How to Use a Digital SLR Camera

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Rebecca Guenther with m5a1photograhpy.com and I'm going to tell you how to use a digital SLR. SLR stands for single lens reflex and in reality a digital SLR technically isn't a SLR. It's still called that because it has the same versatility as the film SLR did. If you know how to use a film SLR, it's pretty much the same idea. There's a whole lot more buttons and there's a menu to go through. It could seem a little daunting. It's really not that difficult. So, instead of loading your film in the back which is use to open for film, you would open up wherever your card goes and you'll slide in your memory card like that. Click; make sure it's in there. Shut it again, okay. Now, you're good to go. Turn it on, on. Now, your camera is on and ready to go. All of these choices here are again pretty much the same thing you had on your film camera. You got the auto setting which is generally just a rectangle. All of the basic settings is based on, is it a portrait, is it a landscape, is it close up, is it action. This will choose how all your settings are. I try to avoid that but if you want to, experiment with it. See what they look like, maybe one of them works for you and then you go the other way and these are different settings. One of these will allow you to set your aperture and it will set your shutter speed. Another one will set your, it will control your aperture but you'll control your shutter speed and then manual. You control everything. From there, you can go into the menu and you can go through there like I said it feels like a lot of stuff. It really isn't. You're going to want to go through there until is your camera shooting raws or do you want it to shoot JPEGs. Back when you use to have film, you'll have the ISO or the ASA and that's you know your film's speed. So, chances are usually shot with four hundred speed film if you were outside a whole lot. You can still set that. Set it to a hundred if it's really bright. Set it to two hundred if it's less bright. You can set it all the way to eight hundred if it's really dark outside. The different is instead of grain, you're going to get more pixilation. It doesn't look as nice as grain I think but maybe it works for what you're doing maybe you just want to get the picture and you don't really care if it's pixelie. That's fine too. So, once you set all of your settings, then you can start taking pictures and you know you can change the focus if you want from auto focus to manual focus depending on what you're shooting, how you're shooting it and go ahead shoot until your cards full. Turn the camera off. Take your card out. Put in a new one and keep going and that's how to use a digital SLR camera."