Take Better Photos with Your Canon M50 or Canon M50 Mark II

so you bought your canon m50 you've gone out and done your first photo shoot and after coming back and looking at the photos they have not lived up to what your expectations were and this is pretty common with anybody who buys their first new mirrorless camera or dslr camera or the first camera that they bought or used in a while and today i'm going to take you through an exercise and a series of concepts to help you make the most of your canon m50 and i'm going to go through all the settings you need at least the the base settings to get you started as well as some rules of composition and the first thing we're going to talk about is the settings in the camera that we're going to use and we're only going to go over a few of them but we are going to go over the ones that i think are the most critical to getting the best possible results and the first thing i want you to do is i want you to take your canon m50 and put it in av mode now this is aperture priority mode and the aperture is how big the opening is in the back of the lens that allows the light into your camera and the bigger that we have that opening the more we get what is called a blurred background or bokeh or subject separation where the subject you're looking at is more in sharp focus and the background is more blurry so just for the purposes of this exercise we are going to have that as wide open as possible and as i go through these settings you're going to see that that that is going to be in the case of what we're doing today that is going to be an aperture of 5.6 so the first thing we're doing is we're putting the camera in av mode and we're going to have the aperture at 5.6 and the next thing i want to do is for the purposes of this exercise we're going to use the kit lens even if you have some other lens at this stage just keep it just to keep it consistent we're going to use the kit lens and what i want you to do is take the kit lens and zoom it to 35 millimeters you'll see the little 35 on the zoom ring set it to 35 millimeters and i want you to do the entire days where the photos only at 35 millimeters and the reason we're doing this is because using a fixed focal length and being stuck to one focal length which is what that number is 35 millimeters is what's called your focal length that forces you to move around and be more creative and find the best composition for your photo and when you look at purists in sort of street photography and often portrait photography many of them prefer to use the fixed focal length purely for the fact that it forces them to move around and with the zoom lens it's quite easy to get lazy where you're sitting and not everything fits in the shot so you just zoom in or zoom out but if we lock it in at 35 and you get to a point where you're trying to set something up and get a certain information or a certain shot in frame if it doesn't fit or if it's too small or too big you're going to have to move in and you're going to have to move out and it sounds very silly but that exercise gets the creative juices flowing in your brain and it's actually going to cause you to find different compositions and take different photos than you would if you could just zoom in and out and now it sounds silly trust me i thought it sounded silly the first time i i heard it as well but put it on 35 millimeters and shoot the whole day on 35 millimeters the next thing we're going to set is the white balance and we are going to set this manually depending on what situation we're in we're going to pick the right balance for that situation now the camera does have auto white balance but i find at times it misses and when it misses it really makes a mess of your colors so having good colors is completely reliant on having the right white balance and to set your white balance all we're going to do is we're going to have a look here and go on the cue menu and up here you can see that currently this is set on auto white balance we hit awb and we've got a series of predefined white balances that we can use here this one's for daylight so if you're in bright sunlight not in shade this one is for shade so if you've got a blue sunny day but you're a blue sky sunny day but you're in the shade and this has got the side of a house as if you're in the shade on the side of a house cloudy is for a cloudy overcast day those sort of gray yucky days tungsten light is for interior lights in a house when you've got sort of that yellowish orangey lighting we've got white fluorescent which is the white tube general fluorescent this actually works well with often some of the modern led bulbs flash is if you're using a flash we're not worrying about that for now and custom allows you to set based on a kelvin value all these settings that we talked about before have a specific kelvin value this allows you to tune it in very specifically but for the purpose of this exercise we're just going to leave that alone we're going to focus on these pre-defined options and all you want to do is if you're in a sunny condition pick the sunny setting if you're in shade shade cloudy cloudy and when you're looking on the back of the screen it will give you a pretty good idea of what the colors are going to look like when you get them home and get them on the computer so if you're looking at the back of the screen and you should each time look at the back of the screen and say do those colors look accurate do i like the colors i'm seeing on that screen and if you aren't play with your white balance that is going to have a huge impact on your colors so you absolutely want to get your white balance right now the next setting we are going to adjust is the picture profile now this is the other thing that has a huge impact on your color and if for this purpose i'm going to give you three different options so i'm going to let you make a creative decision on what kind of photos that you want to take today and you might go out one day and take it with one picture profile and the next day with the next but what i would suggest is for the purpose of this exercise let's stick with one profile that way we're sort of really working on one consistent look or set of set of settings or shot that we're trying to get and it allows us to tune in and work with the camera in the specific settings that we've put in and we're not sort of jumping around a bit so to pick our picture profile we're just going to go in once again we're going to hit the q menu on the screen we're going to go over here and we're going to see right now you can see the s there click that and we've got picture styles and our choices are auto standard portrait landscape fine detail neutral faithful and monochrome but the three that i'm going to have you choose between today are standard this is gonna be good punchy colors like a photo you might see on the internet or an advertisement if you really like sort of rich colors that's what you're gonna go with we are the other choice i'm gonna give you today is faithful if you want a film-like look where you've got muted tones and it almost looks like it's come out of a cinema camera we're going to shoot in faithful and if we want to shoot in black and white we are going to click monochrome and we're do uh black and white shots in monochrome so those are your three choices i wanted to give you some sort of choice not just my rules but some of your choices today so pick one of those three and spend the whole day shooting with that and while i'm going through all these settings and next i'm going to talk about composition but there's there's three accessories that i think you if you might be a new m50 owner there's three accessories that i think everyone should buy as soon as they get their m50 and i'll put a link to those in the description down below the first one is a uv protective filter and these are around ten dollars it's just a screw-on piece of glass that goes on the front lens of your camera and it just protects your lens from getting scratched it also means that if you're out in the field and you get some dirt or dust or at the beach and you get some sand on it you don't have that sander grit sitting right on the lens and have to worry about doing a really particular clean to get that off and not scratch the lens you can basically if you've got a lens filter on all i do is just take my t-shirt and wipe off the lens filter because eventually if that gets scratched or damaged it doesn't matter it's 10 i can replace it but i would never do that if there was dirt on a bare lens this also happens if you get a little bit of mist in the air or rain just makes it a lot easier to clean the next thing is a lens hood once again it's about a 10 accessory this is going to give you better contrast if you've got light sort of coming from the side and hitting the front of your lens it also acts as some extra protection for your lens particularly i find when i'm walking around and i've got the camera at my side and swinging around sometimes i'll bump into a wall or something hard or a post when i'm sneaking between something and by having that lens hood there it's just a plastic lens hood and it just kind of absorbs the blow so it's not right on the lens or right on the lens filter or the lens itself so it provides a lot of protection can improve the image quality depending on the light and the direction the light is coming from and yeah once again it's like ten dollars and the third one another accessory i think this one's another one under 10 is a screen protector for the back of the screen and i like this once again because it keeps your screen new keeps it unscratched all these things add a lot to resale value when you're done because it protects the camera from getting damaged so if you love your m50 and keep going with it and you really at some point like oh i want to step up i want to go eosr or one of the more high level canon cameras you've maintained the value of that camera you've also kept it new for yourself and your own use and it is nice to use a camera that is in good condition now we've got our m50 all set up and we are heading out of the house now we're going to talk about composition and how to get a photo that really looks good something that moves people who draws people in something you want to show your friends want to show your family and you think really captures the moment the way that you saw it because one of the hardest things is we'll be out we'll see something beautiful like oh what a beautiful scene we'll take a photo we'll go home uh that didn't really work didn't really capture the moment so we really want to work on capturing the moment i'm going to take you through some rules we're going to use to make sure we're doing that and the first thing i'm going to say and and this won't be a rule forever but for the purpose of this exercise i want you to try to stick to this rule don't shoot any of your shots from eye level don't walk up to what you want put the camera to your eye and take the shot no pictures like that i want you shooting at mostly lower waist level shots get down in one knee look through the viewfinder or use the flippy screen to get it down at waist level and shoot or shoot even lower sometimes below your knee or ankle level even if you're not super mobile you do have that flip outside screen and you can just get the camera down nice and low so i think changing the angle really changes up the way that your images look and a lot of professional photos and the best photos you've ever been you've ever seen have been taken from a angle that is not at eye level the next thing i want you to do is take at least 30 percent of your shots in portrait orientation so not going this way but going this way and if you look at wedding photographers professional photographers so many of the best photos even landscape photography all the best photographers shoot around 30 sometimes even more in that portrait orientation and and particularly you might find that you're looking at a shot and trying to take it in the normal landscape orientation oh this isn't quite working flip it into portrait mode and often you'll be like wow you will actually find a shot that you did not see initially and often the landscape is is just putting in too much and by doing it in a portrait you kind of can isolate your subject in the middle and and you you're really going to get a better image in a lot of situations shooting in portrait rather than landscape 30 of your images i want to be in portrait orientation the next one i want to talk about is the rule of thirds and the rule of thirds means instead of having your subject right in the middle of the frame to have your subject about one-third to one side of the frame or one-third to the other side of your frame the other thing that the rule of one-thirds often works with horizons so try to get your horizon either sort of one-third the way up or third the way down if you're trying to capture a lot of sky but often a good shot is getting low and getting that horizon sort of one third of the way up and when you're taking a picture of a person or your subject or your thing of interest is instead of just putting it in the middle of the frame which can kind of be a bit boring just get it to that sort of a third of the frame you'll find it just changes everything it just seems so much more fancy or expensive or pleasing to the eye i don't know what it is but definitely play with the rule of thirds and the last concept i want to talk about is something i've come up with and i call it seth b s e f b all right and when you're composing the photo i want you to think through the things in this order first of all subject a subject can also be called focal point do you have something in the frame that the eye is immediately drawn to is it clear do you have a clear subject and as an example might be say you're taking a picture of sunset and i see sunset pictures all the time beautiful clouds maybe there's water it's a beautiful scene but there's no subject and you look at it and it's like ah i can kind of see that would have been a beautiful sunset to see in person but this photo just isn't moving me but often if you take an interesting tree or a person looking at the sunset and just put them at one third of the way over to the side of the frame you have a subject and that person looking out at the subject or that person looking out at the sunset all sun just creates this incredible magic image or really interesting twisted tree might create this magic image and really what you're trying to show is the sunset but when you get a a sunset where there's just the eye doesn't know where to look it's it's sort of confusing and it's not moving where if you have a person your eye is drawn to the person and then your eye sees the sunset definitely have a subject even when you're trying to get a scene adding a subject when you're trying to get the sunset can really change things up and make your image so much more moving so have a subject or have a focal point the next thing i want to look at before you push that shutter button check the edges of your frame we don't want any odd things coming in on the edges of the frame and the other day i was out doing some street photography and with all kinds of people moving around it can often be hard to get a clean edge of frame and often i'll take a series of photos and i was stunned by have one photo it was a great photo of a guy sort of on a sidewalk and at one point there was somebody coming in from the left somebody coming in from the right and it was just a nothing photo but one frame before that those people weren't there it was this beautiful clean image of this guy with no distractions on the edge of frame so you do not want things coming in or poking in from the edge of frame and the next thing we're going to look at for the f is the foreground now sometimes we want a foreground to help set the scenes sometimes the foreground can just be distracting or sometimes we don't want any foreground at all but it's important to think about the foreground so we've got the subject do we have a foreground do we want a foreground and if there is a foreground is it adding to the image or is it distracting from the image and the subject so before you put push that shutter button think about the foreground now it might be a case that you don't want any foreground but before you push the shutter button think about it i'm looking i've got the subject is there a foreground here that can add to the composition of this image do i have a foreground in frame that is detracting from the subject or making the image confusing so always think about your foreground before you push the shutter button and just as important for the b is the background so how is the subject standing out from the background now one example might be if you have a subject that is somewhat dark you probably want a background that is somewhat light so that they stand out from the background and often if it's a person it can be as easy as just slightly moving one way or another to just remove that distracting background or find the background that highlights the subject that you're showing so one example is recently i did a professional shoot and i took some photos and when i came home i realized that i had one of the main people in the chute they had dark hair and behind them was a dark plaque on a historic wall and it just detracted from their hair and the clean look of the whole image and this is really a rookie mistake by myself and i had to go in and use photoshop to replace that plaque with a brick and once i did that it totally transformed the image the image was fantastic but i spent hours editing this photo to get it looked the way that it should have been in the first place and the way that somebody wouldn't even have to have any photoshop or photo manipulation skills to achieve you just need to think about your composition think about that subject and how the background is affecting your subject and so i've come to think of this as sefb subject edges foreground background and i think before you push the shutter button think about that subject edges foreground background if you're interested in getting the best possible results in photo and video with the gear that you can afford or the gear that you already have that's what i do on this channel so be sure to subscribe to this channel and hit that bell notification

Channel: Mark Wiemels

Views: 345,008

Keywords: canon m50, canon eos m50, canon m50 review, photograph, canon, photography, photos, take better photos, review, lens, sunset, settings

Id: 3N00SrpBL8k

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021