Practicing your settings
Turn on your camera
Check your battery and how many frames you have on your camera (Charge the camera battery and or clean off the card if the images have already been uploaded)
Check your optics- Is your lens and viewfinder clean?
Put your camera in P(Program Mode)
Set your image quality to RAW or L with a pie wedge
Set your camera to 1600 ISO (low light setting)
Set your lens to auto focus
Set your WB to AWB
Focal Length of your Lens
Set up an image and take a picture from 5 feet away / 2 feet away / 1 foot away / 5 in away / 2 in away
Take note about how close you can focus your camera
ISO
Put your camera in P focus on an object and then cycle though all of the ISO possibilities of your camera (example 100- 1600)
Aperture
Put your camera to aperture Priority AV OR A
Line up objects moving on a sight diagonal from you. Focus on the one in the middle and put your camera lens to Manual Focus. Make sure you are from about 1-2 feet away.
Bracketing
We bracket shots when we want to have the whole range of tones in an image. We can take multiple shots and combine them digitally in the camera or in an image editing software. If you have a photograph where you have extreme contrasts or if it is overall very white or black the best thing that you could do is to bracket your image.
Leave your camera in P / 1600 ISO / Focus in on an object
Make sure your bracketing is set to O
Bracket up +1 +2 +3
Bracket down -1 -2 -3
If your camera has a Exposure Compensation / AEB setting in your MENU you can also set it to take one at 0 and +1 and -1 by rotating the settings dial. You will still need to press the shutter 3 times on most camera models to get all 3 shots.
SET YOUR CAMERA BACK TO -0- BEFORE YOU MOVE ON.
White Balance WB
White Balance is the color hue of the light. White light can let off a yellow tone (warm) or a blue (tone) or a whole range of tones in-between. We are always trying to match the color to the local color of what we see in front of us when we take the picture.
Locate the WB setting on your camera
Set up a bowl of white objects with a plain white background if you can
Put your camera in P(Program Mode)
Set your camera to 1600 ISO (low light setting)
Set your lens to auto focus
Cycle though the 3 different light bulbs (and Flash on your camera)one at a time (Incandescent / florescent / LED / flash on your camera)
Cycle though all of your white balance settings for each of the bulbs
Put the objects near a window and cycle though the WB settings
Your result should be a range of photographs of the same subject BUT with varying shades of WB – some might be super yellow some blue tones and some in-between.
Manual Mode Setting Aperture and Shutter Speed
Now let’s return to the exposure triangle—aperture, shutter speed and ISO. The general process of shooting in manual mode might look something like this:
Check the exposure of your shot with the light meter (push halfway down on your shutter) visible through your viewfinder.
Pick an aperture.
Adjust the shutter speed.
Pick an ISO setting based on the light available.