Focus Options

 

Focus Options

The two main options for focusing on your subject are Manual Focus and Auto Focus. While you might want more control over your focus, I wouldn’t start in Manual Focus. You’ll have time to experiment with that as you improve your photography skills.

 

There are other settings you’ll be more focused on (see what I did there?) at first. So I recommend letting your camera’s built-in auto focus capabilities help you get sharp pictures as you’re learning how to use your DSLR.

Image Review Settings

The most important setting I would change in your camera from its default is in your image review settings. After you’ve taken a picture and press Play in order to view it, cycle through the view options to turn on the histogram view.

A histogram shows you a  graphical representation of the tonal values in your image.It shows you the amount of tones for each level of brightness in your photo.

 

DSLR cameras and editing software like Lightroom display tonal brightness information in a range from blacks to shadows to midtones to highlights and finally to whites.

 

Turning on the histogram view will help you quickly determine if the picture you just took is properly exposed. Here’s an image exposure comparison. As you can see from the histograms, the image data is more centered on the properly exposed photo. While the data is pushed to the left and right respectively for the underexposed and overexposed photos.