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
Viewfinder Display
So we do have the viewfinder on the back of the camera. We're gonna talk more about that in just a second. We do have an eyecup around it, the DK-28. This is something that can wear out after years of hard use of the camera, and so if you do wanna replace it, it's a relatively minor expense to go ahead and replace that. Over on the right hand side is the diopter of the viewfinder. This is controlling the focus, what you see in the viewfinder. So what you wanna do is you wanna look at the viewfinder information down below, the numbers and so forth, and you wanna turn the diopter until that is sharp on it, and if it's sharp, then you have your viewfinder properly focused. And it does get bumped from time to time, and so you may need to readjust that in the future if you're looking through the viewfinder and it's just not sharp and easy to see in there. Now when you do look through the viewfinder, let's take a look at some of the different information that you have available to you. First...
off, the frame lines that you see are 100% accurate, so as you line things up on the edge, that is exactly where they're going to be in the final shot. We're gonna talk more about the focusing system in this camera, but to start with it has 51 focusing points. There is a button over on the side of the camera that you will be using to control what focusing points and the focusing system. We're gonna get into that in a little bit later section, but those are the points that you're gonna see right in the viewfinder itself. One of the options that some people like to turn on is the grid system. You can go into the custom menu under D6 viewfinder grid display and turn this on and off. Some people like this for making sure they get the horizon correctly level. Some people like it just for compositional reasons, and so it's your choice whether you wanna have that on or off. We then have a one third crop factor. So if you know you are shooting telephoto work, you're not gonna be needing that extra area and you want your images automatically cropped to that one third area, you are gonna lose some pixels and so it's not gonna have the same resolution as shooting on the full frame of the camera. But if you do wanna do that, you can choose an image area with a one third crop on it. There is also a roll and pitch indicator. This can be turned on and off in the custom menu's F1, and this can help you determine if you are tilting the camera. We have a number of warnings. For instance, if you have your camera in the effects mode, I told you to be careful about shooting with that, this let's you know that you are in there. You can put the camera in a black and white mode, and it'll give you a warning when it's in that mode. If you've forgotten to put a camera in there, you'll see a little warning in the bottom left of the camera. And there is a flicker detection down in the bottom right to let you know that you are shooting under lights that are flickering in brightness, and if you shoot a series of photos, you may not get even exposure on them. That is something that we'll talk more about later on in this class because there is a way for the camera to automatically fix that sort of problem. Down along the bottom is the LED information. This is gonna give us a lot of exposure information and settings guide to how the camera set up. On the far left is a focus indicator. There is a white dot that turns on when the camera is in focus and there's a couple little arrows on either side. That's letting us know which direction to turn the lens if we are manually focusing to get the sharpest focus. The auto exposure lock indicator will let us know if we're pressing the AEL button on the back of the camera. We'll talk more about that in an upcoming section. And then there's the flash lock value. If you want to fire a pre-flash, when you do have an external flash unit on the camera, you can fire a pre-flash and lock that exposure into the camera. We talked about program shift anytime the camera's in the program mode and you're adjusting shutter speeds and apertures. The flash sync will have a little x by it to let you know that you are at the x250 flash sync, and then we'll have most of our exposure information. Shutter speed, aperture, and exposure level. If our flash exposure, our bracketing are turned on, we'll see little indicators in there at the bottom. Little indicator as well for the battery level and our exposure compensation. So all of these are just little warnings to let you know that something is a little off or something is a little bit different than the standard operating mode. We may see the ISO in there. As we are setting our ISO, you'll be able to see that right there over on the right hand side of the viewfinder. Normally in the brackets on the right hand side, you will see the number of shots remaining and when you press halfway down on the shutter release, you might see an r, which will tell you the number of shots remaining in the buffer as you are shooting a fast series of photos. And then over on the right hand side, you'll see a lightening bolt that is letting you know the status of the flash. Is it ready to fire? Is it charging up? If it's blinking, that means it's charging up and it's not quite ready to fire. If it's steady, that means it's ready to fire.
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