Quick start to manual settings on Canon: A beginner’s guide

So you’ve gotten yourself a camera and want to start exploring beyond the automatic settings. To see what the camera has to offer for tweaking. Feeling a little lost? Then this is for you! In this guide we’ll go through basic settings regarding balancing the lightness, blurriness and other possibly confusing things when starting to play with settings.

Presets and automatic Focus

Your Canon has pre-made settings for different usecases like “portrait”. This article focuses on “M”, a manual, selection. When using manual settings there is a separate button for “AF/MF” which allows you to choose between Automatic Focus and Manual Focus. When photographing oneself it might be easier to have it on automatic but usually manual focus gets you to the wanted spot of focus without too much hassle. If you are photographing a person the general approach is to focus on eyes. But if you are for example taking a photograph of the clothes a model is wearing manual focus may be more suitable option.

“WB” –key stands for white balance and from there you can correct if the photograph seems to be tinted too yellow, cold tone etc. But this is a vaue you can pretty much correct in editing software too.

Settings affecting brightness of the image

There is more than one setting having an affect on brightness of the image. F-number (aperture), shutter speed (you can think of it as FPS – Frames Per Second for photographing), artificial exposure (ISO value) and a separate lighting (or flash) that is also visible in the space.

In addition to using the buttons, you can adjust the values shown on the screen by turning the Main dial in the upper-right corner of the camera. You can switch between adjusting shutter speed and aperture (F-number) by holding down the exposure compensation [<Av/+/->] button. Or by tapping the button to change which value the Main dial will change when rotated.

The F-number

The smaller f-number is the more it takes light in to the photo. When camera is taking more light in (the aperture is bigger) it narrows down  area of focus. A low f-number creates an effect where a single subject remains sharply in focus, while everything outside this depth of field begins to blur. A popular effect on product shooting.

The higher the f-number, the larger the depth of field. Higher f-number is great for landscape photography. Downside of high f-number is that the camera takes less light in and image gets darker. For this reason landscape photography is easier when there is lots of natural light.

Shutter speed

Shutter speed is the length of time a camera’s shutter stays open to let light hit the digital sensor or film. How long shutter stays open of course affects on the brightness of the image – the longer shutter stays open the brighter image.

Another thing to note is that the longer shutter stays open the longer it is kind of taking the photograph. If you’re taking a photograph of a moving target it’s better to use faster speed. Otherwise the target may seem blurry. But of course slower speed can also be used to voluntary effects. For example making “ghost images” which is quite fun!

Striping on fluorescent light? Suggestions what to try!

-> See if your camera has “Anti-Flicker shooting”
 It recognises flickering frequency and times shutter to the millisecond when fluorescent light is at it’s brightest.

-> Change Shutter Speed manually
If your camera doesn’t have the feature mentioned above try changing shutter timing to sync with electricity frequency. Countries that have electricity frequency of 50Hz try setting shutter speed to 1/50 or 1/100. For countries having 60Hz electricity try 1/60 or 1/120 ms.

-> Change from electronic shutter to mechanic
Sometimes striping happens when you use Electronic Shutter / Silent Shooting –settings. Try changing the setting to “Mechanical Shutter”.

ISO-value

ISO (International Organization of Standardization) is the control for artificial exposure. In photography, the ISO standard ensures that an equivalent sensitivity (e.g., ISO 100) works the same way across all cameras, regardless of the brand. A low ISO value is sufficient when the space is well-lit and there is natural light. A higher ISO value can be useful in dimmer conditions, but a high ISO value causes noise in the image.

If you want to capture fast movement when light is scarce you can slightly increase the amount of artificial exposure (ISO). Since the ISO value adds noise you should first consider lowering the f-number (could the depth of the field be slightly shallower?) or adding external light sources to the situation if you want to avoid the noise.

In newer cameras a high ISO value causes less graininess due to various computational smart features. Older cameras do not include AI assistants more advanced than autofocus.

Built-in and pop-up flash

Flash that comes always above the lens is a terrible light source. It cannot be moved to a different angle when taking a photo so usecases are limited. It can be used as a “Fill flash” in bright sunshine when sun creates hard shades to eyesockets to balance the situation. Another use is as a “Catchlight” – when photographing a person or an animal on cloudy weather or in shade eyes can seem lifeless and dark. The flash creates a small light on the eyeball to make is seem more lively.

I’d suggest practising using additional lighting in darker conditions. It’s really rewarding and you can really get creative with it. There are multiple quick guides for specific purposes on Youtube if you just come up with a good keyword. You can certainly make budget-friendly and DIY  -options work with a little bit of practise. I believe in you!

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