The Back Buttons On Your DSLR

By now you may have learned that DSLR you got for Christmas from front to back and be turning out pictures that amaze. If you're still getting used to the landscape of your DSLR's body, this week's blogs may be of some help. I want to talk about those buttons on the back of your DSLR and how they help you get some great photographs.

 

Here are those buttons on my Canon EOS 5D Mk2.

The buttons will be in different places on the various brands but they have a similar title. You'll see AE-L buttons and AF-L buttons and they're all designed to give you more creative options. You may also have a button that's just AF or, like me, AF-ON. You should consult your owner's manual to make sure you know where these buttons are and how they're labeled. The individual brands may have slightly different ways of initiating these buttons, too.

This is the back of a Nikon D3000. 

Some of the functions I'm writing about may be selected through the LCD display.

The AE-L button locks the exposure settings as you recompose your shot. This is useful when you want to make sure one element of your picture is properly exposed but not the center of focus. 

This is not the only way to achieve this. It is an option that many people like. You can center your view on the area for which you wish to expose correctly, press the AE-L button and then shift your view and refocus. This doesn't mean the correctly exposed area is now out of focus. That will depend on the aperture setting and the depth of field you get from it and the distance between you and the properly exposed subjects. 

So if you want to shoot a picture with a long depth of field so that objects near and far are in focus and you want to make sure that the best exposure settings are applied to the near objects, AE-L should help you do that.

Tomorow I'l discuss some useful applications of the AF button. It helps when shooting video and stills.