One of the things I've learned about photography is that sometimes learning your camera takes a little creativity, especially when you get a new camera and suddenly discover it has about a thousand features you've never used before. Okay, well, maybe not a thousand, but it sure does feel like it, and you all know what I'm talking about.
When I switched from DSLR to mirrorless, there were several features I really wanted to figure out, like animal detection, face detection, eye detection, subject tracking, and the list goes on. All these features sound great, but I kept thinking to myself, how am I supposed to test them? I don't have any pets and I live in a city. So finding birds whenever I want to experiment wasn't exactly convenient.
Then I realized, YouTube. Yup, I started looking for bird videos and it turns out there are tons of them. People set up cameras on their porches, point them at a bird feeder and record hours of birds flying in and hanging out and taking off. It was perfect. So I turned down the lights in my office, pointed my camera at the screen and started going through my settings and testing how they worked. And you know what?
It worked really well. I could watch my camera find a bird, see how quickly it locked focus, and observe how well the tracking worked as the bird moved around. I could even see how it handled multiple birds in the same frame. Once I realized how useful this was, I started doing the same thing with people. With my new camera, I wanted to get a better understanding of face detection.
Could I get the camera to lock onto one person's face and then switch to another? What happens when there are two or three in the frame? These aren't always easy things to test in real life. You don't necessarily have people available to help you. Hiring a model isn't always practical, and your partner probably only has so much patience for your photographic experiments. But with a YouTube video, you have complete control.
You can pause, rewind, and play the same scene as many times as you like. You can change your camera settings and see exactly how the camera responds. And you can use the same trick for other types of photography too. For example, fireworks. Unless you live near Disneyland or happen to have regular fireworks displays in your neighborhood, you probably don't get many opportunities to practice. Just find a fireworks video on YouTube.
Point your camera at the screen and experiment with different shutter speeds. It's a simple way to see how your shutter speed affects the images without having to wait for the next fireworks display. Of course, photographing a screen isn't quite the same as photographing in real life, and it won't get you a real answer on exposure, but it's a great way to experiment and get a feel for how your camera works and what you might need to do in real life.
So whether you've just bought a new camera or you're trying to master some of the more advanced features on the one you already own, remember that you don't always have to go out and find a perfect situation to practice. Sometimes all you need is a computer and a little creativity and some time to experiment. The more familiar you are with your camera before you find yourself in an important shooting situation, the less you'll have to figure out in the moment.
You might be surprised with just how much you can learn without leaving the house.