Lessons
Class Introduction
08:45 2Photo Basics
03:55 3Basic Camera Controls
05:11 4Mode Dial
19:08 5Top Of Camera
10:15 6Back Of Camera
06:11 7Viewfinder Display
05:07 8Back of Camera Buttons
22:08Live View Menu
16:05 10Movie Mode Menu
10:23 11Left & Right Sides Of Camera
15:57 12Bottom Of Camera
02:46 13Front Of Camera
03:18 14Lens Options
10:49 15Playback Menu
07:23 16Photo Shooting Menu
08:34 17ISO Shooting Menu
09:03 18Image Quality Shooting Menus
09:16 19Multiple Exposure & HDR Menus
05:48 20Movie Shooting Menu
07:25 21Custom Setting Menu
09:13 22Timer & Bracketing Menus
08:27 23Custom Control Menu
05:44 24Set Up Menu
28:47 25My Menu
03:03 26Camera Operation
09:50Lesson Info
Image Quality Shooting Menus
Color space is the range of colors that you are going to be recording your image in. If you shoot in raw you get something called Adobe RGB, which is a very large color space that you can use very easily in editing software. The camera comes by default set at sRGB which is a smaller color gamut, which is often used for JPEG images on the internet. If you want to print your images, if you want to work with your images, in some sort of Photoshop program or image manipulation program, you probably want to be in Adobe RGB because it gives you a larger color gamut to start with. Active D-Lighting is where the camera will go in and adjust your JPEGs to make them easier to see in most situations, and so as an example of what it's trying to do is it's trying to brighten the shadows and limit the highlights from becoming too bright. And so, what it's doing if you'll notice the histogram on the top of the screen is it's trying to reduce the highlights, so they're not as close to the right edge o...
f the frame, and it's trying to raise up the shadows so they're not quite as dark. For a lot of general photography, it looks pretty good as to what it does, but it's not perfect for everything, and so it's something I'm a little bit wary recommending to use on everything. If going in and manipulating your images afterwards is something you do on a regular basis, you don't need to worry about this. This is just for people who want to try to get it right in camera as far as the processing of the JPEG image. And so, you can get in there and I wouldn't set it something to too high because it is something that you can work with later. Long exposure noise reduction works with JPEG images, and what happens when you shoot a 30 second exposure, the camera will go through 30 seconds of processing. So, I've always kind of wondered, how much good does this do? Because there sometimes can be noise involved in long exposures. Some cases it's pretty much imperceptible the noise that you see. And so I took a 30 second exposure and I tried it with the noise reduction turned off, and then with the noise reduction turned on, and I noticed no real discernible difference between the two. And so it doesn't really seem to be doing anything very helpful, and it only works with JPEG images, and it does slow you up working in the field, because every time you shoot a photo you have to wait that length of time again for the camera to process the image. And so it just doesn't seem like it's worth it to me. You can try it out in your own photography. See if it makes a difference, but hasn't made any difference for me. Next up is High ISO noise reduction, so this is kind of on the same idea as the last one. When you shoot at higher ISOs you do most indeed get more noise, and so this is where the camera will go in and try to mask out that noise by making adjustments to the image. And so here's an example at ISO 6400. It's turned off on the left and you will notice a little bit of noise, especially in the dark areas. As the noise reduction gets cranked up higher and higher, it does reduce the noise but it does start blurring a little bit of the edge details on the image. So, setting this to High is not something I would recommend for all situations. Let's take a look at it cranked up even higher at a 51,000. You see a lot more noise here. The camera does a pretty good job at reducing the noise, but it does start to kind of dissolve some of those sharpness details. And so you want to be careful about setting this too high for all situations. If you are the type of person who does like to work with this after the fact in the computer, you're probably better off working it there because there you can adjust it in particular for each individual image according to its own needs. When you set it here, it has kind of a common setting that it does for all the images that you shoot at that particular ISO. And so a normal setting might be fine for an average user, but I think a more advanced user would probably just turn this off and handle it afterwards in the right type of software program. Vignette control is gonna work and deal with lenses that have a little bit of a darkening on the corner. As an example you can see in this photograph the sky gets a little bit darker as it's in the corner, so we would call that a vignetting effect. Nikon knows how much vignetting the other Nikon lenses have, and it can automatically correct for it in the camera with the JPEG images. Now some people prefer to add vignetting to images, and so they might want to leave this feature turned off. I know that when I shoot portrait photography, I often prefer to have the vignetting turned on. Keeps the eye in the brightest part of the frame in the middle of the frame, and so it's a real personal choice as to whether you want this turned on or off. And so I think some of the more advanced photographers prefer to leave that one turned off. Auto distortion deals with a curvature in the lens, caused by the lens, and so as an example you can see the horizon is curved in this case. And as we go back and forth between images where the camera is correcting for it, generally we like to have our straight lines straight, and so nobody really likes the distortion, except for those who are choosing to shoot with a fisheye lens, and so this is a good item to keep turned on. Flicker reduction deals with fluorescent lights that flicker as they are turned on. So this is the way that fluorescent lights work is they flicker very, very quickly. So quickly we can't see it with our own human eyes, but can be seen with the camera. So this camera will fire at eight frames per second, so the question is is where are those photos gonna lie on that brightness and darkness of that flickering of that light? And well that's just gonna depend on when those eight frames happen to fall, and what's gonna happen is you're gonna end up with a series of photos that vary in brightness from one image to the next. Which can be extremely frustrating if you're shooting, say let's say a gymnastics match, and every other photo needs to be lightened or darkened. It's gonna cause a lot of work for you later on. So when you have flicker reduction turned on, what it does is it takes in each image and it looks for the flickering, and it times the next image to be shot at the peak of those light cycles as it goes up and down. Now it's possible that you may not get eight frames a second. It might be seven and a half frames a second. It just slows it down just a tad bit so that you get nice even lighting. Okay, so here's an example of what a fluorescent light will do with exposure. Now these first four exposures were all shot with exactly the same shutter speed and aperture, and you'll notice they're not exactly the same brightness, and that's because the light is flickering in the frame. If we turn the flicker reduction on, we can go from image to image and it is either identical or very, very close in its brightness, and it makes dealing with the aftermath of all these images much, much easier. And so I think for most photographers, you're probably gonna want to just leave this turned on. There might be a few people who really want the absolute eight frames a second. They don't care how bright or how dark any individual gets, but I think for simplicity, leaving this turned on would probably be a good call for most people. One option is to leave it turned off, but to let the flicker reduction warning in the viewfinder warn you when it's a problem, so that you can only, so that you can turn it on only when it is a problem. And so that flicker in the viewfinder will come on if you turn this on, and there is a flicker reduction problem. Now just because you see that flicker turned on doesn't mean the problem's being solved. That's just a reminder for you to jump in this mode and turn the flicker reduction setting to the On place. If you have the ML-L3 infrared remote control you need to tell the camera that you're going to be using it and that it needs to stay awake, and be receptive to that information. So if you are going to use it, you want to come in here and turn it on for one of those modes. If you want to do bracketing with the camera, you can bracket in many different ways. The normal way is auto exposure, and this is where the exposure is adjusted between the different frames, but you can also do this with white balance, Active D-Lighting, or even with the flash if you want. Most people though are probably gonna be doing it with the AE and flash, or the AE only.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Thomas Sielaff
Great, great course. Could not be any clearer on what to know, what to do, and in all, making understanding my camera a fun thing! Well, well, worth that cost. A steal really!!
Keshav
Helps you master the camera controls very quickly. I'm glad I took the course. Without it, I'm sure it would have taken me years to know and use the full power of this camera. Great Course. Highly recommend.
Roy Shenfield
This is a great course! I recently bought a D7500 and was somewhat stymied by the large number of different possible settings and the several hundred page user manual and menu guide. This course covers the vast majority of what I need to know and in a reasonable amount of detail. I especially liked the material on menus as he went through most of them in detail. Additionally all the slides shown in the course are available in pdf as well as several pages detailing the authors recommended settings. I highly recommend, especially given the $24.00 special offering for this.
Student Work
Related Classes
Camera Guides