Finding the Dials and Buttons That Matter
Okay. You've read the manual, or at least started it, or at least felt bad about not reading it yet. That's progress. Now let's actually go find the things on your camera we're going to be using for the rest of this class.
Here's the thing. Every DSLR has about six dials and buttons that matter for what we're doing, and about forty that don't, yet. You don't need to know what the WB button does today. You don't need to know what the little wrench icon in the menu does today. If we try to learn all of it at once you'll walk out of here remembering none of it, and I'd rather you leave knowing four things cold than forty things loosely.
So grab your camera. Actual camera, not the manual. I want your hands on it while you read this.
The mode dial
Somewhere on top of your camera there's a dial, usually with a bunch of letters and little pictures on it. A green rectangle or a green camera icon, that's Auto, and we're leaving that behind starting today. Find these four letters on the dial:
- M — Manual. You control everything.
- A or Av — Aperture Priority. You pick the aperture, camera picks shutter speed.
- S or Tv — Shutter Priority. You pick shutter speed, camera picks aperture.
- P — Program. Camera picks both, but you can still nudge things. Basically Auto with a little more say.
We're going to spend real time in each of these, one at a time, over the coming weeks. Today, just find them. Turn the dial to each one and notice what changes on your screen or your viewfinder display when you do.
The exposure comp dial or button
This one bit me hard once. I spent an entire hike up American Fork Canyon shooting a stand of scrub oak in fall color, gorgeous light, the kind you wait all year for, and I got home to find every single frame was blown out white. Overexposed to nothing. I'd bumped the exposure compensation dial with my thumb without knowing it and shot two hours of nothing.
So find that dial or button now. On a lot of cameras it's a small dial near your shutter button, sometimes it's a button you hold while turning another dial. It usually shows a little plus/minus scale. Find it, and I want you to check where it's sitting at zero every single time you turn your camera on from now on. That's not me being dramatic. That's me telling you what actually happened to two hours of good light that I never got back.
The shutter button, halfway down
Most people just mash the shutter button. Try pressing it halfway instead and holding it there. You should hear or feel the camera focus, maybe a little beep, maybe a green square light up in your viewfinder. That halfway press is how the camera locks focus and meters the light before it actually takes the picture. Get used to that two-step motion now, because we'll use it constantly.
The ISO button
Usually marked ISO, plain as that. We're not touching what it does yet, that's a later lesson, but find where it lives on your specific camera because it's different on every brand and sometimes every model.
Turn off the LCD chimping habit, starting now
I'll be honest with you, this one's an opinion and not everybody agrees with me on it. But I want you to turn your LCD review screen off, or at least stop looking at it after every single shot. People call it chimping, checking the back of the camera after every frame like a nervous tic. I think it's a real habit and a bad one. It pulls your eye off the actual light in front of you and puts it on a tiny screen that lies to you about exposure half the time anyway. We'll turn it back on later when it's useful. For now, shoot, don't check.
A practical exercise for today
Set your dial to Av or A. Go outside, or even just to a window with decent light. Point the camera at one object about ten feet away, something with some texture, and take five frames without checking the screen between shots. Then look at all five together.
This is basically how I got my first photo I was actually proud of. I was out in the garden on a cold February morning trying to get a whole fence line in frost, every post, all of it sharp. Instead I got one frame where a single post up close was crisp and everything behind it went soft and dreamy. I hadn't meant to do that. It was an accident of the aperture I'd picked without really understanding what aperture did yet. But that accident taught me more about depth of field than the manual had in a week of reading. Sometimes you learn the concept by tripping over it first and understanding it after.
So don't worry about getting it right today. Worry about noticing what happened.
Before next time
Practice the halfway shutter press until it's automatic, and check that exposure comp dial is sitting at zero before you shoot anything. Bring your camera to next session charged and ready, we're going to spend a whole lesson just on shutter speed.