[MUSIC] We'll be talking a lot about setting up your digital camera, and this is a process that you have to go through that's quite extensive, actually, compared to setting up a film camera. Setting up a film camera, you just basically put the film in and start shooting. Figure out where the f-stops and shutter speeds are and the focus, off you go. With the digital camera there's a lot more to set up, but one of the most important things to set up is you. So let's get going with that aspect. The first thing you want to do is set up your brain. And you set up your brain with knowledge, and that knowledge comes from a course like this. But also, very importantly, that little book that either comes with your camera or that you can find online in PDF or other form and download and study. That is your best, best friend. There's no substitute for the knowledge that you can be gaining from that instruction manual to help you understand the whys and wherefores, the particulars of your own camera. It's not like the old days were a 35 millimeter camera was a 35 millimeter camera was a 35 millimeter camera. It was an SLR. Had the same, pretty much, bells and whistles. A few tweaks here and there, but primarily if you understood one camera you could understand another. Using that manual to understand your particular model camera, your brand, that thing you're holding in your hands that's a key element. Well, once you've got the book in hand, you want to set up your hands. And you're going to learn a lot from that book. You're going to learn a lot from this course. But one of the things you can't learn from the book, you can't learn from this course, you can't learn from anybody other than yourself is, what are you doing with your hands? How are you setting up physically in relationship to that camera? And the kind of camera that you're using has a lot to do with the way you physically address it as well. This is a Canon EOS 40D. It's got a big battery pack on the bottom, got a hand grip on the side here. It's also got a camera strap. Now, where do your hands fall? Let's talk about that first. Do your hands fall naturally in the manner that you might think the manufacturer designed it? Are you left-handed or are you right-handed? Are all your fingers working? I've had a point my life where some of my fingers didn't work so well. And that affected the way that I would photograph, the way that the camera felt in my hands. And feeling that the camera is a part of you, physically, is a really important aspect for you to address. What are you touching? What shouldn't you touch? When you pick the camera up, are there buttons on the back here that if you touch them, it's going to change one of the settings? And if you don't realize that you're changing that, is it going to affect the kind of pictures you shoot? Probably, so knowing what you should touch, what you shouldn't touch. What feels comfortable to you and what feels awkward. Camera like this one, I've got a 24 to 105 lens on it, I might probably put my hand under the lens and hold it, so that I'm giving it a little bit more steadiness. I might put my hand underneath the camera in a position such as this one. Where I'm giving the camera, almost like my hand is a tripod. I might hold the camera on the side here. I might, maybe if I hold the camera there, my thumb is here, I'm not going to be able to see the picture I'm looking at. So there's all sorts of things to think about, what feels right to you? One of those things, also, is the camera strap itself. Do you put this over your neck? Does this allow you to shoot the way that you want to? Is that as low as you want to be able to photograph? Is this is as high? To the side? One side or the other? How does that camera strap affect, not only what you can do with the camera, but your physical connection to it? The way that you feel about it? All of these things are really important, and they're only things you'll know if you concentrate on it. And if you actually think about, okay, what am I doing with my hands? Okay, a very important skill for you to develop as a photographer, it's a physical skill, and it's critical to using most digital cameras today. And that skill is, using whatever finger you use, I happen to use my index finger, but whatever finger you use to depress the shutter-release button. And on this camera it's located right here. That's the little button that does so many things. It's going to activate the light meter, and when you press that button halfway down, it's also going to activate autofocus. And if you've got autofocus set in your camera then, you hear that little chirping noise? [NOISE] There's a bird in my camera. No, the camera is telling me that it's been properly focused. It's also telling me, not only that it's focused properly, but whatever I have set in terms of my exposure mode and the exposure pattern that I'm looking at, whether it's center-weighted, spot meter, whatever, that also has been locked in. Now, let's say, okay, well, that's nice, but what's the effect of that? Well, let's say I'm going to photograph you, but I don't want you right in the center of the picture, but the center is where my focus point is. So what I'll do is, raise my glasses, take my camera, focus on you, and then keep my finger halfway depressed. I'm locking the focus, and now I can shift my camera to the side, putting my subject off to one side or the other, and then release the shutter. And I've made my photograph, with that distance that I originally set in focus, even though it's no longer in the center. So that half-push is really, really critical to your success in maneuvering the camera for exposure and for focus. Finally, you're going to have to set up your eye. I mean, not set up your eye, but really set up your camera for your eye. I've got some students who come into class in the second week. They've gone off and made their first photographs. And they'll come in and say, gee, Professor Glendinning, my pictures here on the computer, they look so much sharper than they did when I was looking through the viewfinder of my camera. Now, this is only a subject for those of you who have a camera that's more likely a DSLR or perhaps a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera with a viewfinder as well, because this is an issue for viewfinder cameras. And that issue is, does the seam look sharp through the viewfinder when you properly focus the camera? When I look through the camera, the seam looks sharp when the lens focuses. When I first got the camera, that was not the case. I looked through the camera, the lens indicated that it was in focus, but the scene still looked blurry to me, because I had not yet set up my diopter control. If your camera has one of these, you'll find it adjacent to the viewfinder window. It's usually a really tiny thing. It's right there really, really small. And what I want you to do is look through the viewfinder, focus your lens and use auto focus, so that you're confident that the pictures being focused. Now I want you to focus on a pattern, maybe there's a wallpaper with a lot of lines in it or some painted element or perhaps a newspaper or something that has a lot of contrast. Focus on that with the autofocus, and then slowly turn that dial back and forth until the scene looks really sharp to your eye. Now, you want to do this with your glasses on if that's how you ordinarily look through the viewfinder, or with your glasses off if that's the way you ordinarily look through the viewfinder. But either way, it's really critical for you to adjust the diopter control for your particular vision and set the viewfinder, as if it was a pair of glasses, so that it's perfectly adjusted for your sight. This is also where you decide whether you're a left-eyed photographer or a right-eyed photographer. Okay, once you've got these few things set up, setting yourself up with your book, where your hands go, setting the diopter control, feeling comfortable with your camera. We're going to do a lot of things in the next few lessons related to setting up the functions, and the menus, and the options of these cameras. Now, I'm going to be using Canon cameras for this example, because that's one of the cameras that I use. And it's got a lot of different options. In fact, I'll be showing you menus from a number of different Cannon cameras. I'm not saying that that's the only camera that you should have. In fact, it's quite highly unlikely that you'll have the same cameras that I'll have. But you'll probably have menus and functions that, either are named exactly the same, especially if they're Canon brand, or that are named something slightly different, but they do the same thing. This is one of the problems with digital photography that we didn't really have in the old film days. A film cassette was a film cassette. A shutter release was that, and there weren't very many functions other than that. But with digital cameras, each manufacture has their own names for these different functions and menus. So you'll really want to focus on that camera instruction manual of yours to find the relative controls to the ones that I'll be talking about in the next few lessons about setting up your camera. Let's get going. [MUSIC]
