Quote:
Originally Posted by glamourpics
I have a Canon 20d. The thing has more controls than an airplane, and frankly the manual that came with the camera is not enough. For example, although it vaguely explains controls like sharpness and saturation v. less saturation, it doesn't give a clue about advantages or disadvantages or how to best choose settings. Explanations of color temperature settings/white balance and also far from enough.
REQUEST: Can you experts recommend an aftermarket book that is complete and clear and readable? I don't mind studying up on this stuff and really mastering the camera, but I'm frustrated at the vagueness and inadequacy of what came w/ the camera.
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There are several theories on using a dSLR camera like the 20D. I have a 20D also and I found the manual adequate for its functions. They do not go into great detail about the issues your raise simply because they are so subjective. But since the camera is an dSLR and you can examine the resulting photos in great detail, I just took he approach, right after I got the camera, of taking photos of the same scene using a different setting for each photo and then compared the differences to see which settings "I liked best".
What I decided was that there are often different settings for different types of photography. So I then experimented with RAW. I found that I could always get the settings I wanted after the fact using the Raw converter.
Here are some basic thoughts on how to proceed:
1. White balance is straight forward. You must choose the white balance that is appropriate for the lighting of the scene you are shooting. When in doubt, use the Custom White Balance settings (CWB). I use a black/gray/white calibration target from Photovision to set my CWB, but you can use just a gray card or a white card. Put the card or target in the scene and shoot a photo of it more or less full frame. Now in the menu choose that photo as the CWB reference photo, and then on the top LCD of the camera select the CWB setting. This is very clear in the manual.
2. If shooting JPG, then set the sharpness at one stop above center and leave all the other settings for the other values in the middle.
3. Set the LCD brightness to one stop below the lowest setting. This will help you more accurately evaluate photos in the LCD. If you set it any brighter than that, then you are fooling your self.
4. Learn about the camera's histogram and how to read it. A good way to learn more about it is to shoot various scenes with proper exposure and then look at the resulting histograms. Shoot a gray card at full frame and you should, for example, see one spike in the middle and nothing else. If it is not in the middle, then you have the wrong exposure. Shoot a typical fair skinned person filling the whole frame with just their face. The resulting histogram should have sort of a hump in the center area and trail off on each side. If part of the graph goes off the edge on either side, then you are losing photographic information in the scene.
If you shoot RAW, you will be able have more flexibility in choosing the parameters after the fact. But you still need to gain a basic understanding of good exposure techniques and only "trial and error" will let you do that to reach what you feel looks right to you. Finally, even if you shoot RAW, it is wise to get good JPG settings so that you will have a good LCD preview as the preview image is a 1500 x 1000 JPG (that will be embedded in the RAW file) and uses the camera parameters.
Re: Advice re: Canon 20d Digital SLR
Cheers,
rfs