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11:15 am - Front Side

Lesson 5 from: Canon 70D Fast Start

John Greengo

11:15 am - Front Side

Lesson 5 from: Canon 70D Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

5. 11:15 am - Front Side

Next Lesson: 11:45 am - Displays

Lesson Info

11:15 am - Front Side

All right, moving around to the front of the camera. We are just about done on the outside, all right, lens released. So if you want to change the lenses, obviously you're gonna have to press down on this button and make about a quarter turn to get the lens on and off, we see are mere inside that's the reflex portion in single lens reflex. Of course, you'll see some contacts you don't need to do anything with this, but they connect up with contacts on the lenses so that there is communication as to where to focus and what aperture to set up towards the top. You're going to see to markings once a white box, which uses thie f s lenses, which are the lenses that are designed for the censor that is used in this camera. You'll also see a red mark, which is for their standard e f lenses thes air the full frame lenses, and I'm going to get in talk a little bit more about those two different lens mouths and some lens recommendations in just a couple minutes here after that. Over on the other s...

ide down hidden is a unlabeled button. This is the depth of field preview button and let me show you a little video clip of what is going on with this button. When you press this button, it stops the lens down let's, go ahead and press the button, stops the lens down and you'll see how much depth of field you are getting in that particular image. Let me press this again, and if you pay attention to the image on the left, you'll see the aperture being stopped down because normally when you view your image through the viewfinder it's in the brightest, widest, opening shallow a step the field now this used to be a big time professional feature used to be if you had depth of field preview, you had a pro camera, but nowadays, it's not a big deal because you could just take a picture and look at it on the back, and it kind of does the same thing where this becomes an advantage is if you are in bright sunlight like you're outside shooting landscapes, and you want to see what f twenty two looks like do the flowers in the foreground, I get to be in focus as well as the mountain in the background. So it's a it's, a handy device only for a small group of photographers. I believe now this is one of those buttons on those cameras that you can go in and change the custom of if you find depth of field preview is a completely useless feature. Feel free to go in and re program this button to something that you find valuable and you'll do that in the custom functions that we will talk about when we get into the menu setting so if you do get the wireless remote there's a little sensor on the front and that's where you're pointing your sensor at it is an infrared sensor which means it's not really good in bright sunlight and so if you're a long distance say fifty meters away from your camera it's not gonna work under real bright light conditions you need to be pretty close or it needs to be dark for it to work really well next up we have a little lamp in here which will come on when you're setting the self timer it's also a red eye reduction lamp that'll turn on and for some people they don't like this lamp on it's distracting it's not something they want they want their cameron the stealth mode and so a lot of people like to turn this off this is something that you'll have a choice to turn on or off when we get into the shooting menu if you shoot lots of pictures of kids and you get lots of red eye you don't have time to fix the red I would want to leave it on for a lot of people who prefer a little bit more discreet shooting you're gonna want to turn it off all right let's talk a little bit about the lens options that are available for you with this candid camera there are two different groups of lenses that you could choose from with cannon the e f lenses and the f s f by the way stands for electronic focus and the f lenses are designed or were designed for the full frame thirty five millimeter camera in the full frame sensor they will say if they have a red circle on them the e f s lenses will be labeled f s and they will have a white square as their mounting index mark and it's best to use some visuals to explain the difference here all right on the left we have the e f which is our full frame sensor as light comes through that lens it projects a large circle of light big enough to cover the sensor area of the camera which is exactly what we want when we're shooting full frame for the smaller f s lenses we have a smaller frame that we're shooting for so it produces a smaller image size circle and there's a different design in these lenses to make him kind of perfectly matched up for this smaller size sensor. Now what you might be wondering is what happens when I switch lenses with body so if you were to upgrade to a cannon six d or five d mark three with your old f s lands well, first off you physically can't even fit it on your camera but let's just say you were really strong and you forced it on what would happen is that you would get a lot of vignette ing or darkening of the corners because it's not designed for a full frame sensor so this is pretty unacceptable so if you plan to upgrade to a full frame camera look exclusively are mostly at the lenses or you're going to have to buy f s lenses and sell them when you sell this camera now the other option is what about those e f lenses on this camera? Because this is the camera that you have well it's not really a problem you do create a much larger image circle than you need that's not really an issue you're simply cropping it and using on leah center portion of it which is perfectly acceptable and you'll actually be eh big advantage to you when you are shooting telephoto work because you just get mohr magnification out of that lens than a full frame user and so with this camera you can use all all of the cannon current available lenses it's only if you are switching cameras at some point down the road or switching between crop and full frame that you really need to get a little bit more concerned about witch lenses you're using on your camera so let's talk about some of the terminology and lenses that cannon has available for you e f as I mentioned, stands for electronic focus e f s means it's a short back focus, which means it's designed for their cropped frame sensor and so some people really prefer getting the ftse lenses because they're kind of perfectly matched to this camera, but they won't work on the full frame cameras remember that the l lenses are their luxury serious of lens is this is their their best lenses and just in case you're wondering they don't make any e f s lenses that are also l lenses. All the lenses are e f lenses exclusively and so that's kind of the best lens that they could make with almost no price regard. Next up is image stabilizer I asked this is a great feature tohave for hand holding it's always nice to have on the lens and sometimes they make lenses with and without I always prefer it with the I s if I can get it for the same price, but oftentimes they cost a little bit more. Many lenses had been around for quite some time and they come out with new versions of him and they just give him a roman numeral number two tow let you know it's the second generation of that lands and so be aware if you are buying something on the used market is this a first or second generation in some cases, I'll warn you right now there is only a first generation linds they haven't made a second generation lindsay on some lenses, they're onto a third generation, but it just lets you know where it is in the siri's. Next up us m stands for ultrasonic motor, and this is what pretty much all of their lenses are these days it's, a type of focusing motor that's in the camera. The other type that's on just a few of the lenses is the tm stepper motor linds. I have one on this camera, which is the little pancake forty millimeter lands, and these lenses are specially designed for focussing with the video mode or in that live view mode there a little bit smoother and quieter when it comes to two continuous focusing and focusing with video. And so there are some advantages to this there's only a few lenses. None of the esteem lenses are l lenses. They tend to be a little bit more consumer orientated lenses designed for people who are using this camera as a still camera and a basic video camera. And so we might see more esteem lenses in the future, but it doesn't look like they're putting that particular, focusing motor on the high end lenses. So when the lenses themselves probably the most common lens that will be had with this camera in the kit if you buy it with the lands is thie eighteen to one thirty five all the lenses will have a little mount index letting you know what a mounted up on the camera to get it aligned correctly. This particular lens has a stabilizer switch all their lenses that have stabilizer technology and we'll have a switch on the outside of the lands all of their lenses will have a focusing switch at least all the ones that can auto focus they'll have a switch right on the outside for manual focus in auto focus and you probably do want to check and make sure that's an auto focus for most normal operation you'll have your zoo marine of course for changing your angle of you if you do want to manually focus, throw the switch in the manual and adjust the zoom ring if your camera is in auto focus with this lens but not with all lenses the focusing ring's not going to do anything on their higher and lenses you can turn the focusing ring and there's no impact at all on some of their lower england's is you don't want to touch the focusing ring because it's kind of stiff and you don't want to turn the motor's designed for focusing so if it turns smoothly you're okay if it it feels really rough or rigid. You probably don't want to turn it. The filter threads on this eighteen to one thirty five are sixty seven millimeters in size that would determine the size of filters for uv or polarizer is you want to get different. Lenses, have different filter size is something to look at and consider when choosing different lenses there's a couple of little notches around the outside of lens, and this is for mounting a hood or a shade, which in many cases is supplied, but not in all cases, depending on the lands. And so this is just simply for blocking bright light from hitting the front element of the lens, which can cause flare, which can cause lower contrast. And so, for best image quality, it's good to use a lens hood as often as possible. It is also kind of a nice little bumper in case you bump your camera up against something so highly recommend using it as much as possible. All right, so this eighteen one thirty five falls into what I call a category of normal zoom lenses. Some of the other options out there that people might like the eighteen to two hundred gives you a very wide range, from pretty good white angle to very good telephoto it's, a very convenient linds popular with travel photographers. Or anybody who just wants one lens everything package not my favorite lens in the book simply because it doesn't let in a lot of light it's focusing is a little bit of on the slow side he had it's not the sharpest lands in fact it might be the least sharp lens of all the cannon lenses but there is a price to be paid for convenience there's a lot of tradeoffs in photography my one of my favorite zoom lenses is the fifteen, eighty five and the reason is is that it gets below that eighteen mark and there's very few lenses from canon for this camera that get down below eighteen and so this one gives you a very good white angle at fifteen gives you more than enough telephoto for general purpose work if you really want a good system the fifteen, eighty five and the seventy two three hundred make for a nice combination good travel lens it's not the fastest lens in the world but I do prefer it a little bit over the other two lenses on the list here I'm not going to talk about all the lenses I'm just going to go into a few of my favorites if you want something faster and photographers love lenses that are fast which means they let in a lot of light so those two point eight type lenses cannon makes one lends its a seventeen two fifty five two point eight it's a good basic lands it's a very safe choice to make it's going to cost you around twelve hundred dollars. Another option that I really like is the tamar on lands it's a seventeen to fifty so virtually the same range it's still a two point eight they have their own vibration technology that they call what they call it v r on it and so vc vibration control excuse me and so that I think it's a very good lands it's going to sell for around six hundred fifty dollars, so it's quite a bit less than the canyonlands and I think as faras sharpness it is as good as the canyon lands probably the sharpest of the bunch and the fastest of the bunch is this revolutionary new signal in eighteen to thirty five and what's revolutionary is thie f one point eight aperture on it. We've never had a zoom lens at f one point eight and so if you were looking for true really good speed, this land's offers zoom and speed. Now you'll notice the range is not as big a range eighteen to thirty five so it's wide angle to slightly over normal and so it would be a very good street photography lens in the fact of the range that it is it's a little bit of a big and chunky heavy lens it it is going to be a little bit more money at around eight hundred dollars, but it's less than the canyonlands, but something you might want to take a look at if you're looking for a fast zoom lens, because that is the fastest out there, not many options when it comes to wide angle, especially if you're looking exclusively within the cannon family of lenses they do have the e f s ten to twenty two, which is a good, safe choice gets you something that's much wider angle the equivalent of about a sixteen millimeter lands on full frame. And so if you want to do a lot of travel photography, if you're into architecture, er your real estate photographer and you're trying to photograph rooms in a small tight area, this would be a great lens for that. There are a number of choices from other manufacture, as though the tamron ten to twenty four is probably going to be the best value of this bunch it's around five hundred dollars and gets you down to that ten millimeter focal inc. Probably my favorite of this whole group is going to be the toki no eleven to sixteen. It doesn't have much zoom range, but it is faster it's enough to eight lands and it's a constant to eight, which means at eleven or sixteen it's a maximum aperture two point eight and that's going to sell for around seven hundred dollars and I think optically that's going to be the best of the bunch. But for those of you who want the most wide angle lens, that would be the sigma eight to sixteen millimeter lands. This is a exceptionally wide angle lens it's not really fast, but that's because it's doing something that the other ones are not doing so there's four good choices for white angles if I had to pick one for most situations, I would go with the toki ni like the extra speed on that one. Uh, you're losing a millimeter but it's not that big a deal for most situations when it comes to telephoto work, I'll give you three good choices on lenses. Kind of the basic go to choice. The one that's matched up well with this camera is the seventy two, three hundred this gets you have very large range it's equivalent of a four hundred fifty millimeter lands roughly four hundred eighty millimeter lens excuse me? The aperture is not real fast, but it's an easily handhold herbal land's going to sell for under seven hundred dollars. My personal favorite of this group is the seventy two, two hundred f or this is an l lens, so you're getting really high quality glass here a little bit better weather ceiling on this you're getting a constant f four aperture which is pretty fast and I think a two hundred millimeter lens on this camera is more than enough for most people's needs if you were going to africa on safari that's when you want something that goes up to that three hundred millimeter range at least on this sensor they do maconel ends that is zoom that is fairly compact in size and that's seventy two three hundred f four to five six l lands and so all of these have image stabilizer they all have the ultrasonic motors on it it just kind of depends on how fast a lens you want how good a glass between the two seventy two three hundreds you will notice an image quality difference if you blow your images up or you use him in any sort of detailed way with that l let's now the larger of the seventy two, three hundred l lenses that's going to self around sixteen hundred bucks the seventy two, two hundred four is going to be around fourteen hundred bucks and so there is a price jump getting into these bigger lenses so having talked about some of the more expensive lenses let's talk about the secret best bang for the buck it so if you want a really good lands that's maybe not the newest lens in the lineup these air my pick for lenses that are just really good values these air all available new, but you're probably likely to find a lot on ebay or craigslist or for sale in your local market. The good old fifty, that nifty fifty one point four lands. They do make a one point eight it's kind of cheap, cheap and quality. And so I do prefer the fifty one for this is going to sell for around four hundred bucks. Great for portrait work on this camera. So if you want to do portrait's that's kind of the go to one another one that might be good for lifestyle photography. Street photography is the little pancake lens that I have on here, and so this is an f two point eight lands it's got the motor for very nice video work for focusing, and this one is going to sell for a whopping two hundred bucks, but I did see it recently on sale for one hundred fifty dollars, and this for a brand new lens that is actually quite sharp. I've compared this against a cannon l zoom lands and it's about the same quality. It's not the same quality is an ill fix, linds, but as an l zoom lens, it's pretty darn close kind of the older generation macro lens, the one hundred macro is one that I've been using for many years and very happy with they have a new wonder l siri's mackerel, incense, that's even better than this. But this one is good enough for most people's needs this one's going to sell for around six hundred bucks if you like to do portrait and you like to go down to the park or out the field, maybe get out of the studio. The eighty five is a great lands it's going to sell for a little over four hundred dollars it's going to give you a little bit greater working distances, it's a little too big or working distance for a lot of people working in studios. Which is why I kind of say it's, a good outdoor portrait lens because you often end up being ten or twenty meters away from your subject. But that's a very nice shallow depth of field sharp lands and finally is and I told you I like image stabilizer lens is well, this is the non image stabilized lands. If you wanted a longer lands, he wanted it somewhat fast and you wanted to get into the l glass. This is the cheapest way to get into an l let's. The image stabilizer version of this land's is around fourteen hundred bucks. This one is around seven hundred dollars and all it's doing is taking off the image stabilization and there are many that say that this is sharper then the image stabilizer version of the limbs so there are some very good attributes, so if you don't need that, take a look at these they've been around for a long time, but they are very, very good lance, if you are using any of these faster lenses like fifty one for the eighty five one eight as well as any of the other really fancy high end lenses were going to talk about a micro just and we had a question on it earlier, I'm going fully explain it later on inside the custom function group to dealing with auto focus, you can go in and find tune the focusing of these lenses so that they're perfectly matched to your camera so that when you focus on a subject exactly that subject is in focus, not two millimeters in front, not two millimeters behind it. So those are my lens recommendations, and this might be a good time to check in with jim and questions covering those final topics that we've been going through for the last half hour absolutely take a deep breath. Yes so a b j holtz wants to know is the eighteen toe one thirty five lands a better option to buy or eighteen to fifty five plus the fifty five to two hundred lens kit bundle that comes along with the seventy d that's a tough question, yeah and it's very hard for somebody buying into this for the first time to see where they are going and know what they're doing with their camera but the farther ahead you can see what your likes and desires our photography the better you'll be able to plan out your lens purchases the eighteenth and one thirty five is a pretty good one lens just does everything and so if you don't know what you're going to do that's a pretty good choice if you know that one thirty five is not long enough for what you're going to do, then I would go to that to land system because that too lends the big advantage is on the two hundred millimeter in if you said no I need to know I'm going to go shooting the high school sports one thirty five may not be long enough for out shooting the football game and so if you need that longer lens that's the key to the two images or to the two images the two lenses as faras the sharpness there may be a subtle sharpness difference between the two but I don't think that's enough to really sway this is the decision one direction or the other okay, perfect and you were saying that the you feel like the eighty five one eight l just best thing for your best bang for the buck so maybe clear it's theeighty five one eight well, no, no. Well, right, ok, not is in christmas, noel, but well in it cannon makes two eighty five two making eighty five one point two l lens, which is beautiful and amazing and we're not going to get into that. I don't eighteen hundred bucks and this little four hundred dollars basic eighty five one eight is a great lands. I own it and I would not shoot portrait inside because I generally don't have a big enough room my spare bedroom, which is my studio isn't big enough to work with an eighty five one eight, but if I'm gonna be outside it's a really nice lands because it really render some beautiful okay or out of focus area in the background. Okay, perfect. And you did not mention the seventy two, two hundred to eight. Was that really just for cost reasons? Yeah, I don't know that the typical person that's going to have this camera is going to be buying into the two thousand dollars to a holy trinity of lenses. They're wonderful lenses. The cannon seventy two, two hundred two point eight the twenty four seventy two point eight the sixteen to thirty five point eight are fantastic lenses, but I'm thinking that if that's what you're investing in in lenses, you should probably have a higher in camera now, this may fit. Somebody's needs perfectly with the a p s c sensor with the video capability. So there's. Perfectly good reason for it's. Just not a real common choice, right with this lens with his camera.

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Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

The good news is that this Canon 70D class is outstanding. John Greengo does an amazing job. I have bought several DVD's on the 70D but this class is superior. The bad news is that Creative Live Keeps putting out misleading information on their courses. In this E Mail it says: "If you're still watching, you can always go back to your My Classes Page to pick up where you left off." After several communications with their support I found out that they mean that you can go back to the course but not the place in the 30 minute course or whatever, a "bookmark" as their tech support called it. As an example, lets' consider an airport that has several giant parking lots. They could say that they have a system where if you lose your ticket they will get you back to your car. Sounds wonderful but all they will do is let you know which lot you parked in, not your actual spot. For the sake of clear communication they should drop that claim.

user-a98d6a
 

This was a wonderful class. John is a wonderful teacher. I originally bought the camera to do video work and it wasn't as helpful in that arena as I would have liked (but he fully admits to this being geared to photographers). I came back to it as a photographer and I feel much more comfortable and excited about using my camera.

a Creativelive Student
 

I agree with the other reviews. I was fortunate enough to receive this class free through the Adorama VIP program. After watching this series of videos, I would have been very happy to have paid the course fee. I had purchased a Canon 70D for a documentary project I am creating. This is my first DLSR and with all of the buttons and all the menus, it can be a pretty intimidating camera. I have shot film for many years and have had several Canon point-n-shoots so I am pretty familiar with photography basics. I will have to commend the demo on how aperture and depth of field. Very simple and concise way John explained this part of photography demonstrates what an effective teacher he really is. Just this part alone has made me want to watch his class on photography. The PDF that comes with this kit is great! There is one page that beaks down the menu system. This one is laminated and is in my camera bag. There are also a couple of pages on how to set the camera for shooting different types of events. I laminated these sheets back to back and these are also in my camera bag. Highly recommend this for anyone that owns a Canon 70D.

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