So you’ve finally taken the leap and purchased a camera. You’ve gotten a few accessories and have it all packed away neatly in your new camera bag. So now what?
Well the first things to understand is the basic operations of a camera. Many your probably already familiar with but there may be some new things to get a hold of. Additionally, all cameras are slightly different but they all follow the same basic principles and operations. You’ll probably be must familiar with the shutter and the focus, as many times they are built into the same button .
Taking your first photos
So once you have your camera put together, you can follow the manual to get some of the basics like how to turn it on and attach lenses. You’ll also want to ensure you have a couple good memory cards and you have one put in the camera. This is also a good time to let you know that your going to eventually take a memory card out and leave it home on accident. This is why you’ll want a backup that you keep in your bag at all times. This also serves as a backup in case the card happens to fail. (Doesn’t happen often but will inevitably at the worst possible time)
So you’ve got your battery charged and SD card in the camera, you’ve got a lens on and ready to start taking photos. Well now you’ll want to get a feel for where things are on the camera particularly three buttons you’ll want to note: shutter, menu/settings, and play/review. You’ll also notice there’s probably some kind of dial or mode button – we’ll get to this. Your shutter is normally your shutter and your auto-focus trigger (half-press). Your menu button will help you set up some key things and your play/review will allow you to see your images you’ve taken.
First, lets get the settings out of the way – many cameras are kind to new users and give you a “easy” option. This is sometimes helpful but often times not. So I recommend setting the menu to the “full or advanced” option if possible. You’ll be able to find this in your manual if you get lost. Next, make sure your time and date are set correctly – this will be important for organizing your photos later so don’t skip this step. Next, you need to format your memory card – this is also very important as it will ensure your images are saving correctly. Finally, you should set your image save preferences – this will determine what type of image to save.
Image File Types
There’s a couple important things to start understanding in the image types your camera creates, there’s two specific types – Jpeg and RAW. Jpeg you’ve probably heard before and is what we would call a “finished” image, meaning it’s already had some image compression and corrections that the camera does automatically. This is an easy to work with image as it’s easily sharable and compatible with almost everything. This is the easiest to start out with but you will want to keep another type of file as well – the RAW images. Different camera manufacturers will have slightly different RAW file types but what you want to know is that it is as it sounds this contains the “raw” image information, meaning it contains not only the image but a lot of additional information about the image such as white balance, shadows, etc.
The important thing here is to make sure you set the file type to RAW + Full JPEG. This will take up more room on your memory card but you’ll want these RAW files later when you are more familiar with photo editing, so it’s really nice to have that option since once you take the image, there is no way to recover that information later. This is what I would recommend to start out with.
Shooting Modes
Now finally, the fun part – you’re ready to start taking some photos. Back to the dial mode button we talked about before – this will be somewhat important but there’s really only 3-4 modes to understand to start with. First, AUTO mode – almost all cameras have this and as it sounds, it will automatically set all your settings and try to give you a good image. This is great to start out with and start getting familiar with the camera. Auto mode is great at learning what the camera thinks the settings should be. Here you’ll start to see what the camera sets and start catching on to how it works.
Next are two modes that will give you more control over your image but still partially automatic – Aperture Priority (AV) & Shutter Priority (TV). These two modes allow control over two specific functions – shutter speed and aperture. Aperture is a fancy word for saying how much light does your lens let in and you’ll notice it works just like your eyes.
So what do these two things mean – shutter speed determines how quickly your shutter closes on your camera. Aperture will determine how much of your image is in focus also known as your “depth of field“. What each of these modes do is it say’s one of these settings is more important than the other. You’ll want to use aperture priority for things like landscapes and objects, stuff that’s not moving a lot and therefore it’s important to have what you want in focus. Aperture is a little weird in that it’s kind of backwards – the smaller it is, less will be in focus – the larger the more will be in focus. What it’s actually doing though is opening or closing, the more open it is the smaller the “f-stop” number, the more closed the higher the “f-stop number.
In general you don’t want this to go below 1/125 of a second for any time your hand holding a photo. If things are moving, you’ll want to be even faster and go to around 1/400 of a second or faster. So anytime your dealing with motion, you’ll know you want to use the shutter speed priority so you can set this as desired. Most of the time when people get blurry photos, it’s because the shutter speed was not fast enough. This is where it’s important to check your images and increase the shutter speed if there is a lot of fast movement.
When your getting more still photos which can include people (so long as you get them not to move too much) you’ll want to use Aperture Priority mode. This is great for those sunset photos, landscapes, flowers, etc. So remember when we said this determines how much is in focus. So if you want everything in perfect focus, you’ll want to use around f/8 – f/11. When you want to get those nice blurry backgrounds with a person in focus, you’ll want to use a lower number of F/2- f/7.
Now you’ve gotten a good handle on the basic functions and everything builds from here. Now we forget to mention, there is one issue with these two AV and TV modes, they may struggle in lower light situations and indoors. So this brings us to the one final settings you’re going to care about – ISO.
ISO determines how sensitive your camera is and can help brighten the image when it may be too dark for a faster shutter or a higher aperture. In general, you always want your ISO to be as low as possible (usually around 100). As you increase the ISO sensitivity you begin to bring in “grain” or noise to your image. So it’s a great tool when you need a boost and remember above all, you want sharp images that are in focus. To start with, setting your ISO to AUTO is a good work around while you get the hang of things. Then as you get more comfortable you can start to take some control over all of these settings.
So I know that’s a lot of information to take in, so that’s why I’m going to give you some cheat codes to start out with for different situations.
Quick settings suggestions:
For taking photos of kids and activities outside – soccer games, football, birthday parties:
Mode: Shutter Priority, shutter speed of 1/320
For indoor events like birthday parties, holidays:
Mode: Shutter Priority | Shutter Speed 1/160 | ISO: 400-800
For sunsets, landscapes and all big things like groups, buildings:
Mode: Aperture Priority | Aperture f/8 | ISO 100-400
For family portraits, flowers, or anything where you want a more blurry background:
Mode: Aperture Priority | Aperture f/2.8 – f/5 | ISO 100-200
