Manual Setting
Making the switch from automatic to manual setting on your camera can be scary but once you understand some of the basics you’ll want to almost always shoot in manual.
Tips:
When taking pictures you will turn the dile to “M” and when you’re taking video you will turn the dile to the video camera icon.
When setting your ISO the lower number is better. If there is enough light I will keep my ISO at 100. If there isn’t enough like I will bump it up to 400. Sometimes you may have to put the ISO up higher than 400. If you ISO is higher than 400 you could get grainy pictures so you need to be careful.
Shutter Speed. When shooting video you want to remember to have your shutter speed at least double your frames per second. This gives your footage a professional crisp look when doing slow motion. Technically you could have you shutter speed less than double your frames per second but if you do this your footage won’t look smooth if you decide to slow it down. I like to always have the shutter speed at twice the frames per second so that I can always have the option of slowing down my footage if I want to. For example, if in my settings I set my frames per second to 60, this means I will want to put my shutter speed to be at at least 120 or higher.
F-Stop. The lower number your f-stop means the more light is being let into your camera and the more blur your background is going to be. The blurry background can make pictures look really professional. Different lenses allow you to have a lower f-stop. For example, my 50mm allows me to go down to and f-stop of 1.4 while my Tamron 24-70mm allows me to go down to an f-stop of 2.8. On the other hand, if you want to shoot a landscape and have everything in focus you could bump up your f-stop to get as much as possible to be in focus.
Shooting in RAW. In setting you can choose to shoot photos in RAW. This basically means that the file is bigger and is capturing more detail. When you are color grading a RAW picture has a lot more to work with and has the potential to turn out better. Programs like: lightroom, photoshop, final cut pro, and premier are programs that will allow you to import your photos and videos to make them look awesome.
