Hi again and welcome to the first in our series of tutorials on how to use a digital SLR camera. Now remember that what you are watching here goes hand in hand with our forum. So if there is anything that has not been explained to you or you got questions about, then go over to the forum and write your question there and we will get back to you very, very quickly with an answer, all right? So this is something that we are working with together, it is not just about watching videos, but hopefully this will provide a bedrock for our learning process.

So we are going to start today by getting out and using this camera, what is it we want to do with it, we want to take photos. Of course it is that is what you bought it for. And so, we are going to think about how can you take a photo as simply as possible very quickly. Well the answer is in using the program modes which you can find on this dial over here. Now on this dial, I am using the Canon 20D by the way but any of the digital SLRs will have a load button like this and they will be very, very much the same okay so do not worry about which model you have got, it will work in exactly the same way.

Now on here, you will see that there are four particular modes which we will be looking at properly in the future, MASP, while yours it might say MAVTVP all right? Those are for different manual and semi automatic mode but the P is for the programmed mode and that means it is going to do the work for you. You will also find something like a green square. On the Canon, there is a green square and what that one is, it is completely automatic, you do not have to do anything except to look through the camera, you should press the button so that you are getting—letting the camera do the work. It is going to be measuring the light, it is going to be focusing for you and in this case, it measured the light and said I need some more light so let us put up the flash, all right? And then it is simply a matter of pressing the button and off you go, you have got your photo.

But that is a bit too automatic for a lot of people and so they have P and the P mode does exactly the same thing but you will notice that this time, when I ask it to focus and measure the light, it has not popped the flash up because this time it is giving me a little bit of control, it is letting me make decisions, okay?

So, the programmed mode to allows you to, once this has what aperture it is going to use, what shutter speed it is going to use. This one says okay, if you want to make an adjustment to the aperture, you can. And so using the adjustment wheel up here or we have got a wheel on the back, whatever it is on your camera, you can change the settings a little bit of you want to maybe underexpose it slightly or anything like that, you can do. But you do not have to remember that, it is automatic and you can just press the button and take a photo and we have got a photo which shows on the back, on the monitor screen that all about digital SLRs have, all right? And I will show you this picture, you do not really want to see a picture of my living room so that is all that I have taken there but I am going to be showing you some proper photos as we go through our tutorial class.

So, what do we need to do to take a photo? We need to have it on P and we need to remember the shutter release button because although it is one button, it is in fact two buttons. Now why is it two buttons, well it is because when you half press it, that is when the camera does all of its work, that when it starts to measure the light, that is when it does all of the focusing, if you got the lens on to focus of course.

After that, it is saying okay, I am ready to go now and then you can frame up your photo, get it to how you want it and then you go ahead and press the button itself, and you heard it click there, it took a photo with me looking at you looking at me. So, it is two positions. Now remember, what you can do is if you want to, you can measure, get the lighting measured but then keeping the finger half pressed, you can move it so that it is reframing the picture and it is going to keep the lighting that we have had before because it is not going to do anything else now that I have got it half pressed. If I let go of my finger, now it said okay you did not want that one, we will start all over again and so then when I do the half pressing, it is now doing all of those measurements again, all right?

So, the only things we need to remember this date are to have it on program and to use the shutter button, remembering you can hear that bleeping and what that is doing is because I have got my finger down and saying I am ready to go, I have done the measurements and everything else, I am ready to go. So, assuming it is ready to go, you can press that button fully down and take your photo. It is as simple as that but I know that you would like to know a lot more about this camera so we will be looking at more of the modes in the next date, okay? But for a moment, get out there and take some photos. I look forward to seeing you again very soon. Bye-bye for now.