Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi Roadmap
It's time for you to get to know your Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi up close. Unfortunately, there are so many buttons and dials and knobs on this camera that many new owners especially those coming to the XTi from point-and-shoot models find the array of controls bewildering. What you really need is a roadmap, showing you where everything is and how it's used. Unfortunately, the diagrams provided in the XTi's manual have more resemblance to a world globe than a roadmap everything is there in...
Fluorescent LightOther Light Sources
Fluorescent light has some advantages in terms of illumination, but some disadvantages from a photographic standpoint. This type of lamp generates light through an electro-chemical reaction that emits most of its energy as visible light, rather than heat, which is why the bulbs don't become as hot. The type of light produced varies depending on the phosphor coatings and type of gas in the tube. So, the illumination that fluorescent bulbs produce can vary widely in its characteristics. That's...
Telephotos and Bokeh
Bokeh describes the aesthetic qualities of the out-of-focus parts of an image, and whether out-of-focus points of light circles of confusion are rendered as distracting fuzzy discs, or whether they smoothly fade into the background. Boke is a Japanese word for blur, and the h was added to keep English speakers from rendering it monosyllabically to rhyme with broke. Although bokeh is visible in blurry portions of any image, it's of particular concern with telephoto lenses, which, thanks to the...
What Can You Do
Pay attention if you're having problems, the first thing you should do is stop using that memory card. Don't take any more pictures. Don't do anything with the card until you've figured out what's wrong. Your second line of defense your first line is to be sufficiently careful with your cards so that you avoid problems in the first place is to do no harm that hasn't already been done. Read the rest of this section and then, if necessary, decide on a course of action such as using a data...
Custom White Balance
If automatic white balance or one of the six preset settings available Daylight, Shade, Cloudy Twilight Sunset, Tungsten, White Fluorescent, or Flash aren't suitable, you can set a custom white balance using this menu option. The custom setting you establish will then be applied whenever you select Custom using the White Balance menu entry described earlier. To set the white balance to an appropriate color temperature under the current ambient lighting conditions, focus manually with the lens...
Creative Zone Flash
When you're using a Creative Zone mode, you'll have to judge for yourself when flash might be useful, and flip it up yourself by pressing the Flash button on the side of the pentaprism. The behavior of the internal flash varies, depending on which Creative Zone mode you're using. P A-DEP. In these modes, the XTi fully automates the exposure process, giving you subtle fill flash effects in daylight and fully illuminating your subject under dimmer lighting conditions. The camera selects a shutter...
Flash Exposure Compensation
Use this menu choice to adjust the amount of additional or reduced exposure to be applied to images taken with electronic flash. You'll find a complete discussion of flash exposure in Chapter 7. When you've chosen this menu entry, use the left right cross keys to select the desired amount, as shown in Figure 3.9. Moving the indicator to the left reduces flash exposure to the right increases it. Press Set to lock in your exposure. Return to this menu to cancel flash exposure compensation when...
Photoshop CS
The latest version of Photoshop includes a built-in RAW plug-in that is compatible with the proprietary formats of a growing number of digital cameras, both new and old. This plug-in also works with Photoshop Elements 5.0. To open a RAW image in Photoshop CS3, just follow these steps Elements 5.0 users can use much the same workflow, although fewer settings are available 1. Transfer the RAW images from your camera to your computer's hard drive. 2. In Photoshop, choose Open from the File menu,...
Using Multiple Light Sources
Once you gain control over the qualities and effects you get with a single light source, you'll want to graduate to using multiple light sources. Using several lights allows you to shape and mold the illumination of your subjects to provide a variety of effects, from backlighting to side lighting to more formal portrait lighting. You can start simply with several incandescent light sources, bounced off umbrellas or reflectors that you construct. Or you can use more flexible multiple electronic...
Continuous Shooting
The Canon Digital Rebel XTi has a single continuous shooting mode that grabs shots at a speedy three frames per second rate. This capability reminds me how far digital photography has brought us. The first accessory I purchased when I worked as a sports photographer some years ago was a motor drive for my film SLR. It enabled me to snap off a series of shots in rapid succession, which came in very handy when a fullback broke through the line and headed for the end zone. Even a seasoned action...
Upgrading Your Firmware
If you're computer savvy, you might wonder how your Digital Rebel XTi is able to overwrite its own operating system that is, how can the existing firmware be used to load the new version on top of itself It's a little like lifting yourself by reaching down and pulling up on your bootstraps. Not ironically, that's almost exactly what happens at your command when you start the upgrade process , the XTi shifts into a special mode in which it is no longer operating from its firmware but, rather,...
How Electronic Flash Works
The bursts of light we call electronic flash are produced by a flash of photons generated by an electrical charge that is accumulated in a component called a capacitor and then directed through a glass tube containing xenon gas, which absorbs the energy and emits the brief flash. For the pop-up flash built into the Digital Rebel XTi, the full burst of light lasts about 1 1000th second and provides enough illumination to shoot a subject 10 feet away at f 4 using the ISO 100 setting. In a more...
Replacing Your Clock Battery
In addition to the large rechargeable lithium ion battery that provides most of the power for your Canon Digital Rebel XTi, a second battery nestles in the same compartment to provide enough power to retain your current settings and preferences, as well as the local date and time. This coin-sized clock battery is a long-lived C2016 3-volt lithium manganese dioxide cell, located in a slide-out carrier near the hinge of the battery door, shown in Figure 9.7. You may never notice this battery at...
White Balance Shift and Bracketing
White balance bracketing can be performed in any JPEG-only mode you can't use RAW or RAW JPEG . This form of bracketing is similar to exposure bracketing, but with the added dimension of hue. When you select WB SHIFT BKT, a screen like the one shown in Figure 3.10 appears. First, you turn the Main Dial to set the range of the shift in either the Green-Magenta dimension turn the dial to the left to change the separation of the three dots representing the separate exposures , or in the...
Troubleshooting Memory Cards
Sometimes good memory cards go bad. Sometimes good photographers can treat their memory cards badly. It's possible that a memory card that works fine in one camera won't be recognized when inserted into another. In the worst case, you can have a card full of important photos and find that the card seems to be corrupted and you can't access any of them. Don't panic If these scenarios sound horrific to you, there are lots of things you can do to prevent them from happening, and a variety of...
Shoot Without Card
The last entry in the Set-Up 1 menu gives you the ability to snap off pictures without a Compact Flash card installed or to lock up the camera if that is the case. It is sometimes called Play mode, because you can experiment with your camera's features or even hand your XTi to a friend to let them fool around, without any danger of pictures actually being taken. Back in our film days, we'd sometimes finish a roll, rewind the film back into its cassette surreptitiously, and then hand the camera...
Clean Your Sensor
There's no avoiding dust. No matter how careful you are, some of it is going to settle on your camera and on the mounts of your lenses, eventually making its way inside your camera to settle in the mirror chamber. As you take photos, the mirror flipping up and down causes the dust to become airborne and eventually make its way past the shutter curtain to come to rest on the anti-aliasing filter atop your sensor. There, dust and particles can show up in every single picture you take at a small...