10 things You Don’t Know About Your DSLR

You may not realize your camera is capable of doing all the things you want it to do. You just don’t know how to use it correctly. The best way to find out the capabilities of your camera is to read the manual of course. But we are going to save you years of practice by telling you about features that can improve your photos and make for a more enjoyable shooting experience.

1. Use Aperture Priority a lot. Just watch your shutter speed if you do this so you don’t get blurred photos. When you use it consider how much depth of field you want. This is especially important for wildlife and adventure sports photography.
2. Use Shutter Priority on your Canon DSLR from Beachcamera.com in situations when you need to achieve slow motion (with a tripod) or freeze fast action.
3. Use Manual mode to carefully control the entire camera and the shot that you want. This is great for still life and studio work.

4. Use continuous or burst mode to capture action. With the massive memory you have available it is safer to use this mode. It does take a bit more time in post-production but you never miss the shot.
5. Use exposure compensation when shooting in the priority modes. Dial in a negative EC for very dark scenes. If shooting in snow or white sand, then you may want to add EC to avoid grey looking backgrounds.

6. Learn how to turn the camera onto silent mode when needing to use it in quiet environments. This way you can avoid having that timid deer run off when the camera beeps as you press the shutter.
7. Learn to use your flash. Flash is very handy for fill in and you must know how to use it and when to have it on different modes.
8. Get to know your Focus Modes intimately and change them when needed. Know when to use follow focus and when to use single shot or fixed focus. Learn about the focus points for your specific DSLR and how to move the points manually. You need to know how to find the modes and focus points efficiently. For even more focus control in many situations learn about “back focus” or simply flip your lens to manual focus.
9. Use metering modes on your Nikon DSLR from Beachcamera.com wisely. Evaluative is most common and your camera will meter the entire scene and try to compensate for everything.
10. Use live view for fine focus. Once you hit the magnification button you can manually focus perfectly. This is useful for telephoto photos and macro photography.

Concentrate on learning these 10 things over the next month. Not only will you get to know your DSLR better, your photography skills will also greatly improve!