Last week I showed you 5 tricks to get the most out of your camera. If you had not read the article, I recommend you take a look at it and make sure you know the first 5 tricks we talked about.
Today I bring you another batch of functions that most of today’s SLR cameras allow you to use, but that many users are unaware of. They are little tricks that make photography much easier and more exciting, and that will allow you to get a better picture most of the time than you would without them.
You don’t necessarily have to use them either, but you do have to know them and their usefulness. From there you will be testing them and using more frequently those functions that most interest you.
This article has a very practical character. I recommend that you go get your favorite drink, settle into an armchair, and accompany the reading of the article with checks on your own camera, as you go.
How to locate these functions in your own SLR camera
Before you start, be realistic. Not all SLR cameras offer the same features. However, manufacturers are working more and more to bring functions that were previously limited to a small selection of very expensive cameras, reserved only for an elite, to the average amateur photographer. If your reflex camera is current or belongs to the list of reflex cameras that I usually recommend, it is very likely that it has more than one of these functions.
You have two ways to locate each of these features on your own camera:
- You can simply navigate through the menu and see if you find each of these options intuitively, or…
- You can consult the user manual of your own camera model in PDF format. If you open the PDF, use the key Ctrl+F on your computer(Cmd + F for the maqueros). In the search field, enter a keyword related to the concept you are looking for. You should thus be able to locate, within the user manual, the specific chapter where they explain how to configure the option in question on your own camera.
Clever? Camera in hand? let’s mess
5 extremely useful functions of your SLR camera
1) Save/restore user settings: There was a time when, for reasons that are beside the point, I had to lend my DSLR to a friend quite often. Every time my friend returned it to me very unconfigured 🙁 I will deny having written this but, I confess to having abandoned the idea of going out with the camera some afternoon to take photos just because I was lazy to start reconfiguring the camera again the way I like it . You understand me, the typical settings that you configure at the very beginning when you just bought it and you don’t touch it anymore, such as the quality of the photo, if it is JPG or RAW, size, megapixels, behavior of the remote shutter, things like that.
Until I discovered this function. Save user settings is a revolutionary invention 🙂 as it allows you to save your custom settings in the camera and thus restore them whenever you want. Some cameras allow you to save settings for more than one user, ideal if you share the camera with your partner for example: you save your settings under the name User 1and the other person under the User 2, and ready. From there, depending on who is going to use it, you use one set of settings or another.
Believe me, if you usually share the camera with more people, this feature will save you a lot of time and frustration. Or discussion 😛
2) Save settings to memory card: This is going one step further. What happens if your colleague throws the blanket over his head and changes all your settings, even the ones carefully saved by you under the profile? “User 1”. I don’t think anyone wants to intentionally screw up your life like that, but what if it happens, what do you do?
If you want to take care of your health, use the option that some reflex cameras offer to save the user configuration on an external memory card. So you keep the card, lend the camera, and once the camera is recovered, you restore your settings from the card itself, period.
Easier impossible.
3) Mirror, mirror…: This function or trick is very popular among photographers, but I include it because I know that many blog readers are not aware of it or are not entirely clear about how it works.
When you shoot a photo with an SLR camera, do you hear a click? I mean the sound of the shot (a sound that drives me crazy by the way, call me a freak…). Unlike in mobile phones, iPhones or compact digital cameras, where that sound is recorded, in SLR cameras the sound is an actual noise from small components inside the camera. For an SLR camera to shoot a photo, a whole series of physical elements have to move allowing the photo to be captured. Pure mechanical movement.
I call this trick “Mirror, Mirror” for a very predictable reason: one of these pieces that move inside the camera every time you shoot a photo is a mirror. We are not going to go into what a mirror paints inside your camera but yes, there is a mirror. If you remove the lens and look inside your reflex camera, right now, you can see it.
It happens that the mirror, when moving during the shot (normally folding up), produces a small tap on the inner walls of the camera, which translates into a slight vibration.
Has it ever happened to you that, having a very well prepared focus, with the subject totally still, a stable tripod, etc., etc., you have ended up with a slightly blurred photograph? On some of these occasions, the reason could have been the sudden impact of the mirror inside the camera at the moment of shooting.
Many SLR camera manufacturers, aware of this problem, offer an option within the menu through which you can block the mirror. Locking the mirror what it does is prevent the mirror from moving from side to side every time you go to shoot a photo. You save that little movement that could cause shaky pictures.
Another option you have is to shot delay/mirror. What this does is that you frame a photo, focus, leave everything ready, and then press the shutter button to take the photo. From that moment the camera moves the mirror up (as it normally would) HOWEVER it does not take the picture. Not yet. This allows the mirror to move, produce that vibration as usual, but the photo would not be taken yet. After an instant (extremely brief, this happens in the time it takes you to blink) the camera begins to record the photograph.
I don’t know if it’s very complicated to imagine, but the idea is that: the camera separates on the one hand the moment of movement of the mirror, which is when all that unwanted vibration can happen, and the moment of taking the picture on the other hand, once that vibration has passed. You don’t notice this, but the camera manages it very well.
Listen to me, it’s not something you have to worry too much about, don’t let the “Mirror Mirror” keep you awake at night either. What he told you before, this is something that should be known and experienced. Sometimes it may be useful to you, but you don’t have to spend your life blocking the mirror or delaying the photo every time you want to capture a beautiful moment. Understand me.
Summarizing: blocking the mirror or retarding the picture with respect to the movement of the mirror will give you sharper pictures.
4) Automatic Bracketing: Soon Alexa will explain to you in a magnificent article what Braketing is. For now we will say that it is taking several photographs of the same thing but with a different exposure in each of the images taken. This allows us to obtain the same underexposed photograph, with normal and overexposed exposure, and thus be able to decide, later, which of the 3 to keep or which one we like best.
There are times when you have it very clear, you adjust the exposure, you know what you are doing, you shoot, and away you go.
Other times, either because you are traveling, in a context and environment different from the one you normally have, you are in the street, it is a strange day, at times the sun comes out and at times the sky becomes overcast, in the end the same exposure setting will produces photographs, some good and others not so good, what if this one came out too underexposed, what if the other one came out too overexposed… Braketing allows you to go home with some peace of mind knowing that you have different versions of each photograph with you so you can choose as you like .
Look in the options of your reflex camera in case it offers you the automatic braking. If it has it, you’re in luck: you’ll only have to configure the camera once, and with those same parameters you can always obtain the number of photographs you’ve indicated, with the exposure settings that you’ve configured yourself.
5) Extra button, extra function: My favorite trick, perhaps it is the function that I use the most, on a daily basis, in my photographs. I recognize that not all SLR cameras offer it, but the Nikon D7000 for example does. This option allows you to assign x functions, the ones you want, to certain “extra” buttons that are built into the camera. Obviously you have the essential and typical buttons each in its place, each one assigned to a function, they come like this from the factory and you have to use them as they are, however some SLRs have one, two or three extra buttons, or without function still or pre-configured with one. If you go into the camera menu you find an option where it allows you to assign a function to those buttons.
On my DSLR I don’t like where the video recording button is placed, it’s difficult for me to use it, so I chose a button that was much more comfortable and accessible to me and assigned the video recording function to it. I have another button dedicated to locking focus and exposure (without having to go through the shutter). They are just ideas. Locate the option in the menu and check what functions the camera allows you to assign to the extra buttons it has.
This allows you to save a lot of time and, above all, feel much more comfortable when using your camera.
The last and most important function: My dear reader, you are the most important function. Never obsess over these details. Get to know them as much as possible, explore them, try them, but remember that the function of these options is to help you become a better photographer and achieve a specific goal: a great photograph. And not just any one, but “your own great photography”. Nothing written is more valid than what you yourself feel and experience behind the viewfinder of your camera, your finger on the shutter. Use these tips as a means, but don’t confuse them with an end. In your own photos no one knows better than you. You have the last word.
Take photos. Enjoy it with passion.
So far my humble contribution. I hope you will find it useful. If you know…