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Segment 2 - Top Deck: Right Side

So this is where we get really diving into the actual class that is just a preview. Thank you for waiting all through that time to get started on the controls of the camera. So let's, figure out how this camera works first off, kind of the basic stuff we want to get out of the way you won't have your camera turned on. All right, so go ahead and just turn that rotating collar turned the camera on. Now the camera, in an effort to be as efficient as possible with the battery well, often go to sleep on a regular basis, usually after six to ten seconds or eight seconds, eight to ten seconds on dh in orderto wake the camera if you want to press lightly down on the shutter release just to wake the camera up. Next up, the main command I'll on this camera is in the back, some position of the camera, and so if you want to change something that's, kind of the go to dial it's going to be able to change a lot of different features on the camera, but it's just kind of one of them it's what they call...

the main command I'll now out in the front of the camera is thie sub command ill, so we have one on the back. One on the front, sometimes they do the same thing. Sometimes they do different things. It depends on the mod that we were that we are in next up on the back of the camera is the multi selector, and I apologize. I sometimes forget the name of this thing, and I just call it the mouse or the up down arrow on the back of the camera. It's the only thing on the camera that really controls things quite in that manner. So this is going to be used for selecting focusing points, also navigating through the menu system, we're going to go up, down left and right, entering different areas on dh making settings. Now, when you do want to make a setting, you can often just hit the center button, and this is just kind of like the in turkey on your keyboard. You have something highlighted. That's what you want selected, you'll just hit the center button. Sometimes, though, we will use the ok button over on the left hand side. And so this is kind of like the centre button. They often do perform similar features on the camera, but sometimes you very specifically have to hit the ok button. I really can't believe I'm going to explain this but I'm going to explain on how to press a button on a nikon camera nikon does things a little bit differently than many other cameras, but many of the features on this camera require you to press and hold the button while you are turning either the front or the back dial of the camera and so it is a two finger affair it's kind of a safety precaution so that if you just turn the dial or you just hit the button nothing will change you have to do both at the same time and there are ways to customize this if you don't like this operating system but that's the way that the camera generally works so what we're gonna do is we're going to start off on the top of the camera just go through all the features and then go to the next side of the camera to start with we have the off on switch we also do have it with a spring loaded light switch and so what that's going to do is it's going to light up the top lcd panel? So if you're trying to look and see what shutter speed or aperture you've set or some other setting on the camera and it's dark out and you can't see the top lcd you can't just spring that over and it will stay active for about six seconds as far as firing the shutter, one thing to note is that the shutter durability is rated at two hundred thousand cycles, so that what that means is that nikon estimates the shutter is going to be good for two hundred thousand firings. It might last longer. It might last less than that, but that's what they think it should last to, and so you should be able to get a lot of life out of this camera and for any riel techno geeks out there, the release time, which is the time from pressing the shutter to the actual picture being taken. It is zero point zero for two seconds, which is one of the shorter time legs in the marketplace today, pressing the shutter release beyond waking the camera up. If it happens to be asleep by pressing halfway down that activates the auto focusing system and the meter, insist now you will be able to customize this a little bit, but pressing halfway down is a good thing to do when you are anticipating taking a picture pressing all the way down, of course will fire the shutter and then leaving the finger halfway down. When you are ready to take a picture is one of those steps a lot of photographers are always doing when they're picking up the cameras, just giving a little light touch to that shutter release. All right, so we're going to start kind of concentrate over on the right hand side with one of the most important buttons on the camera, the exposure mode button, so in orderto work this button by pressing the button, it does nothing you have to press and hold the button and turn the dial at the same time, and that is going to take you through the four different mode. So let's, talk about these four different modes. The one that I asked you to put the camera on before is called the programme mode, and what happens here is the camera will take a look like this coming in through the lens and it's going to determine the best shutter speed and aperture for a very generic setting. It doesn't know if you're shooting sports or if you're trying to shoot a landscape with lots of depth of field, it doesn't understand this, so the programme mode would be for very general shooting. If you were doing what I would call just, you know, family photography, you're just taking some pictures of the family on vacation on dh usually have the cameras set up so anyone in the class king or anyone in the family can grab the camera and pick it up and start shooting than the programme mode might be good for that, but I think it's not something that ah lot of people are going to want to do for very specific types of photography because the camera is in that general mode. Now when you take your finger off of the mod ill and you turn the back dial it's going to do something called flexible program, which means it will allow you to change the shutter speeds and apertures in unison so the exposure will still be exactly the same. But you're going to be getting as far as the amount of light community, but you're going to be getting a different combination of shutter speeds and appetite, so for the knowledgeable photographer, they could make a decision that, oh, I want faster shutter speeds and I'll just dial this a little bit one direction or I want more aptitude or more deaf, the field, I'm gonna dial it. The other direction varies. A little caveat to this that you should know about and that is, is that the nikon system is a little what I call a sticky so let's say you have the camera in a general programme mode and you decide to take a portrait of somebody, and so you set the camera to a shallower depth of field and you shoot your picture. And then you go okay thank you and you walk away and you decide you want to take a landscape photograph and you pick the camera and you shoot the picture the camera is still in the portrait mode with that shallow depth of field that you set earlier and so be aware that the camera is kind of sticky in that regards and that you should readjust it for its standard position next up right next to the mod dial or at least remove button very close to it is the plus minus button on the top of the camera this is the exposure compensation when you're in the program aperture priority or shutter priority mode which your moods were going to talk about in a moment any of those automated automated modes for their semi automatic where the camera is making control over the exposure this allows you to take a picture that is either brighter or darker than the recommended setting and so normally the camera is set at zero as faras exposure compensation and you khun dial it up or you can dial it down and you know I forgot to test this out earlier but let me just double check to see how far we can go so we can go up to five stops overexposed or five stops underexposed I'll be honest with you folks I've never shot a picture mohr than two stops overexposed or underexposed using that system so five stops is pretty extreme, but you know, it's not hard to put on there, so I'm guess I'm glad they did that. And so this is once again something that you might use an aperture priority, shutter priority or program any time where you take a photo and you look at the result and you say to yourself, that could be a little lighter or that could be a little darker, this is the easy way to adjust it now, this is another kind of sticky mode. Once you set it in there, it is set in there until you change it back out. Now, where you'll be able to see those changes being made when you press down on the button, hold it in and turn the back dial is either in the top of the camera or in the viewfinder itself. On the top of the camera is going to show you the exposure value. For instance, if you dial it plus one it's going to say, plus one, if you look in the viewfinder, the exposure indicator is going to have three little notches to it, and what that means is that one third two thirds, one full stop brighter than normal. If you were to go to the minus to side, this is what it would look like. And so just be aware that if you do set this, you do want to get it back to zero setting. And once you release that button, then you can go back and start playing with that flexible programme mode, adjusting shutter speeds and adjusting apertures. Now, one of the things that this camera's gonna have is a lot of customization, and occasionally I am going to allude to it. And so what you see in the upper right hand corner of your screen right now is my little shortcut for those of you who want to jump ahead in this class. So in the custom menu, under b four is something called easy exposure compensation, and what that allows you to do is it allows you to change the exposure, the exposure, compensation without having to press the button and turn. And I'll all you have to do is you turn the unused dial, which would be on the front of the camera and many people. Well, the reason the camera is not set up like this right now is that many people find that it's a little too easy to dio. And so this is something that you can go in and adjust, and I will mention this again as we get into the customization menu, all right, so just once again on that, uh shortcut! I want to show you on the camera, get the side shot over here on the camera is normally to do exposure compensation. You would have to press and hold this button and turn the dial in the back of the camera. If you engage this easy exposure compensation, all you would do is just turned the front dial, and so if you find yourself that you're constantly doing it and you don't want to use two fingers to do it, you're going to be foreign adjust that, but a lot of people kind of like that safety protocol of pressing a button and turning a dial at the same time, and so we'll talk a little bit more about that as we get into the custom menu on the camera. Now, when you do look through the camera in the viewfinder display, so you hold it up to your eye down there at the bottom is going to be your viewfinder display and there's going to be some information. I'm going to go through this more detail in more details a little bit later on, but real quickly, the numbers that you're looking at there from left to right, you're looking at your shutter speed your aperture, although there's not really numbers there you have your light meter next. Then you're going to have your eyes, so setting and then within the bracket is the number of images lap, and they say, I'm going to go through this in more detail in a special section on the viewfinder, but that's real quickly at what you're looking at, which is important to see, because if you're doing your exposure compensation, you will see that in the viewfinder with that light meter either to the plus side or to the minus side. When you change the camera to shutter priority by pressing the mod ill and turning the back button on the camera, you now control shutter speeds with the back dial of the camera. Let me make that change myself, and so now what you can do is you can just turn the back dial of the camera and that changes your shutter speeds. If you turn the front dial, it does nothing because we don't have that special mode engaged for easy exposure compensation you, khun do exposure compensation the same as you can with the programme mode. Now I'm not the biggest fan of the shutter priority mode and there's reasons for that in the sense that there are so many shutter speeds to choose from and there's a limited number of apertures if you're not paying attention, you can choose a shutter speed that is outside the range. And you'll end up with either a very dark or very bright picture, and so there are some cases where shutter priority can work pretty well. I don't recommend it for most users. One exception to that I know is a number of bird photographer's likes, like using shutters, priority mode because they want a fast shutter speed to stop a burden movement, and what they will do is they'll take pictures of birds flying around, and then they'll land on a tree branch, for instance, and that tree branch might be in the shadows and it might get really dark, and the picture would be underexposed because, well, the camera doesn't have an aperture toe let in enough light. And so if you are going to use shutter priority mode in a situation like that, you might want to try using auto sl get in the iast a little bit later on, but those are you know what I'm talking about know that, otto, I also will then adjust for that light, and we'll give you a decent picture in that case, albeit at a higher ece, no question at you on just on that subject, if you're running in auto, so can you set your exposure to be over or under as well on sort of on top of that? Yes, you can okay, yeah and you can also I thought you were I thought you were going someplace else and I'll just go there for you, you know? Can you set parameters for the auto I sl yeah you consent bottom levels and top levels and some adjustments and we'll get into that in the menu system as well yeah, lots of controls on this camera great okay, so that was shutter priority next up is a for aperture priority let me make my change here so this is one of my favorite quick shooting moz when I'm when I'm doing a photo tour I'm traveling and I don't know what my next photo is going to be I want to have the camera ready to go right away and I do like the aperture priority mode because there's a limited number of apertures and you consented pretty much anywhere you want, but I kind of like setting it at something like two point eight or four, five six and the camera's going pick an appropriate shutter speed. You just need to be kind of aware of what that shutter speed is before you take your shot, but you're generally going to be able to pick the camera and shoot it very, very quickly one thing to note here is you'll notice that it's now the front dial of the camera that is controlling the aperture not the back dial the back dial does nothing at this point and that's, because nikon wanted teo, have you get very used to using the back dial for shutter speeds and the front dial for apertures? And because I use a wide variety of cameras the way that I remember it with nikon is that the aperture was in front of the camera on the lands and that's where the dia less on so it's very close to where the aperture is on the camera. And so that's how I remember, does this one do this or just this one? Do that? And so it works very much the same way as the shutter priority mode with exposure compensation, you can use that or not use that, just reset it back to zero when you're done. Finally, let's, go to our last mode, which is my favorite mode, which is full on manual. This is where you get to set shutter speeds and apertures, and now the backdown continues to control your aperture. The backdown controls your shutter speed, the front dial controls your aperture, and what you'll be looking at in the viewfinder is you'll be looking at your light meter to try to even it out at zero setting you don't want it to the plus or to the minus unless you're seeing dictated. And for a lot of manuals, type set ups, what I do is I will even my light meter out, which means get the indicators right under the zero shoot the first picture, take a look at it on the back, judge whether it needs to be brighter or darker due to whatever that scene happens, tio contain, and then I'll make some adjustments, either with the shutter speed or aperture at that time. And so I know a lot of people who have this camera, this is how they're going to use their camera pretty much all the time, so those are the main modes on the camera. The camera does not have the picture icons doesn't have any flour modes, which I kind of like that it doesn't have that it it kind of sets a bar that you have to rise above to use this camera, and so I like the seriousness that this camera takes its photographers, you might say, okay, exploring the rest of the top of camera is the movie record button. If you were to write now, just hit the movie record button guess what happens? Nothing, because we don't have our camera in the movie mode right now, so right now it is kind of a useless button up on the top of the camera. And one of my favorite little discovery's within the custom menu that we're going to die full into, but I'm gonna let you know about right now is that you can reassign the movie mode to setting the I s o and this has been one of the complaints about nikon cameras is that it's a little cumbersome to change the so because it's a two button, you gotta press about internet dial, and in this case, it puts that button in a much easier position it's still pressing a button and turning a dial, but now it's just with one hand rather than going over to the left hand side where the iso button is and turning a dial on so it's a little bit quicker. So if you were somebody who bought this camera, who says movie sh movies, I don't want to do any of that video stuff, I just want to shoot still photos, I would go in and reassign f thirteen to controlling the so because it's going to make it much faster to change and easier to change, especially with the camera held up to your eye. And so that's. One of those neat little things that we're going to find more about in the custom menu on the top of the camera, not of any great significance is the focal plane if you've some reason needed to measure for very precise focusing reasons, whether it's, macro photography or cinematography, that is the mark where the film censor or the film plane the sensor is in the camera, we, of course, have a built in flash. We're going to talk more about in a little bit later, section and the hot shoe, where we attach additional flashes, so let's talk for a moment about some of the nikon flashes that are available, and as I said, nikon has a great system for flashes their little s p r two hundred is something that you probably don't need to invest in it's, a very small, lightweight flash designed for triggering other flashes, and the built in flash on this camera will already do it so there's, not a lot of need for that particular flash. Nikon recently brought out a s p five hundred. This is kind of a lower, too middle and flash as faras the power and features of it. The one thing that it does have that kind of unique is a video light. So if you were purchasing this camera and you wanted to shoot a fair bit of video or some video, and you wanted to add a little bit of a hot light, it's got a hot light as well as a regular strobe unit for kind of a general picture taking one of my favorite flashes is thie, sb seven hundred. This is a good intermediate level flash if you were, say, a family photographer shooting pictures in your living room and vacations, and you wanted something that you know, had more power than the built in flash but wasn't overwhelmingly large, heavy or expensive, I think this would make a good choice. If, however, you are a pro or very serious photographer that has more power needs your shooting subjects that are larger in size, maybe like a large wedding group, maybe twenty people or so you're going to need a more powerful flash. Also for things like photo journalism or wedding photography event photography, where you're firing flashes on a very rapid pace. The sb nine ten is goingto have a faster recycle time for any given power flash you haven't, so if you're going to be using it on a day to day type basis, I would definitely look at the nine ten over the seven hundred you also do get some other special effects mode that you could get in there for kind of playing around and being very creative. But for the most part, it's, just more powerful and that's where the big help comes in now, with any of these flashes, I highly recommend the twenty eight t t l remark remote court what this does is it allows you to get the flash off the camera by about three to four feet at the most, and keep constant communication between the flash and the camera so that it knows exactly how much power to fire with. And so it keeps the communication line there. For instance, I like using this on a flash grip, and so I can put the camera on a flash, dan, and then I can rotate the camera around it, which keeps the flash directly above the lens for a very consistent like, this is something that wedding photographers or event photographer's like, because it's a very consistent, good quality but portable light system, and having that cord makes it a very, very simple system. Now, one of the things that you can do with these optional flashes that we're not going to get into in this class because it's a whole class into itself is the whole remote triggering of different flashes because you can have several multitudes of groups and individual flashes and have built in flash, trigger them and automatically control them. One of the things that you can get to do that is the eight hundred, and this will do that do so without firing a pre flash one of the things that I don't like about using this built in flash to trigger other flash units is that there is a slight pre flash from this flash that goes out to trigger the other flashes. And the problem with that is that I don't know my friends or my family members. They seem to be blinkers, and as soon as they see one flash, they blink. So as soon as this fires, they blink. When the actual pictures taken with the other flashes, their eyes are close and so it's kind of fun for certain types of photography. But I think for many different professional people photography, you're not going to be able to use this to trigger the other flashes. The eight hundred can be a help to that. But you might also want to look in after market wireless triggers, like the pocket wizard system. So that's the bit I have on flashes.