Canon EOS 80D For Dummies. King Julie Adair

the shutter button – to select Setup Menu 3. Then rotate the Quick Control dial (the big wheel on the back of the camera) to highlight Touch Control. Press the Set button, rotate the Quick Control dial to highlight Standard or Sensitive, and press the Set button again.

❯❯ Touchscreen sound effects: By default, the camera emits a little “boop” sound every time you tap a touch-controlled setting. If you’re sick of hearing it, visit Shooting Menu 1 and look for the Beep setting, shown in Figure 1-11. The option that disables the boop is Touch to Silence – silence being indicated by a little speaker with a slash through it. The Disable setting turns off both the touchscreen sound and the normal beep tone that occurs when the camera finds its focus point.

       FIGURE 1-10: Control the touchscreen response through this menu item.

       FIGURE 1-11: Set the Beep option to Touch to Silence to prevent the camera from making a sound when you tap a touch-controlled item.

      One final point about the touchscreen: If you connect the camera to a TV or monitor, the touchscreen has limited functionality when you are playing back photos and movies (scrolling and zooming). Otherwise, it is no longer is available, regardless of the Touch Control option. Don’t fret; you just have to use the old-fashioned button-push method of selecting menu options. See “Ordering from Camera Menus,” later in this chapter, if you need help.

      Working with Memory Cards

Instead of recording images on film, digital cameras store pictures on memory cards. Your camera uses a specific type of memory card – an SD card (for Secure Digital), shown in Figures 1-12 and 1-13.

       Most SD cards carry the designation SDHC (for High Capacity) or SDXC (for eXtended Capacity), depending on how many gigabytes (GB) of data they hold. SDHC cards hold from 4GB to 32GB of data; the SDXC moniker indicates a capacity greater than 32GB. Cards are also assigned a speed rating from 2 to 10, with a higher number indicating a faster data-transfer rate. The memory-card industry added a new category of speed rating – Ultra High Speed (UHS). UHS cards are organized into two bus interface classes (I and II) that support different bus speeds and two speed classes (U1 and U3) which have different data writing speeds. The 80D is compatible with UHS-I cards. These cards currently are the fastest the planet has to offer. Of course, a faster card means a more expensive card. But to maximize your camera's performance, we recommend that you make the investment in Class 10 or UHS-I U3 cards. Especially for video recording, a faster card translates to smoother recording and playback. A faster card also can improve performance when you’re shooting a burst of images using the camera's continuous capture feature.

      In addition to using regular SD cards, your camera accepts Eye-Fi memory cards, which are special cards that enable you to transmit images from the camera to the computer over a wireless network. It’s a cool option, but the cards are more expensive than regular cards and require some configuring that we don’t have room to cover in this book. Additionally, Canon doesn’t guarantee that everything will work smoothly with Eye-Fi cards and directs you to the Eye-Fi support team if you have trouble. All that said, if an Eye-Fi card is installed in the camera, Setup Menu 1 offers an Eye-Fi Settings option that offers options related to the card. For more details, visit www.eye.fi. (See Chapters 6 and 10 for details about using the camera’s own wireless connectivity features.)

      Whatever cards you choose, safeguarding them – and the images on them – requires a few precautions:

      ❯❯ Inserting a card: Turn the camera off and then put the card in the card slot with the label facing the back of the camera, as shown in Figure 1-12. Push the card into the slot until it clicks into place.

      ❯❯ Formatting a card: The first time you use a new memory card, format it by choosing the Format Card option on Setup Menu 1. This step ensures that the card is properly prepared to record your pictures. See the upcoming section “Setup Menu 1” for details.

      ❯❯ Removing a card: First, check the status of the memory card access light, labeled in Figure 1-12. After making sure that the light is off, indicating that the camera has finished recording your most recent photo, turn off the camera. Open the memory card door, as shown in Figure 1-12. Depress the memory card slightly until you hear a little click and then let go. The card pops halfway out of the slot, enabling you to grab it by the tail and remove it.

      ❯❯ Handling cards: Don’t touch the gold contacts on the back of the card. (See the right card in Figure 1-13.) When cards aren’t in use, store them in the protective cases they came in or in a memory card wallet. Keep cards away from extreme heat and cold as well.

      ❯❯ Locking cards: The tiny switch on the left side of the card, labeled Lock switch in Figure 1-13, enables you to lock your card, which prevents any data from being erased or recorded to the card. Press the switch toward the bottom of the card to lock the card contents; press it toward the top of the card to unlock the data.

       FIGURE 1-12: Insert the card with the label facing the camera back.

       FIGURE 1-13: Avoid touching the gold contacts on the card.

      Exploring External Camera Features

      Scattered across your camera’s exterior are a number of buttons, dials, and switches that you use to change picture-taking settings, review and edit your photos, and perform various other operations. Later chapters detail all your camera’s functions and provide the exact steps to follow to access those functions. The next four sections provide a basic road map to the external controls plus a quick introduction to each.

Topside controls

Your virtual tour begins on the top of the camera, shown in Figure 1-14. The items of note here are

      ❯❯ On/Off switch: Okay, you probably already figured this one out. What you may not know is that by default, the camera automatically shuts itself off after one minute of inactivity to save battery power. To wake up the camera, press the shutter button halfway or press the Menu, Info, or Playback button. You can adjust the auto shutdown timing via the Auto Power Off option on Setup Menu 2.

      ❯❯ Mode dial: Through this dial, you select an exposure mode, which determines whether the camera operates in fully automatic, semi-automatic, or manual exposure mode. To adjust the setting, press and hold the unlock button in the center of the dial as you rotate the dial. Chapter 2 introduces you to the various exposure modes.

      ❯❯ Hot shoe: The hot shoe is a metal bracket on which you can affix an external flash (or other hot shoe accessory). It’s called a hot shoe because it’s wired to communicate back and forth from the camera using electrical signals. Don’t go poking around the hot shoe: the flash-sync contacts (the little round metal posts) need to be clean and free of debris to