Photography Tips, Tutorials & Techniques

Let me tell you something. I’ve been around cameras for a quite a while now and when someone asks which of something is better, it’s nearly impossible to give them a definitive answer. There are a few reasons for this. First or all, the answer depends completely on the person’s priorities. What are they looking for? What’s important to them? How would they want the final result to appear? Secondly, defining “which is better” is like shooting at a moving target, especially when it comes to cameras and electronics. Last year’s “better” might be this years “worse.” I think you get the idea.

Today’s post is going to be a discussion about cameras that use mirrors (DSLR cameras) versus cameras that don’t use mirrors (DSLM cameras). By the way, DSLR stands for digital single-lens reflex and DSLM stands for digital single-lens mirrorless, but I think you’ll find that most people out there call the camera without a mirror, mirrorless.

A Quick Overview

I don’t want to beat a dead horse here because I’m sure you’ve already read or heard about how mirrored cameras work. If you haven’t though, I’ll quickly give you an overview of the process.

For a scene to be visible through the viewfinder of a DSLR camera, that scene (light) needs to first enter through the lens and then reflect off of what’s called the rotating mirror. If you take the lens off of your camera and look inside, you’ll see this mirror. It’s on an angle at the center of the camera.

After the light bounces off the rotating mirror, it travels through the focusing screen, or what some folks call the focus screen. This is the device that lets you actually see through the viewfinder clearly. Once the light passes through that, it hits what’s called the pentaprism or the correcting prism, which flips the scene around so you can see it correctly and then, finally, the light passes through the viewfinder itself. So, as you can see, the word reflex that’s used in the acronym DSLR is accurate. There’s a lot of reflection that goes on inside of these cameras, and that’s just to see through the thing to get a glimpse of what you might take a picture of. And to be even more accurate, the DSLR really stands for one lens and a mirror. a single lens.

How a Photo is Captured with a DSLR Camera

The process for taking a photograph is either really simple or somewhat complex, depending on how you look at it. It goes something like this; you look through your camera’s viewfinder at a scene. The light from the scene makes its way through the lens and everything I just talked about above. You focus the lens and when you’re ready to take the picture, you press the shutter button. Once you do that, the mirror that’s allowing you to see the scene through the viewfinder flips up to make way for the camera’s sensor to absorb some of that scene’s light. First though, the shutter that sits behind the mirror needs to move to the side for whatever time you or your camera has determined is appropriate. Personally, I think there are a lot of moving parts in cameras and those moving parts scare me. I have no idea how cameras last so long because it just seems like these parts would somehow break or wear out over time. It truly is a feat that they work so well. Although, many people would say, “That’s it? That’s all a camera needs to do to take a beautiful photo?” To each their own. We all look at things differently.

Anyway, beyond those moving parts, there are some inherent negative aspects that come with mirrored cameras and I’ll talk about them next.

What’s Wrong with DSLR Cameras?

DSLR cameras might be considered rather large in size because of all the mirror apparatus contained inside of them. Well, large when compared to some of the mirrorless cameras coming out today. I guess what I just stated is relative. Let’s compare cameras to cars for a moment. Back in the 50s, 60s and 70s, cars were huge. There was a lot of metal contained in them that obviously wasn’t absolutely necessary. The term “boat” was used for a lot of these vehicles. As time moved on, cars become much smaller and more efficient as new technologies emerged. Sheetmetal became thinner. Aluminum was used instead of steel. Parts became smaller. You get the idea.

The same goes for cameras. Will bulky moving mirrors and large lenses exist in 50 years, after technology has had some time to advance even more than it has? I have a feeling they won’t exist. Especially since this very technology is on the march today. Things are becoming smaller, lighter and more efficient as I sit here and type today.

When you look through a viewfinder at a scene, the reason you can see that scene is because the rotating mirror is set in place, on that angle I discussed earlier. It’s sort of like a periscope, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of observing one of those things. When you press the shutter button on a camera to capture a scene, the mirror flips up, temporarily blocking your view. Your view might not be blocked for long and if you’re engaging in landscape or still life photography, this might not bother you at all. But what if you’re a sports or fast moving action photographer? Would having your view blocked for even a micro-second bother you? What if you were shooting in burst mode (continuous shooting mode, sports mode or continuous high speed mode)? Would your ability to see what you were shooting matter? I think it would. It sort of feels like someone waving a hand in front of your face as you’re walking around someplace. It’s not an ideal scenario.

Have you ever used a feature such as exposure compensation during your photography? If so, when you make your adjustment and then look through the viewfinder, does the view of the scene change at all? It doesn’t. If that’s the case, how are you supposed to know the effect of the change on your subject? Yes, that’s a tricky one. There are tons of settings that cameras offer and the fact that you can’t see many of their effects on a scene through the viewfinder is definitely an issue.

What’s the Story with Mirrorless Cameras?

Mirrorless cameras, or DSLM cameras, don’t contain mirrors or pentaprisms. This is a big deal because removing these two aspects of a camera can greatly reduce its size. To see a scene through the viewfinder, a mirrorless camera uses electronics, as opposed to mechanics. This has its pluses and minuses. I’ll discuss some of them below. I will mention quickly here though, because of sensor size on mirrorless cameras, lens size can shrink and focus time can quicken. Well, the focus time is a tricky topic and I’ll discuss that below too.

One of the best things about mirrorless cameras is that the “blocking of the view while shooting” that I discussed above doesn’t exist. To demonstrate this yourself, simply use the LCD screen on the back of your DSLR camera to take photos. You won’t see those blind spots. Compare shooting through the viewfinder and the LCD screen. You’ll see that the mirror blocks your view while shooting via the viewfinder, but doesn’t when shooting via the LCD screen. This is a huge plus for electronic viewfinders, which I’ll talk about next.

If you change the viewing mode on your DSLR camera to live view, you’ll see your scene on the LCD screen on the back of your camera. Go ahead and change a few settings on your camera, such as exposure compensation. While looking through the viewfinder, you’ll see no effect, but while looking at the LCD screen, you will. This is because the LCD screen is seeing exactly what your camera’s sensor is seeing. Now, think about that LCD screen as an electronic viewfinder on a mirrorless camera. Basically, camera manufacturers just shrunk that LCD screen down so it’s small like a traditional viewfinder. So cool.

If you’ve ever shot a scene with a mirrorless camera, I’m sure you noticed something right away. The noise of a traditional DSLR camera wasn’t there. Sure, there’s some noise that stems from the shutter moving, because yes, that still needs to happen, but all that noise from the mirror slapping around is gone. Again, while mirror noise might not bother you while taking photos at a loud party or a dirt bike track, it may because an issue while photographing a symphony orchestra or something like that.

Speaking of mirrors, have you ever wondered how the camera gets that mirror to move so fast? It really can flip up and down at remarkable speeds, but as you probably already know, it can only move so fast. One of the major purchasing points of mirrorless cameras is that they have the ability to take more frames per second than their mirrored counterparts. Inside DSLM cameras, only the shutter needs to move while inside DSLR cameras, the shutter and the mirror needs to move. For every single shot. That definitely slows things down.

The DSLM Pitfall

There are a few areas that have kept the mirrorless camera down when it comes to popularity. One of those areas is that many photographers never warmed to the idea of having an electronic viewfinder that’s, well, electronic and small and digital and low in resolution. These electronic viewfinders simply weren’t clear enough to show a scene the way people wanted to see it while photographing. The optical viewfinder was better because you wouldn’t see any grain and there would be no lag as you’re moving around a scene. I’m sure these things kept a lot of people away.

The good thing is, the areas I just spoke of have come a long way. With today’s mirrorless cameras. magnification quality is almost as good as optical viewfinders and since these types of cameras now have faster refresh rates, that lagging hardly even exists anymore. And if you’re reading this post after 2018, none of what I’m writing may even be an issue.

The greatest challenge for mirrorless cameras has been focus speed. When these cameras first came on the scene, they used a system that’s called contrast-detect AF (auto-focus). This type of system uses the camera’s sensor to make the necessary contrast measurements, which is very precise. You get a great focus. The issue is, it’s slow. While smaller lenses generally hasten focus speed, the lens sizes mirrorless cameras use are larger than those that compact cameras use, and the focus technology that mirrorless cameras use is that of the compact camera. While focusing on still objects works just fine, attempting to focus on moving objects just doesn’t work that well. The sensor simply can’t calculate what it needs to fast enough to offer a decent focus measurement.

When it comes to DSLR cameras, something called phase-detect AF is used to determine focus. This type of focus is much faster than the other, but it can sometimes offer a result that’s of a lower quality and that’s less accurate. This is because these types of cameras use a focusing sensor as opposed to the actual image sensor to determine focus. The image sensor offers a more accurate focus, at a cost – speed.

In recent years though, camera manufacturers have developed technology that combines the two different types of auto-focus, right on the camera’s main image sensor. They call this a hybrid AF system. It’s actually such a good compromise of speed and quality that it’s now used on both DSLR and DSLM cameras. So really, the gap in speed and focusing ability is being narrowed every day. If I had to guess, I’d say that more and more photographers are gravitating towards the mirrorless alternative. It seems to be turning into a real contender. Those photographers with reservations about specific technical concerns are seeing those concerns vanish right in front of their eyes. They might just make the switch. Now you see why so many of us have difficulties when it comes to purchasing new camera equipment. Things keep changing and getting better and we keep waiting for those great things, which get old very quickly. Such is the life, I suppose.

There’s a lot that goes into choosing a technology for which type of camera you use. I hope I’ve shed some light on some of the areas you look closely at. While there are many more aspects of cameras and photography to consider, I think I touched on the largest and most important ones in this post. If you have any questions regarding what I’ve shared today, please leave them for me in the comment section down below. Thanks for reading!

The auto-focus feature on Canon’s Rebel line of cameras is quite stellar. It’s been getting better every year and for a good majority of photographers, it’s what they use when they’re out shooting.

There’s actually a lot that surrounds the topic of auto-focus with these cameras and you might not even know much of what exists. That’s because these Canon cameras come set to One Shot mode when they’re shipped from the factory. One Shot is what many of us are used to. You know, you point your camera at whatever it is you want to capture, press the shutter button half way down to let the camera focus and when it does focus, you continue pressing the shutter button until the picture is taken. We all know how this one works, but did you know that there are two other focus modes? Well, there are and that’s what I’ll talk about down below.

In today’s post, I’d like to discuss all three focus modes that are available on the Canon Rebel lines of DSLR cameras. The example photos I took for this post were of the Canon T6i, but this post can be used for all Rebels, from the T2i, T3i, T4i, T5i and T7i. All work pretty much the same way.

Accessing the Auto-Focus Menu

If you look at the back of your Canon camera, you’ll see five buttons that create the shape of a circle. There are four arrow buttons and one Set button in the middle. The right arrow button says AF on it. If I press that button, I’ll be brought to the Auto-Focus menu.

Inside the menu are three options. They are One Shot, AI Focus and AI Servo. To choose one of these options, use the left and right arrow keys on the back of the camera. Once a selection is made, press the Set button to accept the change and to return to the home screen. Below, I’ll explain what each option does.

The Different Auto-Focus Modes

Okay, I’ll quickly explain what each auto focus mode does so you can get outside to start shooting. These explanations are easy to understand.

One Shot: Use this focus mode when taking photos of objects that don’t move or that remain on the same focal plane throughout the shot. To focus on an object, press the shutter button half way down. When this is done, the focus is locked onto an object at a specific distance (plane) from the camera. To complete the shot, press the shutter button all the way down. This mode is used in the Portrait, Landscape and Close-up modes on the camera dial.

AI Focus: These cameras are very intelligent and can accurately determine when a specific focus mode is necessary. The AI (Artificial Intelligence) Focus mode allows the camera to choose between One Shot and AI Servo modes. When you press the shutter button down half way to take a photo, the camera chooses One Shot mode because that’s what the scene calls for. If that subject begins to move, the camera will automatically switch over to AI Servo mode and will begin refocusing as it sees fit. This focus mode is used with the Scene Intelligent Auto, Flash Off and Creative Auto modes.

AI Servo: This auto-focus mode is used when photographing moving objects. You still push the shutter button down half way, but when you do, the camera doesn’t lock in on an object. It determines whether or not it needs to track the object and continuously focus on it. You wouldn’t want to use this mode for still photography because it can become rather annoying. The camera automatically chooses this type of focus when in Sports mode.

When you’re in one of the manual modes, you’ll have the ability to set any one of the focus modes that you deem necessary to maintain focus.

And there you have it. It’s a short and sweet topic that can help out so much once it’s understood. Happy shooting!

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I hope I clearly explained how to choose a focus mode on a Canon Rebel camera as well as what the focus modes mean. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment section down below. Thanks for reading!

Trying to get a camera to focus on the correct object in a photo has always been a challenge for many people. This is especially true as they move from the very beginning stages of photography to the more amateur stages. In the beginning, many folks simply point and shoot from a distance. As they move through the ranks though, they begin honing in on the details of many scenes. They get much closer in and they target what should be clear and what shouldn’t. The problem is, cameras can’t think, therefore they can’t know the photographer’s intentions. Oftentimes, the autofocus feature on many cameras automatically focus on the wrong thing. Over and over again and I can tell you from personal experience, this is very annoying when it’s happening.

In today’s post, I’d like to discuss how you can basically tell your Canon Rebel DSLR camera what to do. What to focus on. You may have heard that cameras these days have dozens of focus points, which is great if you’d like to capture a larger object in a scene. What if there’s something very specific in the scene you’d like to be in focus though? What do you do then? How do you focus on just that? Can you tell the camera to pick just one of those dozens of focus point to use? Sure you can and I’ll tell you how to do that below.

By the way, for this post, I’ll be using my Canon Rebel T7i. The basic concepts of what I’ll explain down below will be true for the T6i, T5i, T4i and the T3i. I completely forget what the T2i looks like, so I won’t include that one on this list. Really, the only difference will be that the newer T6i and T7i will be touch screen and the older models won’t have as many focus points. Everything else is pretty much the same. Think about the big picture here. No pun intended.

The Rear LCD Screen

Okay, I’ve propped my Canon T7i up on my table and I took a photo of the rear LCD screen. This is what it looks like right after I turn the camera on.

In order to follow the process I’ll show you below, the camera needs to be in this mode; the one where all the information is showing on the rear screen.

Changing the Focus Point

In order to manually choose my own focus point, I’ll have to press the proper button on the back of the camera. In this case, that button is the one all the way to the right; right above the small magnifying glass with the + on it.

When I press that button, the current focus settings will come up. Because I already have this camera set to a manual focus point, the center point is highlighted. If I hadn’t set this camera this way, the entire center area may have been highlighted in orange. Also, if you’ll notice, the box to the left, above the focus points, is highlighted. That’s the mode I’m currently in. It’s called Manual Selection: 1 Pt AF. That translates into one point autofocus. What this means is that no matter what, the point at the center of the scene will be the point that’s focused on. That’s fine, but what if I’d like to change that point?

To move the focus point manually, I can use two different methods. I can either roll the scroll wheel on top of the camera back and forth. This will move the point to the left or to the right. I can also accomplish the same exact thing by pressing the left and right arrows on the back of the camera. If I wanted to move the focus point up or down, I can use the up and down arrows. I circled the arrow buttons in the image below. I also moved the focus point to the left a bit and circled that as well.

I suppose the question remains, what if I didn’t already have a single focus point chosen and set the way I did? Well, upon entering this mode, the camera knows the focus point will be manually changed. If many are already set, the camera will reduce that number from many to one. From there, the point can be moved. On the older cameras, the point will move around either clockwise or counter-clockwise until the proper selection is made. If we continue to move the point, the original multi-point configuration will be set again. And finally, to accept the change, I can either press the same magnifying button once more or simply half-press the shutter button. Doing this will return me to my original view.

Changing a Focus Zone

On the T7i, I can easily change the focus zone. To do so, I can tap the second icon from the left with my finger. This is the one right on the touch-screen. When I do that, the entire center zone, or the zone that’s currently active, will be highlighted. To move that zone of focus points, I can again use either the scroll wheel that’s on top of the camera or the arrow keys on the back. It’s the same idea as above.

In the image below, you can see that I moved the focus zone from the center position to the left position.

The Easiest Way to Do It

I’ll give you a tip for some very easy focusing. For yeas, I battled with my old camera over where to focus. I’d sit there and watch as the camera focused on this and then that and then the other thing, all the while, never focusing on what I wanted it to focus on. It was so frustrating. The way I solved this little dilemma was to set the focus point to the center. I got rid of the zone multi-points all together. I used just the center point (which I still use today) because in doing so, I knew that if I placed that center point on the object I wanted to focus on, that’s the one that would be targeted. No questions asked. If I wanted to focus on an object and then move the camera slightly to one direction or the other in order to have the object that’s in focus off to the side a bit, I’d press the shutter button half way down and hold it there. Then, I’d move the camera with that focus locked in and press the shutter button all the way down to capture the image. This is a great and very popular solution.

If you’re working on a tripod or can’t move the camera for some reason, that’s a good time to change the focus point like I showed you above. It really depends on the situation.

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I hope I clearly explained how to manually select a focus point while using the Canon Rebel series of DSLR cameras. If you have any questions regarding this post, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

I’ve taken a lot of photographs in my day and I’ve noticed a lot of things. One of these things has to do with darker, underexposed photos. It seems as though underexposed images are slightly noisy when compared to their well exposed counterparts. Now, when I say “darker,” I mean underexposed. I don’t mean photos that were taken in dark settings. Those types of photos can have a very acceptable exposure that there’s nothing wrong with. Being underexposed is something completely different. Being underexposed means that an insufficient amount of light was allowed to hit the camera’s sensor as the image was being captured. Darker photos are simply dark, but may have had a sufficient amount of light touch the sensor for that particular scene.

Anyway, since I’ve only noticed this type of occurrence, I thought I’d run a little experiment to see if what I think is true, is actually true. And this is why I’m writing today.

In today’s post, I’m going to quickly compare the quality of six photographs I just took in my office. I have a bookshelf with a few books on it that I thought would be the perfect subjects. I partially closed the curtains to make the room slightly less flooded with light and I used a tripod to make sure the conditions between photos were constant. What I’m going to do below is simply show you the output of a few shots with different shutter speeds. I’ll talk more about that below.

The Subject

These are the books I just photographed. This particular shot is the best one. I just lowered the exposure level slightly in Adobe Camera Raw a bit to make it look as good as possible. Take a look.

The Comparison

To complete this experiment, I decided that full manual mode was in order. The only aspect I wanted to change was the shutter speed, so I kept everything else the same between photos. I set the aperture to f5.0 and the ISO to 800. I used my Canon Rebel T7i, which looks really good at this ISO level. The reason I raised it up was because I wanted to replicate what the camera might choose automatically for a scene like this. I also wanted to lock that value in.

As I mentioned above, I took six photos. I began by underexposing them, moved towards a normal exposure and them finished up with a shot that’s slightly overexposed. The results were exactly as I expected them to be. The darker images were noisy and that noise lessened as the later images were more exposed. What struck me was how beautiful the final shot was. Being overexposed virtually eliminated any noise in the shot and I was able to easily reduce that exposure during post-processing. It was as smooth as smooth can be.

Below, I’ll show you the darkest photo in its entirety. After that, I’ll show you enlarged portions of the remaining images so you can get a better idea of the noise we’re dealing with. I’ll also note the shutter speed above each shot. Here’s the first one.

And here’s the same shot enlarged a bit.

Shutter speed: 1/30 of a second.

Shutter speed: 1/20 of a second.

Shutter speed: 1/10 of a second.

Shutter speed: 1/5 of a second.

Shutter speed: 1/2 of a second.

Shutter speed: 1.3 seconds.

The Results

Do you see how the quality of the images got progressively better as they were more and more exposed? I’d say we can learn a lot from this little experiment. Primarily that we should be careful when using manual mode that we don’t accidentally underexpose photos. Well, we should be careful when using all the modes, but manual is much more prone to error because of the freedoms inherently offered with it. Also, if I had a preference, it would be to slightly overexpose an image and, like I did above, reduce that exposure in post-processing. As you can see from my leading photo, the quality is very high.

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I hope I clearly explained how photographic underexposure can have a detrimental effect on the quality of the images we capture. If you have any questions regarding this post, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

There’s something about the photography exposure triangle that I just love. I can talk about it for hours if anyone cared to listen. It’s just technical enough to keep me interested and its concepts can be continuously applied to all types of photography. Actually, it has to be applied for decent photographs to be captured. In short, even if you use the auto modes of your DSLR camera, understanding the exposure triangle can be a huge factor in improving the photos you take.

A while ago, I wrote a few posts that have to do with taking great night photography. If you’re interested, you can read those posts here:

Some Tips For Setting Camera Exposure For Night Photography

3 Incredibly Easy Tips For Better Night Photography

Should I Use Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR) When Photographing?

The three posts I just linked to primarily have to do with taking still photography at night, meaning, the photos were taken in shutter priority (a long exposure), an average sized aperture and a low ISO. Also, a tripod is used for these types of long exposure photographs. I’m sure you’ll get the idea of what I’m talking about if you browse the three posts I linked to above. Essentially, I’m referring to those types of pictures that have very little movement in them.

In today’s post, I’d like to talk about how you can best capture night photographs of moving objects. Really, this is simply going to be a post about a different combination of camera settings. The exposure triangle is one thing for night time still photography and quite another for night time photography that contains action. Or movement; whatever you want to call it.

I got the idea to write about this topic last night after flipping through a whole bunch of these types of photos. I’m not sure if I’ve tackled this specific type of situation yet, so I think it would be worthwhile to do so now. Plus, I just can’t seem to shut up about all of this, so I’ll treat this blog as my avenue of relief.

The Problem with Night Photography

There’s a real problem with night photography out there. The problem is, we need to actually know how to take good photos under low light conditions. While it’s not terribly difficult to take a regular picture of an object that’s just sitting there, it’s much more challenging to capture something in a defined way. Let’s say you wanted to see night time car tail light trails in your photos. Would your camera just take those kinds of photos without you telling it your goal? Probably not. Let’s say you wanted to capture the very defined and very focused sweat falling from a soccer player’s face during a night game. Would your camera know what to do all by itself? Again, probably not. With everyday situations, you can get away with taking ordinary night shots. In very specific situations though, you’re most likely not going to get away with things if you don’t give your camera very specific instructions.

A Definition of Movement

If you plan on taking photographs during a night time sports game that offers very low light, you’re going to have to take some very specific precautions. Both your camera and lens are going to have to be up to snuff and you’re going to need to know what you’re doing. This isn’t an easy situation to be in and you’ll likely need a lot of practice. When I think about these types of low light situations, rock concerts come to mind. Hardly and light, people jumping around, clarity is a primary concern.

For the purposes of today, I’d like to focus on situations where extreme movement ins’t in play. I’m going to imagine a situation where you’re simply walking around town, taking interesting photos of people and things. Because of the relaxed nature, you’ll need to concern yourself with having a shutter speed that’s fast enough to avoid blur, but not so fast that it’s the most primary of considerations. The goal is clarity, but there’s not excessive movement or action.

Considerations

With any type of photography, there are three primary considerations. They are movement, light and blur (depth of field). In my previous posts, the greatest concern was light, so the shutter speed was decreased to a point of letting enough of it in to make a fine photograph. In those posts, I discussed the fact that since the shutter speed was slowed to such a degree, the aperture size could be reduced for a clearer photo and the ISO value could be reduced as well, to minimize noise. The slower shutter speed would compensate for both of these things.

In today’s post, movement is important, so I’d like to emphasize that shutter speed will be critical. The thing is, the lack of light is also something to contend with, so aperture size is equally important. Finally, since a higher ISO’s impact on the quality of photograph has been remarkably reduced through the years, I’ll say that we can leave that for the camera to decide.

Good Settings For Night Photography

I’m going to give you some round-about camera settings for some decent night photography, depending on how much ambient light you have available. If you’ve never tried night photography, you really should go out and experience it. There’s nothing like it and scenes are truly woken up when captured by a camera.

Okay, so, I have a few goals. I’d like my low light photos to be clear in the sense that I don’t want any movement to show. I’d like the camera to capture enough light for the photos to be relatively bright. I don’t mind bokeh (out of focus blur); I actually prefer it and really, I can’t avoid it with the settings I’ll need to choose for a situation like this. Finally, I don’t want a crazy amount of grain in my photo. I know what my camera can handle and I don’t want to push its limits.

Aperture

As I mentioned above, one of my primary considerations is light. To capture as much light as possible, I’m going to need a fast lens. I’d preferably like it to be either f1.2 or f1.4, depending on how much out of focus range I can put up with. Remember, the larger the aperture, the shallower the depth of field (more blur). F1.4 is a really great aperture size with work with while walking around town taking low light photos, however, an f1.2 setting can produce incredible results as well.

Shutter Speed

Because of the large aperture size inside the lens, I’ll have some liberty when it comes to shutter speed. Depending on the movement in the scene, I can get away with a 1/400th of a second shutter speed. Ideally, I’d like it to be slower than that, in order to let more light in (which can result in a lower ISO value), so I’d much prefer something as slow as 1/200th of a second, but I could go up to 1/640 if there was still a glow in the sky from a fallen sun. This setting would be scene dependent.

ISO

As I mentioned earlier, modern cameras have come such a long way in terms of reducing grain caused by high ISO values. Because of this, I’d likely let my camera decide which value it would use during this type of photography. I would set the upper limit to 6400 though because that’s what I’m comfortable with. You should test your own camera to see where photos begin to degrade in relation to ISO values. My older camera I bought way back in 2011 began to degrade at ISO 800, but my new Canon Rebel T7i does a much better job at keeping noise out of the picture.

In Conclusion

Here’s what I’d like to say. If you want to walk around with a camera at night without a tripod, you’re going to need to set your camera shutter speed to a value that allows you to avoid camera shake and excessive movement of the subjects in the frame. Also, because of the low light in the scene, you’re going to need a big hole in the lens to allow what available light there is, in. Finally, you’ll need to set your sensor to be sensitive enough to allow your lens and shutter to do what they do best, which is control movement and let light in. As always, testing and experimentation is key, so do lots and lots of that. It’ll be worth it in the end.

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I know I sort of rambled in this post, but I wanted to get some thoughts out that I had floating around my head. I hope I clearly explained some of the ins and outs of hand-held night time photography. If you have any questions regarding this post, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

If I had to guess, I’d say that one of the most important operational aspects of any camera would be its ability to change functions on the fly. I’m sure you’ll agree when I say that the easier it is to alter the settings of any camera, the better. After all, what’s the sense of having the ability to change those functions if it’s a real pain to access them?

In today’s post, I’d like to introduce you to something called Quick Control that’s available on many Canon DSLR cameras. In its most basic sense, Quick Control is a mode that you can enter to change many of the settings on the camera. While there are other, more spread out, methods for accomplishing some of the same types of things, the Quick Control screen has so many options available in one place. And changing the available settings is a snap. All it takes is a push of one button and a push or a roll of another. This area is so important to be aware of for both new photographers as well as more advanced ones because it can definitely help getting things done much more quickly and efficiently.

How to Access Quick Control

For this post, I’ve decided to use my very own Canon T7i. This is the latest iteration of the Rebel line and I really do enjoy shooting with this camera in particular. It’s all about quality and ease of use.

Okay, I’ve gone ahead and put the camera into Manual mode (M) so you can see almost everything that’s available on the Quick Control screen. Please be aware that you’ll have control over different functions while you’re in different shooting modes. Some functions will be available while others will be blocked out. For example, while in Manual mode, you’ll likely have the ability to change almost any setting, such as shutter speed, aperture, ISO, exposure compensation and so much more. While in Program mode (P) though, shutter speed and aperture are blocked out and are unable to be altered. And when you get to the even more automated modes, such as Creative Auto, Portrait, Landscape and so on, even more restrictions will be in place. Personally, I tend to forget which mode I’m in and I sit and wonder why I can’t change something. I do this all the time.

Accessing Quick Control mode is easy. Since the T7i has touch screen, all I would need to do is touch the small Q button that sits at the lower left corner of the rear LCD screen. If I were on an older model camera that didn’t have touch screen, such as the T2i, T3i, T4i and so on, I would have to push the physical Q button that sits just to the right of the rear screen.

Once I push one of those buttons, I’ll see a slight change occur. Any options that are able to be altered will be surrounded by light gray boxes. Here, take a look. Notice the boxes around the various settings.

Remember, which settings you’ll have the ability to change depend on which mode the camera is currently in. Also, if you’ll notice, the functions that are able to be set are shown by popularity. Going from left to right, they’re listed in order of how frequently a photographer might reach for those settings.

How to Change a Setting

Now, the big question is how to actually change a setting. On a touch screen camera, simply touch the setting you’d like to adjust. After that, touch the new value and then when you’re finished, touch the curved return arrow that’s at the bottom right corner of the screen. This will change the settings and then bring you back to the Quick Control screen.

If you don’t have touch screen, you’ll need to navigate to the area you’d like to adjust by pressing the arrow buttons on the back of the camera. When you land on what you’re interested in, you can press the Set button to enter the settings area for that particular feature. Then, to adjust the setting, you would use the dial at the top of the camera to choose the new value and finally, you’d press the Set button to apply the change. After being applied, the camera should return to the Quick Control screen on its own. If you would like to exit this screen or any active settings screen at any time, you could always press the Menu button that’s above the rear LCD screen on the back of the camera.

An important shortcut to consider is one that cuts out the middle man. If you were to highlight any of the available options on the Quick Control screen and simply roll the dial that’s on the top of the camera, you could change that particular value without ever accessing its own screen. Keep this in mind when you’re in the field because it’s the fastest option available.

How to Disable Feature Guide

After using your camera for about a half hour, you’ll notice some rather annoying messages that continuously appear whenever you access many of the different areas of the camera. You can see one of these message in a gray box in the photo below. To turn these tips and guides off, head into the menu area by pressing the Menu button that sits above the rear screen. Then, once in that area, use the left and right arrow buttons to scroll back and forth until you see an option called Feature Guide. I can’t tell you where this option would fall because Canon keeps changing its location. On the T3i, it’s listed under one of the Tools headings, but on the T7i, it’s listed under the Display Level heading. Wherever it is, scroll to that option and then press the Set button.

Once you click on it, you can use the up and down arrows to change the value to Disable. Then, press the Set button again and finally, press the Menu button to exit the menu area.

PS – This post refers to almost all Canon Rebel cameras, including the T2i, T3i, T4i, T5i, T6i and the newest T7i.

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I hope I clearly explained how to enter the Quick Control area on Canon Rebel DSLR cameras and how to change the values contained therein. If you have any questions regarding this post, please leave them in the comment section down below. Thanks for reading!