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Backside: Viewfinder Display

Lesson 6 from: Nikon D5600 Fast Start

John Greengo

Backside: Viewfinder Display

Lesson 6 from: Nikon D5600 Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

6. Backside: Viewfinder Display

Lesson Info

Backside: Viewfinder Display

Next up we have our viewfinder. And this is what obviously makes this camera unique from many different cameras on the market, as we have an actual optical viewfinder on this. Which makes viewing very easy, very sharp, very bright and easy to see. There is a diopter on the right-hand side of the viewfinder, which allows you to adjust the focus of the viewfinder. It has a little plus and minus, I think, on there somewhere. It has nothing to do with exposure, it's the focus of the viewfinder. It's not the focus of the final image, just what you see through the viewfinder. This is to accommodate people with different vision. So adjust it for your eyes and what you want to look at. 'Cause when you look through the viewfinder, down at the bottom is gonna be your shutter speed's aperture and other information. You wanna make sure that that is sharp in the viewfinder. Don't worry about the image that you see, that could be the lens that's off. It's that information down there at the bottom. T...

he little rubber eye cup is something that is a piece that you can replace for about 10 bucks. It's DK 25. If you do keep your camera for a long time and wear it out, that rubber may break. I've seen that happen on people who use their cameras a lot or perhaps you use glasses. That might make it wear a little bit more quickly. There is an eye sensor on the camera. And the reason that the eye sensor is there is that there's a big display on the back of the camera, and when you hold the camera up to your eye, it automatically turns off that LCD display, because that can be kind of distracting having that bright screen on so close to your eye when you're looking through the viewfinder. There is a control in the menu section where you can have that turned off if you need to for some other reason. So that's what the eye sensor is doing. When you look in the viewfinder, first off, the frame that you are looking at is 95 percent accurate. You are actually getting a little bit more than you see. Everything that you see in the viewfinder, you are guaranteed gonna get and a little bit more. And so for very, very careful framing, just be aware that you're gonna get a tad bit more. In an upcoming section, we'll talk about focusing points, but you will also see those, whichever ones that are active, in the viewfinder. There is a grid that can be turned on for those of you who like the grid for compositional reasons. And this can be done in the custom setting menu, D three, the viewfinder grid display can simply be turned on or off. There are a number of warnings in your camera. The three warnings are if you have forgotten to put a memory card in the camera, if you left your camera in the black and white mode, and if you have a low battery. And so those are the types of things that you'll see come on if they are set or missing. Next up is the LED information. We've talked a little bit about this, but let's talk about some of the other details in here. The little green dot on the left will turn green when your image is in focus. And this is true even with the lens in manual focus. You can just turn the ring until that green dot lights up, and that means you've achieved focus. There is, on the back of the camera, a button called the A-E-L button, where it locks the exposure. When you have that pressed with your thumb, it'll tell you in the viewfinder that you have properly pressed that button. We talked about the flexible program, as well as the basic exposure information, which is right there in the middle. And then we have a lot of other little settings that you may have the camera in. The effects mode, which was on the dial on the top of the camera. That's where it's shooting kind of those filtered funky looking images. Just another warning in here that you have those turned on, 'cause you wouldn't normally have those turned on in most cases. We've talked a little bit about the flash exposure compensation and the exposure compensation. Bracketing is a way of having the camera adjust the exposure for you. We'll talk about this when we get into the menu section where we can actually turn this feature on and off. But it's not something that you would normally leave your camera in, 'cause it's usually shooting a series of three photos lighter and darker. That's a good warning sign to know of. Then we have our ISO. Where's the ISO, or the sensitivity of our camera set at? Critical shooting information. And then over in the brackets, we will have shot information, which is the number of shots remaining. And if you have more than a thousand, it becomes a K number. So K is an indicator for a thousand. SO two point one K indicates 21 hundred shots approximately. As you start actually getting down to the final numbers, those will become more exact and accurate. When you press halfway down on the shutter release, the number in the brackets becomes the shots remaining in the buffer. The buffer is the onboard memory of the camera that allows you to shoot a series of photos right away before they are even downloaded to the memory card. So for action photography, it's kind of an important number, 'cause how many shots can I shoot very quickly before they download to the card? And so you'll see that when you press halfway down on the shutter release. So if you look through the viewfinder, lift up and down the shutter release, that will go back and forth. Now the only time that you're gonna see the ISO in there is when you have it programed to show the ISO, which I think is more important than the total number of shots left. But that is an option that you get to choose, and we're gonna make that choice when we get into the menu system. And then finally, over on the right-hand side, we have a lightning bolt that lets you know if the flash is ready. And then there's a question mark, which may not be the best symbol here, but the question mark is where the camera is saying really, do you want to do this? Something's wrong. Anytime that is flashing, that is an indicator that something is amiss in the camera, and it might be that you don't have an appropriate aperture in shutter priority. It might blink when you get down to a very low shutter speed because it's worried about camera shake. Are you sure you wanna shoot a photo at two seconds? It's gonna be blurry. So it's kind of the camera's questioning what you are doing and how you have the camera set up. So anytime that you see that, it's a little bit of a warning. It's possible it may mean nothing, but it's something to check on and make sure you know what's going on. So that is the viewfinder.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Nikon D5600 Recommended Settings

Ratings and Reviews

Margaret Lovell
 

I received my D5600 as a Christmas gift, and while I picked up a few things on my own, this class was wonderful. I learned more than I would have picked up just by reading a book about the camera. Thank you, John!

John Acklen
 

John is a fabulous teacher. So clear and easy to follow. I will take many of his classes as I learn photography! Thanks John!

Adrian Todd
 

Really great review as there was some features of my d5600 I wasn't too sure about. It's probably one of the best instructors I have come across as he's explains things in simple terms that I am able to understand.

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