I was at dinner recently and a someone handed me an SLR they got for Christmas. I quickly realized that all the menu settings were messed up and not set to take pictures properly (in my opinion). It took only a few seconds and I handed the camera back to her with everything optimally set.

I was happy to hear that some people found my article on what camera to buy as a gift helpful. I thought I would do a follow up post quickly explaining how to set up everything! I’ll keep things pretty general, these instructions should apply to most digital SLR cameras. 

RAW vs. JPEG

We shoot RAW because it is the highest quality image format the camera can produce. The RAW files the camera produces are not yet fully processed, they must first be adjusted for color, contrast, sharpness, and other characteristics. You of course can make these adjustments to JPEG files, but you don’t have nearly the same flexibility and the quality is lower compared to RAW regardless of what level of JPEG you shoot.

If you do shoot JPEG because you don’t want, or need, to process RAW files, make sure you have it on the super-fine settings. If you’re shooting RAW you’ll need to process them either using the supplied RAW conversion software, or a program like Adobe Lightroom. Lightroom is the program we use and it does a beautiful job. I think you’ll find Lightroom pretty intuitive to use. It will give you the freedom to easily export to JPEG without much work, or you can experiment and fine tune your images exposure, contrast, saturation, sharpness etc.

Color Space

If you have the camera set to shoot JPEG you’ll want to change the color space to Adobe RGB (1998). It may already be selected or it might be set to sRGB. sRGB is a smaller colorspace (less colors) than Adobe RGB (1998) so you’ll want to make sure you’re shooting it in order to maximize colors in prints. If you’re exporting a RAW file from Lightroom into a JPEG make sure you select Adobe RGB (1998) at the export dialog.

A Quick Explanation of Modes

SLRs have a ton of different settings. You’ll often find presets for things like landscape, sports, people etc. You’ll also probably notice Av, Tv, M settings. Obviously you can keep the camera on the Auto setting, or any other preset, but that’s kind of boring and if you’re reading this then you probably want to know a little more!

I would say one of the most comfortable settings starting off is Av or aperture priority. Basically with aperture priority you just select the aperture value and the camera will automatically select shutter speed. You can think of the aperture as the iris of the camera. The more open the aperture is the more light entering the lens, the smaller the f/stop (f/2.8-f/4.0 for example). The more closed the aperture is the less light entering the lens, the higher the f/stop (f/8.0-f/16 for example).

Generally when your taking portraits of people lower aperture values like f/2.8-f/4 help isolate your subject and help them pop out of the photo.

When shooting things like landscapes you might want to shoot in the aperture range of f/8.0-f/16 as this will result in sharper images with as much of the image sharply in focus as possible. I’ll try to tackle shutter priority (Tv) and full manual (M) in subsequent articles. The best is to get started with Av.

Exposure Compensation

If you’re shooting in Av or even some of the manual presets then you’ll want to find the exposure compensation dial. This will allow you to change how bright or dark the image is. The exposure compensation looks like a meter that you can set to either the center, left (darker) or right (brighter). The meter might look up/down or left/right but it shouldn’t be too difficult to spot.

ISO

One last thing. ISO basically controls how sensitive the sensor is. It might be set to Auto which is a good place to start if you don’t want to think about this. If you’d like to take control of ISO then heres what you need to know.

The lower the ISO (100-400 for example) the less sensitive the sensor.

The higher the ISO (800-3200) the more sensitive the sensor.

In bright light you’ll want to shoot lower ISO, and in low-light conditions you’ll want to shoot higher ISOs. The trade off is noise. Higher ISOs tend to be more grainy looking than low ISOs - though this is starting to change with newer cameras.

Focus Point

When you first break your SLR out of the box the focus will probably be set to “all points”. You’ll notice that when you press the shutter release half way down it will lock focus on one or a few of the focus points. Press it all the way down and if you’ve locked focus then the camera will take the photo.

The problem is that on with all points focus the camera might not focus on the subject you want. Heres what you do: change the focus point setting so that the focus is on the center point. You may have to check your manual to figure out how to do this or you might be able to do it by fiddling with the focus buttons.

Once you’ve set the focus to the center point only that focus point will be active. That gives you the ability to point the center focus point over whatever subject you want in focus, press the shutter release button half way down, the camera should lock focus on the center point (which should be over your subject). Now, while still holding the shutter release half way down, recompose the image the way you like, and then press the shutter release the rest of the way down. Now you know how to take full control of what part of your image is in focus! It will take some practice to become intuitive but you’ll get there!

Final Thoughts

Some of the above settings might not be available in menus until you switch the camera from automatic to manual, or aperture priority or shutter priority. 

It might not hurt to take a look through your manual so that you can learn how to change some of the above settings!

Then you can feel free to do a celebratory dance, because you learned more about your camera today! 

Note: Your dance may or may not look like Lauren’s….

Hope you enjoyed this article! And please feel free to leave any questions or suggestions for future articles in the comments!

Rob