I’m someone who likes to know, why the grass is green, why the sky is blue, and why the moon sometimes looks yellow.  When I got my first camera I HAD to know what all the cryptic numbers and letters meant on my camera and I felt sheepish that I didn’t know it before hand.  When my husband was looking into buying a motorcycle I wanted to be a part of it too.  I researched what the cryptic letters meant, so when he pulled up a motorcycle listing that had an “R” as part of the description I was so happy I knew that “R” meant Retro when he had no clue.  I like to be able to walk the walk AND talk the talk.  So here’s a little info just in case you didn’t know.

EOS – Electro-Optical System.  Because the communication between your camera and lens is all electric with nothing mechanical in between.  AND its also a reference to the Greek Goddess of the dawn.  Either pronounced ee-oss like the goddess or ee-oh-ess.

SLR – Single Lens Reflex.  Pretty much it means when you look through your view finder you are looking down through your single lens and you see exactly what you’re going to shoot.  Unlike a point and shoot where you look through a viewfinder which it displays what your camera sees.  When you add the D to DSLR the D just means Digital.

ISO – International Organization for Standardization – Taken from the greek word, “Isos” meaning: equal.  So before the digital world, ISO came on your film.  I first learned about ISO when I shot my family pictures years ago.  I didn’t understand why my 8×10 was so grainy.  My film’s ISO was 900.  Great for lowlight, indoors, sports.  But like our cameras today the higher the ISO the grainer my photo was.  With film, ISO was an indicator of light on the actual film with light sensitive crystals that either reacted and developed or didn’t.  People would say that a certain film was “fast” meaning they had bigger crystals and reacted faster also resulting in graininess.  I should’ve gotten 200 ISO film.  “Slower” but less grainy.  Well back to the digital world somehow some pretty smart people were able to adapt the concept of ISO to the sensor in our camera.

D, like Nikon D700 – Means Digital but for Canon it’s just another camera in the line up

AV or A – Aperture Priority.  This setting is semi automatic and when on this setting, you the photographer, chooses the aperture and ISO and the camera chooses the shutter speed for you.

TV or S – Shutter Priority.  This also is semi automatic.  You the photographer chooses the Shutter Speed and ISO and the camera chooses the aperture for you.

P – Program Mode.  In this setting your camera is thinking even more for you than in the others.  You set the ISO and your camera chooses your Aperture and your Shutter Speed.

Green Box – Auto.  The camera does all the thinking for you.  Fully Automatic.

B or start in Manual and dial down your shutter speed past 30 sec. and you should reach it – Bulb.  This is a fun setting to play with.  You, the photographer chooses the ISO and Aperture and you also choose how long the shutter stays open by how long you hold the button down.  This setting is best when your camera is on a tripod or else you’ll get bad camera shake.

M – Manual.  You choose all your settings and you think for your camera.

This is just a little review on some of the many functions on our SLR’s.  😉  There will be more posts like this in the future and more in depth ones of the different settings like AV, Tv, etc.  If you have any questions about something with your camera I’d love to see if I can help!  I know this wasn’t the most exciting post but we all have to start somewhere and the beginning is a very good place to start!