1. Yucaipa Photography
Camera Club
Workshop #1

2. Getting To Know Your Camera & Equipment
Learn the Buttons and Dials
Learn the Twist
Learn to Love Your Camera’s Quirks
Learn Menu Features
Speed Up All Processes
Extras & Accessories
Keep your camera clean!
Don’t change lens at the beach!
Know what your doing
Take care of your stuff!

3. Buttons and Dials
Learn where the dials, buttons and switches are located on your camera. No, I mean really know. Can you find them with your eyes shut, by touch alone? Can you make important adjustments - e.g. exposure override, auto-focus mode - by touch alone?
Zoom & Focus Ring
Shortcut buttons
Camera Modes
Remember when you first learned to bat a ball? You hit and hit again until you were sore, but eventually you got the hang of it, hitting without thinking. Get the hang of your camera by practicing with it until it all becomes second-nature.

4. Twist
If you have a digital SLR, learn which way to twist to zoom out, to zoom in. Which way to twist the focusing ring for closer subjects, which way for far away objects. Same with controls like the aperture ring and shutter dial - which way for bigger aperture, which way for shorter exposure time.
Every fraction of a second you spend thinking about which way to turn a control is time spent with your eye off the ball. If you have to think about your controls, you can’t think about timing, or composition.
Zoom and focus rings
Easy or hard to twist?
Manual and auto focus swith
IS or VR

5. Love Your Camera’s Quirks
You probably have some friends with quick-fire responses, some who take a little longer to answer or get the joke. But you love them all the same. Your camera may be a little slow to start, a little sluggish to respond to the zoom control. If you allow for your camera’s quirks, you learn how to get the best out of them. Get to know you camera inside and out!
If your camera takes a long time to start when you turn it on, then keep it on - most cameras wake from sleep more quickly than from ‘off’. If shutter lag is a problem, learn to press the button just before the action completes. If the zoom control usually overshoots the setting you want, learn to release it just before you reach the setting you want.
95% , 98%, 100% Viewfinder
Image Stabilization
Lens Hood Vignette
ISO Capabilities

6. Menu Features
Every camera is different and every camera has a fairly complex array of menu options and features. Have you ever wondered what that little flower on your camera screen means? Or maybe what EV stands for? These are all menu options available in most cameras today, and if you get to know them you can really do some cool stuff with your camera.
If you have ever been strolling around in the park and you notice a beautiful flower right in between the crack of the sidewalk so you pull your camera out and bend down to take a shot of it, you may notice its sometimes impossible to focus. Well there could be a very easy solution to this problem, just turn your mode dial on your camera to the picture of the little flower (macro mode) and try again.
Macro
Sports WB
Flash
Memory card
Exposure Compensation
Self Timer
Wireless Trigger
External Flash Options

7. Speed It Up
Turn off every automatic function you don’t need. The more thinking you do for the camera, the faster it can work. If you’re set to a wide-angle on a point-and-shoot camera or dSLR with small sensor, you have a huge amount of depth of field to work in. In good light, there’s hardly any need to focus. Try turning auto-focus off and be amazed at how much more responsive the camera is. Turn off the flash, of course, (but if you have to use it, charge up your battery till it’s bulging!).
You’re getting the idea: the core of camera technique is reducing the gap between you and your subject, so that it all flows effortlessly, and you can concentrate on the picture-making rather than the camera-using. Remember you don’t take pictures, you make them!
Manual Focus
Aperture Priority
Manual
Shutter Priority
Versatile lenses

8. Extras & Accessories
What’s in your bag? First things first, camera body, now the accessories:
multiple lenses (preferably at different focal lengths)
flash (or flashes)
diffuser(s)
lens hood(s)
memory card(s) & memory card reader
photo editing software
lens cleaner
pocket knife/multi-tool
trash bag(s)
external hard drive(s)
laptop/PC
cords & cables
light meter
filter(s)
batteries & charger(s)
tripod or monopod
and a BIG ol’ bag to put
it all in!
Be careful what you buy
Its better to buy new if you can
Don’t buy on eBay!