography and have had so many aha moments in both classes. Its just so nice when everything clicks. John's way of teaching is so down to earth and just easy to absorb the information. Now I'm off to see what I want to do next. Thanks so much for such an awesome class!

Scott Jackson
 

It's almost embarrassing to admit. I've had my T3 Canon for over 5 years, and am just now trying to really learn what all it can do. Up to now, The best I could get in photos, unless I got lucky, was pretty much equivalent to the old 110 pocket cameras. While the T3 is an older model comparatively speaking, especially in the current electronics age, it's still a very good intermediate camera in my view. John as much said this in this course, which made me feel better. I didn't know if it was me, or the camera. Obviously it was me on the poor quality photos. John is so in depth, and speaks well to simple minds like myself. I could understand exactly what he was saying. Everything makes sense now. As John said, the manuals that come with these cameras are a bit over whelming, and just so much to try and read. I learn better with visuals and audio much better. John excels at doing just that. If you have a camera that has so much on it, and you're totally confused like I was, I HIGHLY recommend this course. You'll be glad you did. In just a few hours, I knew more about my camera, and the basics of just about any camera of this type. I was amazed.

Paul Spears
 

I'm a beginner , I'm so glad I took this class. I always come back and re watch it trying to get theses things engrained in my little pea brain. LOL I like this system I can rewatch it when I want or need a refresher. I tried other sites but I like this one the best. If you need help with the T3i or any other Camera they have it all here. I'm now taking the fundamentals of photography. It a lot more in depth but they explain it very well.

Student Work

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