Fully charge the battery and put it in the camera.
Put the memory card you bought into the camera and we will format it (get it ready for use in that camera) in a bit.
Look at the instruction manual and go through the set up process as they suggest…setting the date and the like.
Over the course of these articles, I will take you through some more sophisticated choices that might interest you, but for now, just focus on the following…
Make a few simple choices that will serve you well…the right choice to make out of several options available:
Press the Menu button and bring up the Menu
Find the area where Quality/Image Size can be found and scroll to the Quality setting. Choose RAW. Just RAW…not RAW and jpeg…just RAW. It gives you the most flexibility later on when you edit the image. Don’t fight me on this one…RAW is the one and only answer.
If you then scroll further down the menu and find a choice of Compressed or Uncompressed…choose Uncompressed. It will give you the best image data to work with when you edit.
I shoot in an Aspect ratio of 3:2. That means my images (which I can later crop to any aspect I want) are shot in a way that would allow me to print that image in any configuration of 3:2…like three feet wide by two feet tall or 18 inches wide by 12 inches.
If you scroll some more you will find Color Space…choose AdobeRGB. All you need to know is that gives you more color options when you edit.
Probably on another page called Color/WB find White Balance and set it to Auto. I will do a whole article on this sometime, but for now Auto is the answer no matter what anyone else tells you. Go with Auto. One of my best friends, Dan, insisted on setting his own White Balance on his new camera when I took him to Augusta National. We have always enjoyed the photos he took that day because the green color of our skin matched nicely to the green sky and green greens of Augusta. Choose Auto.
Another choice in that area might say Creative Style and choose Landscape if that is what you will mostly shoot…or Portrait if you are going to be doing a lot of people shots. You can experiment with all the choices but Landscape is a pretty good choice for now.
The last thing to find is the Format area usually under a Menu choice in Setup. Go to Format…put your brand new memory card in the correct slot in the camera and push the button to Format that card. It will basically totally erase the card (SO DO NOT FORMAT IT IF THERE ARE PHOTOS ON IT YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD TO YOUR COMPUTER…ONCE THE CARD IS FORMATTED, THOSE IMAGES MAY BE GONE FOR GOOD…OR YOU WILL AT LEAST HAVE TO LEARN A NEW SKILL CALLED RECOVERING DELETED IMAGES…NEVER ANY FUN). Your camera will erase the data on the card and organize that card so it is ready for the new images you are about to shoot. I will do a whole article on Formatting…but the above is the very basic info you need to know.
Enough for now. Don’t let all the choices confuse you. Set the basics and you will learn the others down the road…they are not mission critical right now. Aloha.