To be a true photographer…

Arrive to organize equipment and get a sense early of camera settings needed Dress appropriately – good shoes and pants. Know where you are going ahead of time Know what shots you need and what equipment you need. Be polite and be friendly so that you will be allowed closer to the subject. Use your press pass. Be proud of what you are doing – this is professional journalism, not a social event.

Hold camera properly Protect and carry camera at all times. DO NOT let the camera be caught in rain. Use a plastic bag if rain is forecasted. If it’s cold, warm up the battery in your hands. Be inconspicuous but inquisitive. Take plenty of images.

Never store the camera in your locker or your car. Keep camera at room temperature when storing it. Learn about the different lenses and experiment with them to get the best shots!

Using the Canon Rebel

Auto Modes Portrait Restricts depth of field, enables flash and uses skin tone softening. Landscape Increases depth of field and sharpness. Turns off flash, and boosts blues and greens. Close-up A macro mode for close-up shooting. Sports Sets the shutter speed as high as possible, and enables continuous auto focus for moving subjects Night Portrait Combines flash and a long exposure to capture both portrait subject and background. Portrait Landscape Close-up Sports Night Portrait

The LCD screen Battery Mode ISO Size of image Single or continuous shoot White Balance F-Stop Aperture Exposure Shutter Speed

ISO To change your ISO, press the ISO button. See it in the second picture on the right? The lower your ISO ( ), the smaller amount of light your camera will use. So if it’s a bright sunny day and you’re taking pictures outside, set your ISO to 100. The higher you set your ISO, the more light your camera will use. So if you want to take a picture inside without a flash, you can try setting your ISO higher to 800 or 1600 to see if you can get a high enough shutter speed to hand hold your camera. The catch with using a high ISO is that it makes your pictures pretty grainy, it shows up REALLY bad in reds and oranges, so I always try to use the lowest ISO possible.

White Balance (type of light) Florescent Light

Is a nice background blur more important? Use AV

Aperture Priority Turn the dial on the top of your camera to AV. This means that you will be setting the Aperture, and then the camera will automatically adjust the shutter speed to make sure you have a correct exposure. That means the pictures is not too bright and not too dark. In AV mode, the little arrow is probably covering up the 0 which means you have a correct exposure. And in AV mode, it won’t change. It will always stay on the 0 unless you specifically tell it to move to a higher or lower number. In most cases, if the arrow is on a higher number, the picture will be over exposed (too bright) and if it is on a lower number it will be under exposed (too dark). So for right now, we’ll just let it stay on 0. :)

Look at the second picture.. Do you see where it says -2…-1…0…1…2 ? That’s your exposure. exposure

Let’s talk a little bit about Aperture. Look at the picture. See where it says 5.6? That means the aperture is at 5.6 or f/5.6. The lower the aperture number, the wider your lens is open and the more light it lets in, meaning, the brighter the picture. This also means a shallower depth of field. aperture

Shallow depth of field with low aperture You know, you’ve seen those pictures where one thing is in focus and everything around is has that nice blur? That’s a very shallow depth of field. That means the aperture was set very low, like maybe at f/2.8.

When you see the pictures with a lot of people in them and a lot of stuff in the background, and everything is in focus, those pictures probably used a higher aperture, like f/11 or f/16 or even f/22. That also means that not as much light will be let into the lens, so you will have to have a lot of other light, like from a bright sun outside or a flash or something.

F-Stops The diameter of an aperture is measured in f-stops. A lower f-stop number opens the aperture and admits more light onto the camera sensor. Higher f-stop numbers make the camera’s aperture smaller so less light hits the sensor. F-stops are expressed in three different ways: f/8, f-8, and 1:8. Aperture settings can be used creatively to control depth of field, how much of a photo is sharp in front and back of where you focus on the main subject.

Now, to change your aperture, you use the little black dial thing right below the shutter button in the first picture. Turn it to the left for a lower aperture and a right for a higher one. Be sure to keep an eye on your shutter speed as you do this. See the number 1/125 in the second picture? That’s your shutter speed.

Shutter Speed Alert! As a general rule of thumb, if you are going to be holding the camera with your hand (not using a tripod) you don’t really want to have the second number of your shutter speed (in this case, 125) set lower than what mm you are zoomed to, going no lower than 50. Letting your shutter speed get lower than 1/50 will cause “camera shake” and your pictures to be blurry. If you get another lens with a longer zoom (like 85mm) then you will know not to set your shutter speed lower than 1/80. Get it? :)

Is a nice background blur more important? Use AV Is capturing speed most important? Use TV. That gives priority to shutter speed, or the length of time that light reaches the digital camera sensor. Specific shutter speeds include 30, 15, 8, 4, and 2 seconds; ½ second, ¼, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30…1/8000 of a second.

TV Mode – Shutter Priority Turn the dial on the top of your camera to TV. This means you will be controlling the shutter speed and the camera will automatically adjust the aperture to make sure you have a correct exposure. To change your shutter speed, use the same dial you used to change your aperture. When set it TV mode, it will control your shutter speed. Turn it to the left for a lower shutter speed and the right for a higher one.

Shutter Speed Shutter speed is how fast the camera records the picture. You’ve seen those pictures of cars at night where you can only see a red streak from the tail lights, right? That’s because the shutter speed was set very low to record for a long time and capture the car as it was driving out of the picture.

And you’ve seen pictures of athletes that completely stop motion and show exactly what he was doing right at that millisecond? Those pictures use a high shutter speed.

Suggested Shutter Speeds I like to keep my shutter speed around 125 when taking portraits of something that’s going to be relatively still… A sleeping baby, kids that are old enough to sit still and smile for the camera, etc. If you have a lot of wiggling around, like babies or toddlers, you might want to go higher to around 200. If you want to capture action, like a kid running, riding a bike, paying a sport, etc, you probably want your shutter speed to be around 500 to 1000.

Be sure to keep an eye on your aperture as your change your shutter speed. If your aperture number starts flashing, that means that the shutter speed you selected is too high to correctly expose the picture. That means your aperture can’t be set any lower to allow in more light and your image will be too dark. Shutter speed You need to lower your shutter speed until the aperture number stops flashing. This means the picture will be correctly exposed. aperture

Focusing Turn your camera on and press that button. See if it’s set to “automatic selection.” This means your camera will “guess” what you’re trying to focus on, and automatically choose what it thinks you want to focus on. I get a lot of out of focus shots by leaving it on “automatic selection”, therefore, I like to change mine to “Manual AF Point Selection”. Okay, look at the first picture. See that thing that looks like a plus sign made out of small boxes contained within a box? :) The button right below that is the AF Point Selection button and it controls your automatic focus (AF) point selection.

To change it on your camera, first make sure the AF Point Selection screen is open by pressing the AF point selection button, then press the “SET” button (located under the ISO button and above the WB button in the second picture). This brings up a diamond shaped grid of focus points. One of them should be highlighted. That means it’s always going to focus right there. I keep mine set right in the middle, but you can change it to any point, whichever one you feel most comfortable with. To change it, use wheel dial by the shutter button.

What the dot is on will be in focus When set to Manual AF Point Selection, your camera will always focus in that one spot. When you look through the view finder, you should see the same AF point selection grid. If you press the shutter button halfway down, the AF point you selected will highlight and you will probably hear your lens focusing. This means your lens is focused on that one spot. Now sometimes, just because it’s focused in that one spot, doesn’t mean the picture is framed exactly how you want it. Just keep the shutter button pressed halfway down and move your camera until the picture is framed the way you want it. Then press the shutter the rest of the way to take the pic.

Lens Equipment Watch the Autofocus (AF) switch on the lens. If your images are blurry, you may have accidentally set it to Manual (M)

Use a lens hood (or your hand) to block direct sunlight

UV filter

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