Getting Sharp Focus

When you're shooting in P, Tv, Av, and M shooting modes, you can control the focus - where the focus set in the image. In other shooting modes, the camera automatically decides what and where the subject is and it decides which autofocus (AF) point or points to use. This is called automatic AF-point selection. Sometimes the camera correctly indetifies the subject, and other times, it does not. Because one aspect of getting a successful image in getting sharp focus, it's important to know how to control the focus.

Chossing a Shooting Mode

Here is a high-level  summary to help  you choose a shooting mode:

> When you want to shoot quickly without worrying about changing camera settings, choose a Basic Zone shooting mode such as Portrait, Landscape, or Sports mode to have the camera take control of everything. You can choose the image-quality settings and a few other options. Press the Q button to display the Quick Control screen to see what adjustments you can make.

Setting The Image Quality

The image - recording quality that you use to take your pictures is an important decision because it ultimately affects how large you can print your images, the number of images that you can store on the memory card, and the "burst" rate--the maximum number of images captures when you shoot a series of images in succession in continuous shooting. The higher the images quality you set, the larger the print that you can make, and the fewer images you can store on the memory card. But with memory card prices being much more affordable in recent year, it`s worth getting a large memory card and talking advantage of the highest-quality images that the T3i/600D can deliver. Higher image quality also reduces the burst rate. But even at the Large/ Fine quality, the burst rate is a healthy 34 images.

I recommend choosing the Large/Fine recording quality to get the highest qualityJPEG images. Also, if you're an experienced photographer, then shootingRAW capture is an excellent option for getting the best image quality.

Setting the Date and Time

Setting the date and time is the first thing that the camera asks you to do. Once you set it, the date and time are embedded into Exif ( Exchangeable Image File Format ) data for every image that you make. The EXIF data contains all the information about a picture including the exposure information, camera settings, and the date and time you made the picture. You can see this information when you view your image in Image Browser, a program on the EOS Solution disk that comes with the camera. The date and time provides a handy record that you can use to recall when you took pictures, and it can help   you organize on your computer.
You  may also need to reset the date and time if you run the battery completely out of power.
                                                      

Setting up the Camera

Much of the setup for the camera is done using the camera menus. To help you navigate the menus, they are arranged by type and color.

It's important to know that the items on the camera menus change according to the shooting mode that you chose. In the automatic, or Basic Zone shooting modes. Also, the menus change when you're Movie and Live View shooting modes. So if you can't one of the options mentioned in this book, first check to see what shooting mode the camera is in, and then switch to a Creative Zone mode and check the menu again.

A Quick Look at Key T3i/600D Camera Controls

For most of your everyday shooting, you have the camera controls you need within easy reach. The following main controls can bes used together on separately to control most functions on the T3i/600D.

Mode Dial : This dial enables you to choose a shooting mode. Shooting modes determine how much control you have over you images and over camera settings. To select a shooting mode, turn the Mode dial until the mode you want is lined up with the line on the camera boy.

Quick Tour

If you just got your Rebel T3i/600D, then becoming familiar with the camera and setting it up to suit your needs are important first steps. This Quick Tour gives you a brief walkthrough of key camera controls and provides a quik look at setting up and using the camera. Many of the topics here are discussed in more in more detail later at teh blog, but this tour gets you off to good start.