Canon EOS 80D For Dummies. King Julie Adair

These two clusters of holes lead to the stereo microphone that picks up sound when you record movies.

      ❯❯ AF Area Selection button: This button enables you to change the AF Area Selection setting, an autofocus feature that we describe in Chapter 8.

      ❯❯ Drive button: This button switches between the various shutter-release (drive) modes, such as single frame, self-timer, or high-speed continuous. See Chapter 2 for more information.

      ❯❯ ISO button: Press this button to access the ISO speed setting, which determines how sensitive the camera is to light. Chapter 7 details this critical exposure setting.

      ❯❯ Metering mode button: Yup, you guessed it: This button enables you to choose the camera's metering mode, which determines which part of the scene the camera uses to set exposure. Chapter 7 has details.

      ❯❯ AF button: This button is related to the AF mode setting, which determines when the camera locks focus when you use autofocusing. See Chapter 8 for the lowdown.

      ❯❯ Main dial: You use this dial, labeled in the figure, when selecting many camera settings. In fact, this dial plays such an important role that you’d think it might have a more auspicious name, like The Really Useful Dial, but Main dial it is.

      ❯❯ Shutter release button: You probably already understand the function of this button, too. But what you may not realize is that when you use autofocus and autoexposure, you need to use a two-stage process when taking a picture: Press the shutter button halfway, pause to let the camera set focus and exposure, and then press the rest of the way to capture the image. You’d be surprised how many people mess up their pictures because they press that button with one quick jab, denying the camera the time it needs to set focus and exposure.

      ❯❯ LCD panel illumination button: This button illuminates the top LCD panel with an amber backlight.

      ❯❯ Focal plane mark: Should you need to know the exact distance between your subject and the camera, the focal plane indicator is key. This mark indicates the plane at which light coming through the lens is focused onto the image sensor. Basing your measurement on this mark produces a more accurate camera-to-subject distance than using the end of the lens or some other external point on the camera body as your reference point.

       FIGURE 1-14: The tiny pictures on the Mode dial represent special automatic shooting modes.

Back-of-the-body controls

Traveling over the top of the camera to its back, you encounter the smorgasbord of controls shown in Figure 1-15. Throughout this book, pictures of some of these buttons appear in the margins, as in the upcoming list, to help you locate the button being discussed. Even though we provide the official control names in the following list, don’t worry about getting all those straight right now. The list is just to get you acquainted with the possibility of what you can accomplish with all these features.

       FIGURE 1-15: Having lots of external buttons makes accessing the camera’s functions easier.

       Do note that many buttons have multiple names because they serve different purposes depending on whether you’re taking pictures, reviewing images, recording a movie, or performing some other function. In this book, we refer to these buttons by the first label you see in the following list to simplify things. For example, we refer to the AF Point Selection/Magnify button as the AF Point Selection button. Again, though, the margin icons help you know exactly which button is being described.

      With that preamble out of the way, here's the rundown of back-of-the-body features:

      ❯❯ Menu button: Press this button to access the camera menus. We discuss navigating menus later in this chapter.

      ❯❯ Info button: By default, the monitor on the back of the camera is initially blank. Pressing this button during shooting displays the Camera Settings screen; pressing again displays the Electronic Level; and pressing a third time displays the Shooting Settings display. We describe all three of these screens in the upcoming section, “Monitoring Critical Camera Settings.” A fourth press of the button turns the monitor off. To find out how to customize the button, see “The Info button: Choosing what the screen shows,” also later in this chapter.

      In Playback, Live View, and Movie modes, pressing this button changes the picture-display style, as outlined in Chapters 4 and 5.

      ❯❯ Live View/Movie mode button and switch: Live View is the camera feature that enables you to compose photos using the monitor instead of the viewfinder. The camera ships ready for Live View mode. All you have to do is press the Start/Stop button, providing the switch above the button is pointing to the camera icon. This engages Live View; press Start/Stop again to return to regular (viewfinder) shooting.

      To enter Movie mode, move the switch to the red movie camera icon. The live scene appears on the monitor, and you can then press the Start/Stop button to start and stop recording. To return to still photography using the viewfinder, move the switch back to the camera icon. Live View will be disabled; press the Start/Stop buttong to activate it.

      ❯❯ AF-ON button: Just like pressing the shutter button halfway, pressing this button initiates autofocus. See Chapter 8 for more information on when this option can come in handy.

      ❯❯ AE Lock/FE Lock/Index/Reduce button: As you can guess from the official name of this button, it serves many purposes. The first two are related to still-image capture functions: You use the button to lock in the autoexposure (AE) settings and to lock flash exposure (FE). Chapter 7 details both issues. When using Live View and Movie modes, this button serves only as an exposure lock.

      This button also serves two image-viewing functions: It switches the display to Index mode, enabling you to see multiple image thumbnails at once, and it reduces the magnification of an individual image after zooming in. Chapter 5 explains Playback, and Chapter 4 covers Live View and Movie modes.

      ❯❯ AF Point Selection/Magnify button: When you use certain advanced shooting modes, you can press this button to specify which of the autofocus points you want the camera to use when establishing focus. Chapter 8 tells you more. In Playback, Live View, and Movie modes, you use this button to magnify the image display (thus the plus sign in the button’s magnifying glass icon). See Chapters 4 and 5 for help with that function.

      ❯❯ Quick Control, or Q, button: You press this button to enter Quick Control mode, which offers one avenue for changing critical picture-taking settings.