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Canon 7D Mark II Menus: Playback, Setup and C. Fn1

Lesson 17 from: Canon 7D Mark II Fast Start

John Greengo

Canon 7D Mark II Menus: Playback, Setup and C. Fn1

Lesson 17 from: Canon 7D Mark II Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

17. Canon 7D Mark II Menus: Playback, Setup and C. Fn1

Lesson Info

Canon 7D Mark II Menus: Playback, Setup and C. Fn1

All right, let's, jump into the playback menu. To be honest with you, there's not going to be a lot of things that we adjust or change in here. So this is when you play back an image, what sort of controls we have. First off, you can protect images, which is a very light level of protection. It prevents you from deleting the images, but you can still form at the memory card, which would delete the images. So this is a very low level of protection on the card. You can rotate the images if you need to know. The only reason that you would need to do this is if you were gonna hook your camera to a tv and do a slide show for chance. You can erase images and you there is a garbage can on the back of the camera. So it's, pretty easy to do it right from there. If you are wanting to erase a lot of images, it's a little bit easier in here because you simply go through and check off which ones you want and then press erase once. Rather than having to erase and confirm the erase on every single im...

age, the print order, you can hook your camera to the printer there several pages in the manual about how to do this we're not going to take the time to do it, but your camera can do it with many different types of printers that are available in the market today. Another area that we're not going to go into is the photo book set up. You can create little photo albums for your camera, and this is something that is for use with the canon eos utility software, and, as they say, we're just not going to take the time to go into it because you have to memory cards in the camera, you can copy images from one card to the other card, which can be, uh, convenient when you don't have a computer around. If you shoot a raw image and you need to get a j peg image off of it, and you don't have your computer around, this is a great way to process that into a j peg. You could move it to a different card if necessary, with the above option, but it's, nice to be able to take a raw image and use processing or no process processing it all to end up with a jpeg image without the use on entire computer they're moving on to the next page of the playback menu, page two, we're going to start with re sizing options, this could also be recalled or called downsize because you can't make it bigger you could only make an image smaller and this is on ly for j peg images there is a rating option on the back of the camera you can also access it here in the playback menu if you want to hook your camera to a tv we're doing a slideshow you can adjust to show all the photos are certain photos from a particular date or particular folder or just the movies or a few other different parameters has for us filtering your images to show which ones you want in the slide show if you want to transfer your computer your images to your computer you need to have the eos digital solutions dis to use this image transfer normally I would just take the card out of the camera and use a card reader for it the image jump with dial you recall that the back dial allows you to go forward and backward through the images that you've already taken if you want you can use the front dial to either jump forward ten or back ten images or one hundred images by date by folder movies stills locked images or images that are rated in a particular way and so this is something that potentially customised I generally leave it at jump ten but the other option I do is jump by rating I will occasionally rate images that I like as two star images and then some, if I want to show my camera to somebody, I could just show them a few of the highlight images that I have selected so far in that way. They're not coming through everything to see a few pictures and that's just a simple way of doing the playback to make it easy, easy as possible for somebody else to see your images all right, from there were moving quickly onto the third tab of the playback menu. First option here is highlight alert. This is an option if you are concerned about over exposing your image, what it does here is it links over exposed pixels from the picture you have just taken, so this is sometimes called zebras or blink ease, and this is just a great way of scene if you're subject is over exposed now, just because you have some bling keys in your photograph doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad exposure. It depends on a number of parameters, but it's just a good tool for looking at that image. And judging as to whether it may or may not be over exposed a f point display, this is going to show you the points that the camera actually utilized when it focused on your last image. This is one of the things that I don't like to see cluttering up my image in the viewfinder, however for somebody who is new to this camera I think this is good to leave turned on because it's going to give you a better understanding of how this camera is actually focusing when it's in the midst of tracking subjects and doing all its shots especially when it's looking at a large number of focusing points which ones is it choosing so I think it's good to leave it on for a while until you learn how the system works when you play back your images if you want to see a grid pattern you can have a grid pattern show up just on the playback screen next up is the history graham option so the history graham is a great way of judging to see if your pictures are properly exposed there is the brightness sistah graham and there is the rgb red green and blue history ram the rgb one I think is a little bit easier on the eyes to see it's also got more detailed information about what's going on so I highly recommend turning on the rgb hissed a gram movie play count what this does is it's either going to show you the recording time for instance one minute two minutes or it's going to show you the time code of your video that you have shot most people are just going to have it in record time the professional video shooters are going to be probably having that in time code when you zoom in after you've taken an image house close in, do you want to get when you press that magnifying button over on the left hand side of the camera? My preference is actual size because normally when you zoom in it's not really close enough but if you do it at actual size it will zoom in pixel for pixel so each pixel on the sensor becomes one pixel on the back of the camera and that was the best way to show you if you have taken a sharp picture or not now if you want to adjust it from there you can but that's where it's going to start off at which is where it's at probably going to be the best description of whether that's in focus or not if you want to hook your camera to a tv, you can enable the hd my connection which will allow you to control the forward and back through images using your tv remote control and that will cover our playback minion all right let's get started into the setup menu setup menu are some general features that well there's a few of them we're gonna want to come back to every once in a while. First up is the record function card folder selection option so this is all about where do you want your pictures stored and how do you want them stored on the different cards so let's look at some of the options standard sends everything to one card and you may have a second card in the camera and it doesn't care about it it's just they're a storage and you can switch over to it at any time you want the next option is auto switch when the first card fills up it overflows and goes into the second card slot another option is record separately so for instance raw images are in one jpeg images are in another car recording to multiple would be the same files are being recorded to both cards simultaneous lead this is for the very paranoid photographer who wants to make sure that anything happened images air instantly backed up to two separate locations I think for most people the auto switch is the most sensible option leave one card in the camera if they happen to run over it's just going to spill over into the second card and then they can switch the first card out and it will spill right back into the first card and just go back and forth between the two but there's lots of good reasons to choose any one of these different options if you want to record separately you want tohave raw images in one and j peg and the other you will need to jump back into the recording quality section for the image type and size and back in the camera settings the shooting the shooting menu you'll have to select which card and what type of file that you want recorded to it in the example you see on screen here the compact flash card is getting the raw image and the sd card is getting the large jpeg image and so this is something that you can adjust with many many different options in the camera the file numbering system on your camera should probably be left in continuous it files up has a continue astounding number up to ten thousand and then when it gets to ten thousand it starts over again but if you wanted to re set it manually you could the file name system this is a great place for you to go in and put your initials for instance and what it does is it immediately uses your initials in the final naming of the camera now I do recommend when you download your images to your computer that you renamed the files that ten thousand counting system that I just talked about is not the best long term system I highly recommend using a date system along with a sequential numbering system so that you never have files that have duplicate file names but it's not bad to have your initials associated with that image in case you are ever submitting your images someplace or you're downloading your images you immediately know which ones are yours because they have your initials on them the auto rotate option is a nice little option on your camera and it doesn't come set right as far as I'm concerned so this is how your camera comes set and if you shoot a vertical picture it's going to rotate it for you on the computer and it's going to rotate it for you on the camera and you don't need it rotated on the camera because you khun turn your camera sideways if you want to see your image in a larger screen and I want to see my images on the largest screen possible so it's great that the camera is rotating these when they get downloaded onto the computer, but I don't need it done on the camera that way you khun better see your images formatting the card is deleting the photos the leading the directory deleting the empty folders in any other little stuff that may get in on that card it's something that professional photographers do on a regular basis before they go out on a new important shoot. You do want to make sure that you have downloaded your images, they're backed up, they're safe you want to get him off of the camera generally as quickly as possible I don't like leaving important pictures on my camera for more than twenty four hours if I had my computer around that evening I am downloading I want to get him off that camera because things happen to cameras, sometimes bad things, and I want to get him off and backed up in a variety of locations as soon as possible. Next slide next menu is setup menu number two how quickly do you want your camera to power down in order to save power? One minute is the standard you can increase or decrease according to your needs the brightness this is one that I recommend setting to manual, so take it off of auto so that the camera has consistent brightness levels on the screen. If you ever use that screen to judge exposure, this is going to be a much better use of it. Uh, the only trying to think of when I would want it in auto, I just don't like it in auto, and so normally you're going to leave it right in the middle of that. There are times where I will brighten it up if I'm trying to show somebody photographs under bright light conditions, I will adjust it from middle and I'll make it brighter but generally just leave it straight in the middle at manual you can set date, time and zone in here. Don't forget that your camera does not understand timesown settings and daylight savings time adjustments, so you need to go in and let it know that though there have been adjustments, language for the menu system is next and then the viewfinder display he recall in the viewfinder we had options for looking at this horizon line as well as the grid pattern and in here is where you can go in and turn on or off these features in general I would say leave him turned off at first, but if you think you might need him, turn him on see if you like him and then come back and turn them off if you don't in general I think it's best to have the least clutter in the viewfinder possible, so one of the options that you'll get to see and hear is thie show hide in view finder and this is that information that appears along the bottom of the frame that shows you your white balance your drive mode mita ring system in focusing system and if you want, you can check and have that off or not have that in there at all. Next up this camera has a gps system in it it's not the most robust system in the world, so it may not pick up a signal in areas of weak signal strength. But if you are getting a decent signal, it will record your exact location into the metadata of the photograph which makes things very convenient when you want to go into a program like light room that has ah whole gps location setting that will actually show you your location well, put it onto a google map for you tell you your altitude and warm information that you would normally get from a photograph so there's going to be some people that absolutely love this feature but it's something that the the problem that I have with it is that it uses up battery powers when you're out in remote areas where you least can afford to have that battery power being taken away. And so it's something that I generally leave turned off and would only use leaved on in a few situations where I know that I'm going to have enough battery power. And so there's a number of settings were not going to go through all these settings about tweaking the gps system because it does use more battery power. How often do you want it to update its position? A cz well as just displaying the current gps locations, and so if you do want to get into this there's a little bit more in here than we have in this class we have time for but it's it's a neat feature but be cautious with the battery life on to our final tab in the setup menu await is this no number three sorry jumping ahead of the gun here, so video system is simply for what video system you used in your country here in north america, it's the ntsc system the battery information is very cool because it tells you very exacting information about what type of battery life you have, how many pictures you've taken, not in total, but on this particular battery charge, very handy sensor cleaning. Keeping that sensor clean is very important. We talked about the camera's auto cleaning system, which should be left on, in my opinion. But if you do want to manually clean it, there's two steps, one is getting a rocket blower, and that's involves turning the camera, turning the camera upside down, putting it into the manual cleaning mode, taking the lens off, popping the mirror up and then just simply blowing air on the sensor, hopefully, hopefully knocking off the dust of the sensor. Step two is not something that everybody feels comfortable with, its using a swab and liquid to swipe the sensor clean. And so if there is dust on the censor, what you do is you put a couple drops of alcohol and you swipe across the sensor teo to clean it up. Not everyone feels comfortable doing this, so there are repair shops that could do this for you at a cost. Of course, the info display buttons remember the info button on the camera that I have pressed numerous times. The three different screens are the camera settings, the shooting functions and the level function if you want all of them keep them all checked off if you don't like it one check it on the back here camera is a rate button and some people don't like to rate their photos if you want, you can change this to a protect button so it's customizable but with only one other feature so it locks your images prevents you from deleting them in camera. As I said, that was a very low level of protection ht my frame rate can be normally left on auto if you're going to hook it up to different types of tvs, there are some different settings if you're not getting a clean signal from the camera, but for the most part, auto should take care of that without much problem. Okay, last menu have the setup menu, the custom shooting mode if you recall the sea one, two and three on the top of the camera, I recommend it. If you want to use these, what you do is you set your camera up the way you want it to work. Come here and you would register these settings as either setting c one c to or see three and so it's just gonna be a matter of figuring out what features you want to record into each of those three settings if you have not been paying attention in this class for the last two hours you could clear all the settings that you've messed up in your camera and put him back at the camera's factory default settings. Next up is copyright information, and this is very cool because you can put in not just your initials like you did in the serial number of the camera, the file name of the files that they shoot here you can actually put in your name, your website, information, your phone number or address whatever you wanted. I think probably your email is obviously the most sensible thing that you could put in here, but I would put this in here just for the minor security that if your camera ever got stolen, the thug who stole your camera probably wouldn't know that this is in there, so you could truly prove that it is your camera because it has your name in the camera and it would actually be writing that metadata to each of the photos so you don't have to add that information later on and so you can go in. It takes a little bit of time it's not quite as easy as a blackberry to work, but you can type in all the information you need to have in there, including your website, your email and so forth logo display is just companies that have had something to do with the construction of the camera it's a goofy one and then, finally, in here we have our firmware version at the recording of this class. The current firmware version is one point. Oh, two or one point oh point, too, and that is likely to change in the future. And so if you're watching this two or three four years down the road, you're gonna want to check with cannons website to see what the new software called firmware that we download that runs the operating system of the camera right now is of recording. There is some rumors on the market that cannon's gonna have a firmware update that's going to increase the performances and add a couple of features into the camera on, so we'll see if that comes up anytime soon. But if it does, you'll be able to go to cannon's website pretty much any place online and download the new software, put it on a memory card, put it in your camera and have a new software that's running your camera with new up to date features, which is a nice feature tohave.

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Ratings and Reviews

Kanoelani Patenaude
 

I am a pro photographer in my dreams, where I know the in's and out's of my camera; however, reality proved differently, as real life would tell you, I was a deer caught in headlights just looking at my new 7D Mark II. I am a photographer enthusiast without the skills, but a lot of love for the moments one, or the profession/hobby of it can capture. I mostly shoot my husband, friends, and community surfers in the lineup, and of course, my children, who rarely sit still. Thus, I switched from Nikon to Canon, venturing on the 7D Mark II for the grand reviews of how stellar of camera it is for action shots (surfing, and kids, this was a no brainer). That said, and overwhelmed with the way beyond my skill set, but noted desire and aspiration to grow, I made the purchase, and sought help rather quickly as I wanted to feel confident with what I was utilizing to capture the best memories possible. I came into this CL course knowing the "on/off" button, and "auto" shoot mode. I came out of the course feeling like the pro in my dreams, and ready to shoot manual. John's teaching style is on point, and his detailed visuals are a huge plus. So impressed, I purchased, John's photography starter kit, and was even more blown away. My first shots post that course, I thought were great for my first educated shoot, and shockingly, I even received and email from one of the sponsors of the surfers I captured, asking if they could use my image for their sites and publications. Not bad for a newbie. Though, my intent was never a business purpose, I did not know if I should charge a small fee, or give it for free. I don't mind free as it's not my business, yet I don't want to ruin it for any photographers in town doing the same thing that are charging. Perhaps another course to help me with that. I highly recommend courses by John Greengo! Thank you so much, John!

user-cfdd6e
 

I bought my 7D Mkii the week it was introduced as an upgrade to my old 20D. I immediately noticed what a huge step up it was and to be honest was a little overwhelmed by all of the options and customisations available. In the year I've owned it I've managed to pick up a lot but I still felt there was a lot in there that I wasn't making the best use of. John's course has filled in the missing pieces and I now feel a lot more confident that I will be able to get the best out of this amazing camera.

J.R. Link
 

John's coverage of the Canon 7D Mod II was excellent. It helped immensely in understanding the myriad of choices available in this camera. I would recommend this course to any user of the 7D Mod II. camera. The only comment I would make is that it might be helpful if John didn't assume that we all are sports photographers. Some hints for other types of photographers would be a great addition to an already excellent course.

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