I posted a while back in 'Say Hello!' And explained that I will be sitting With a lot of Equipment and no idea on how to use them.. Well, now I finally got to take a look at everything after some delays due to various reasons. Anyhow, I'm pretty overwhelmed, figured i'd post a full gear list here and hope someone could point me in the right direction. Here goes; - Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 300mm f/4L IS USM - Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM - Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM - Canon Extender EF 1.4x III - Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Photo - Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM - Canon Extender EF 2x III - Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Canon - Canon EOS 7D I've been doing research on usage of ISO, Aperture, Shutterspeed aswell as with lenses. It's a lot, but I'm having a lot of fun learning more and seeing results. However it's still a lot, and now that I sit with so much equipment I require some help! There's also a lot of stuff that I did not list, such as memory cards, multiple flashes that you can attach to the camera and some camera stands. Also now that I got all the equipment I look forwards to interacting more with the forum and hope I'm not asking too much of you guys! - Thanks, LMBK
Good grief! That is a very impressive list of some top shelf gear. There are not many things that you would not be able to do with that range of equipment. You have the gear and now you just have to learn how to use it. I hope that you also got the manuals to go with it. If not, you can always download them from the Canon site. If you have questions, just ask. I am sure we will try to help.
LMBK, I looked at your gear and thought, do you want to adopted me. I am cute and adorable if you let me use your gear.
If I were you, I would charge a battery, insert a memory card in your 5D III and attach the 16-35mm. ISO, set it to something like 100 or 200, set the exposure to a semi automatic mode such as AV, set the focus to auto focus, and get out there and give it a go. Doing this will get you a little hands on experience, you will get your head around what the dials and buttons do. If you get stuck, just ask. If the images are not coming how you expect, post a couple of the images, and I sure someone will point you in the right direction. Good luck and let us know how you get on. Gary
Thank you! That makes me happy to hear, I'm excited to try everything out. Unfortunately I couldn't find any of the manuals, but If I can download them that should be no issue. There definitely will be some questions to come, but I'm New to forums in general and not sure if I should add questions onto existing threads like this one, or make a New thread for any questions that might arrise? Thanks, LMBK
Gary! Thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for. I'll do as you suggested and get some hands on experience. I'm still uncertain about how to transfer the Pictures from the camera onto a computer, and I heard something about RAW images and it's all rather confusing. I'm sure I'll figure it out, but there's so much and I'm trying my best to prioritize Learning the right stuff. Thanks, LMBK
Well for manuals https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/manuals will allow you to search for all the canon ones. The camera menus are pretty easy to dig into but I would at least look over the camera manual so you know the range of what its capable of. For settings, I take a classic approach of what you would be taught in a photo class, they would give you a old manual film camera you would load with film and go shoot. So in following with that theory, set the iso to something, anything really, I would maybe pick 400 so you can be outdoors and some indoors if it is brightly lit, (there was a reason that we bought 400speed in 100foot rolls in school). Then put the camera on manual mode and go out and start shooting things. Get used to balancing aperture and shutter speed and get a feel for exposure. Then play with the how a small or large aperture affects depth of field, followed by playing with short and long exposure to freeze or blur action. after that you can start setting ISO as needed to get your aperture or shutter speed to where they need to be depending on what you are shooting and what you want to do with the exposure. Once you get to a spot where you look at a scene and are thinking ahead ok in this shot I want to do this and this and you can dial that into the camera, then you can start worrying about the rest. Some situations you will notice you need to over or under expose a little depending on how the light is falling on the subject you are shooting, another reason I wanted to have you set to manual. The practice of taking multiple shots where you have some under and over exposed according to the light meter is called bracketing your shot, and is handy and a good learning tool. It was necessary in film days with certain lighting situations, you should try this as well and see what happens. For example adding more light to the exposure will change a subject when they are backlit by a window will allow you to expose for the subject rather than the lighting outside the window because the camera looked at the the available light and tried to expose for the window behind them. RAW is a great file format to shoot in and allows much more range when editing in say lightroom/photoshop when you want to pull detail out of highlights or shadows, but at this point you really want to worry about getting the shot as perfect in camera. If it is in jpg right now you may as well leave it there till you have some practice.
Thank you! Going through the manual put a lot of my worries and questions about handling/functions to rest. I'll definitely continue playing around with different settings, I'm currently using Manual mode aswell since I find it super interesting how each setting changes the picture in their own way, and how they interact. I'm pretty sure I'm shooting in RAW at the moment, but I figure it's fine as I'm able to transfer them over to my computer and view them without problem. Thank you for your reply, and it's exciting as I do find myself thinking things like "Here I should do this" and afterwards I have these "AH I could have done that!"
You have a couple of choices here. You can plug your camera directly to your computer via a USB cable. Or you can remove the memory card from the camera and plug it into a card reader. If you do the latter and if you are using a CF card, be careful as it's really easy to bend the pins. These cards have a slot on each edge of the card, one is thin and the other is a little thicker. Just make sure that these slot into the correct slot in both the camera and the reader. If it feels as if it is not going in, don't force it. Double check that you are inserting it the correct way. Gary
