Have gotten a few inquiries about Canon SLRs and 50d in particular, from those considering or who have recently purchased one. So I decided to share a few of my thoughts on this amazing machine with everyone.
1.) Practice your photog skills to perfection with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM prime which all the greats use, and produces beautiful out-of-focus backgrounds due to its shallow depth-of-field. Most kit zoom lenses can make you lazy and usually is quite slow (unless you pay a lot of extra money for a faster zoom) and often produce images of sub-par quality, especially in low light. An excellent quality zoom for the 50d that won’t break the bank is the Tamron AF 17-50mm F/2.8 SP XR Di II VC.
2.) Use Auto ISO – because it works extremely well on the 50d and it’s one less thing you need to worry about in 80% of shooting situations. However, to produce the cleanest (noise free) images make sure you are shooting at ISO 800 or less. Unless you like that really grainy, gritty look for artistic effect, then shoot at 1600 or higher, but focusing can be difficult in low light so you might need to manual focus, itself a fine art.
3.) Perhaps the main reason anybody buys a 50d instead of the EOS Rebel T2i its speed. Your 50d comes with a whopping 6.3 frames per second, twice as fast as the T2i, which is quite nice for action shots, kids or anything on the move that is important to get right so don’t be afraid to occassionaly set this puppy on multi-exposure setting and take a bunch of captures in short burst. But don’t overuse this, because you will end up wasting a lot of disk space and spending a lot of time asking whether this or that image is best.
4.) One of the biggest mistakes amateur photographers make is producing under exposed images. So commit to learning Manual mode, Aperture priority, Shutter priority, EV compensation or all of the above. Getting images properly exposed in the camera makes for editing, sharing and printing your photos a lot more enjoyable. This also means avoiding extreme lighting conditions, or extreme variations in lighting E.g. where there is extremely bright and really dark areas in your viewfinder.
5.) To really take advantage of the 50d, you need to learn about RAW image capture and how to fine tune RAW conversions in your favorite photo editing software such as Adobe Lightroom (my favorite) or Photoshop Elements, which is also a good choice. Shooting in RAW produces the largest files for which to base a master file for printing, and is an excellent capture mode for landscapes or formal portraits. RAW capture will give you about 2 stops protection in either over or under exposure, which you compensate for in RAW conversion process. The 50d also allows you to capture a RAW+Jpeg so you can save the RAW as a permanent archive, and get straight to the Jpeg to share online with friends, and if you practiced all of the above and use follow your creative vision, you will capture Jpeg images that are excellent prints up to 16×20.
6.) Keep the camera in “Evaluative metering” mode. It makes the best use of pre-defined exposure settings that are programmed into your camera in most shooting situations. Explore other exposure modes at your risk; there are some scenes (like black tux and white wedding dress) that are better suited to center-weighted or spot exposures, but unless you are planning on becoming a pro, the Evaluative metering mode is your best bet.
7.) There are many different preset picture styles that come with the 50d, such as standard, portait, Landscape, neutral, faithful and monochrome. If you are shooting RAW, none of these settings really matter, but if you are shooting RAW+Jpeg or Jpeg mode, then select a shooting mode to suit your taste. I prefer the Neutral or Faithful mode as it renders colors closest to reality. I then set to adjust saturation, hue, constrast, etc… in Lightroom in post-edit session.
8.) If you get into shooting with a Canon Speedlight, you are in for a real treat because the 50d has a great Auto-Mode and a very fast 1/8000th of second sync speed. For most non-pro photographers, using Flash can be hit or miss because it’s so easy to misuse. For example, it’s nice to use a flash when taking pictures of people in sunlight because it prevents eye sockets from going dark. And balancing flash with natural light takes practice, but once you get the hang of it will dramatically improve your photography. If you want to use your Speedlight and take professional looking pictures, buy a Lightsphere Collapsible by Gary Fong.
So I hope you didn’t expect “50 Tips for shooting with Your New 50D” because nobody would every read, let alone remember 50 great tips. These 8 tips are practical as they are challenging, and you will likely spend many months (and hopefully years) ahead practising and improving the same basics over and over. There are never really any advanced moves or secrets to taking great pictures, but basic moves executed with vision and foresight.
On a final note, you probably know that I have been a very happy 40d and 50d owner until one day this past Spring I decided it was getting too much of a chore to take out all my equipment and lug around for casual and social shooting situations. Thus the humor in my friend Bryan Dormaier’s question at a 15 year reunion “Where are your lenses and shit?” I laughed so loud, I was nearly in stitches! So Bryan, FYI… I don’t carry them anymore since I traded down for a Canon S90, which is by far easier to carry around and is easier to grab casual photos which are perfect for what I want to do with them. On the downside, as great they can be, smaller cameras are much easier to steal, be treated like a plastic toy or drop into a toilet by your 2 year old.
All the products I mentioned can be found in the Photography section of My Favorite Things.
Good luck shooting, and I will look forward to seeing your photos online!
