Why it is important to understand your camera equipment
I know the excitement one can get when they receive new — or used! — camera equipment in the post and there is a strong urge to go out and use it right away. But as I, and I’m sure many other budding photographers have experienced, this isn’t ultimately the best thing to do. Just because your new camera body or lens might be better than what you had before, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to get better pictures right away. Before stepping out the door and photographing your next subject, take the time to sit down with the equipment and have a good look through the manual. You might not use all of the available features, but it is still good to know how it works and to get familiar with the additional features that could very well help improve your photography.
When I received my Sigma 150–600mm lens around three years ago, one of the first things that I did was look over where certain buttons and sliders were located. This lens includes a lens lock, where you can switch it to lock the lens at a desired focal length. Although I often shoot at the furthest length of 600mm, I put the lens lock on when I am walking and the lens is hanging down from my shoulder or neck, so that the pull of gravity isn’t making the lens pull out to the furthest focal length which might cause issues with using the lens in the future. There is also a slider for Auto Focus, which can be switched to Manual Focus and Manual Override. My previous lenses didn’t have this feature, and I have found that the manual override is very useful when the autofocus picks out a leaf or a branch instead of the subject, and I can alter the focus ring slightly with this function on. I also got familiar with how the lens sat in my hand, so I knew where the sliders were positioned on the lens and where my fingers were placed so I knew which fingers to use to adjust the sliders quickly.
Depending on the subject or theme you work with, once you understand how certain features work and the settings available on your camera equipment, they will become natural to you when you are out in the field. However, there will be times, as I have experienced very recently when the settings being used before might not be the best ones to use for a specific style of photography or videography. I found it helpful to read tips or watch videos from other photographers working in the same genre of photography, to understand how they achieved certain images or videos and to see if my current equipment is capable of achieving similar results. There is a lot of information online from many photographers on how to take better photos, so it is relatively easy to search for specific how-to’s and apply them to your photography however it suits you.
On a personal note, I am still improving my photography skills after doing it for around a decade now, so while it has taken a long amount of time to get to a point where I currently feel happy with the work that I am producing, I have found that by getting familiar with my camera equipment from the get-go and making small changes to my camera settings now and then, I can now see those improvements when comparing my current images to what my images looked like over previous years.
