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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 work properly.

❯❯ Microphone: These two clusters of holes lead to the stereo microphone that picks up sound when you record movies.

❯❯ AF Area Selection button: This button enables you to change the AF Area Selection setting, an autofocus feature that we describe in Chapter 8.

❯❯ Drive button: This button switches between the various shutter-release (drive) modes, such as single frame, self-timer, or high-speed continuous. See Chapter 2 for more information.

❯❯ ISO button: Press this button to access the ISO speed setting, which determines how sensitive the camera is to light. Chapter 7 details this critical exposure setting.

❯❯ Metering mode button: Yup, you guessed it: This button enables you to choose the camera's metering mode, which determines which part of the scene the camera uses to set exposure. Chapter 7 has details.

❯❯ AF button: This button is related to the AF mode setting, which determines when the camera locks focus when you use autofocusing. See Chapter 8 for the lowdown.

❯❯ Main dial: You use this dial, labeled in the figure, when selecting many camera settings. In fact, this dial plays such an important role that you’d think it might have a more auspicious name, like The Really Useful Dial, but Main dial it is.

❯❯ Shutter release button: You probably already understand the function of this button, too. But what you may not realize is that when you use autofocus and autoexposure, you need to use a two-stage process when taking a picture: Press the shutter button halfway, pause to let the camera set focus and exposure, and then press the rest of the way to capture the image. You’d be surprised how many people mess up their pictures because they press that button with one quick jab, denying the camera the time it needs to set focus and exposure.

❯❯ LCD panel illumination button: This button illuminates the top LCD panel with an amber backlight.

❯❯ Focal plane mark: Should you need to know the exact distance between your subject and the camera, the focal plane indicator is key. This mark indicates the plane at which light coming through the lens is focused onto the image sensor. Basing your measurement on this mark produces a more accurate camera-to-subject distance than using the end of the lens or some other external point on the camera body as your reference point.

FIGURE 1-14: The tiny pictures on the Mode dial represent special automatic shooting modes.

Back-of-the-body controls

Traveling over the top of the camera to its back, you encounter the smorgasbord of controls shown in Figure 1-15. Throughout this book, pictures of some of these buttons appear in the margins, as in the upcoming list, to help you locate the button being discussed. Even though we provide the official control names in the following list, don’t worry about getting all those straight right now. The list is just to get you acquainted with the possibility of what you can accomplish with all these features.

FIGURE 1-15: Having lots of external buttons makes accessing the camera’s functions easier.

Do note that many buttons have multiple names because they serve different purposes depending on whether you’re taking pictures, reviewing images, recording a movie, or performing some other function. In this book, we refer to these buttons by the first label you see in the following list to simplify things. For example, we refer to the AF Point Selection/Magnify button as the AF Point Selection button. Again, though, the margin icons help you know exactly which button is being described.

With that preamble out of the way, here's the rundown of back-of-the-body features:

❯❯ Menu button: Press this button to access the camera menus. We discuss navigating menus later in this chapter.

❯❯ Info button: By default, the monitor on the back of the camera is initially blank. Pressing this button during shooting displays the Camera Settings screen; pressing again displays the Electronic Level; and pressing a third time displays the Shooting Settings display. We describe all three of these screens in the upcoming section, “Monitoring Critical Camera Settings.” A fourth press of the button turns the monitor off. To find out how to customize the button, see “The Info button: Choosing what the screen shows,” also later in this chapter.

In Playback, Live View, and Movie modes, pressing this button changes the picture-display style, as outlined in Chapters 4 and 5.

❯❯ Live View/Movie mode button and switch: Live View is the camera feature that enables you to compose photos using the monitor instead of the viewfinder. The camera ships ready for Live View mode. All you have to do is press the Start/Stop button, providing the switch above the button is pointing to the camera icon. This engages Live View; press Start/Stop again to return to regular (viewfinder) shooting.

To enter Movie mode, move the switch to the red movie camera icon. The live scene appears on the monitor, and you can then press the Start/Stop button to start and stop recording. To return to still photography using the viewfinder, move the switch back to the camera icon. Live View will be disabled; press the Start/Stop buttong to activate it.

❯❯ AF-ON button: Just like pressing the shutter button halfway, pressing this button initiates autofocus. See Chapter 8 for more information on when this option can come in handy.

❯❯ AE Lock/FE Lock/Index/Reduce button: As you can guess from the official name of this button, it serves many purposes. The first two are related to still-image capture functions: You use the button to lock in the autoexposure (AE) settings and to lock flash exposure (FE). Chapter 7 details both issues. When using Live View and Movie modes, this button serves only as an exposure lock.

This button also serves two image-viewing functions: It switches the display to Index mode, enabling you to see multiple image thumbnails at once, and it reduces the magnification of an individual image after zooming in. Chapter 5 explains Playback, and Chapter 4 covers Live View and Movie modes.

❯❯ AF Point Selection/Magnify button: When you use certain advanced shooting modes, you can press this button to specify which of the autofocus points you want the camera to use when establishing focus. Chapter 8 tells you more. In Playback, Live View, and Movie modes, you use this button to magnify the image display (thus the plus sign in the button’s magnifying glass icon). See Chapters 4 and 5 for help with that function.

❯❯ Quick Control, or Q, button: You press this button to enter Quick Control mode, which offers one avenue for changing critical picture-taking settings. See “Changing Settings Via the Quick Control Screen” to learn more about this camera feature.

For expediency’s sake, we refer to this button from this point forward as just the Q button.

❯❯ Playback button: Press this button to switch the camera into picture-review mode. Chapter 5 details playback features.

❯❯ Set button and Multi-controller: Figure 1-15 points out the Set button and surrounding controller, known as the Multi-controller. These buttons team up to perform several functions, including choosing options from the camera menus.

You work the Multi-controller by pressing one of the eight tiny arrows around its perimeter. In this book, the instruction “Press the Multi-controller right” means to press the right arrow, for example.

❯❯ Quick Control dial: The Quick Control dial surrounds the Set button and the Multi-controller. Rotating the dial offers a handy way to quickly scroll through options and settings. It’s a timesaver, so we point out when to use it as we provide instructions throughout the book.

❯❯ Erase button: Sporting a trash can icon (the universal symbol for delete), this button erases pictures from your memory card. Chapter 5 has specifics. In Live View and Movie modes, covered in Chapter 4, this button is involved in the focusing process.

❯❯ Multi Function Lock switch: You can rotate this switch up, in the direction of the arrow, to lock the Quick Control dial so that you don’t accidentally move the dial and change a camera setting that you aren't intending to modify. If you want an even larger safety net, you can set things up so that the switch also locks the Main dial, the Multi-controller, and the touchscreen (when shooting). The section “Setting up the Lock switch,” toward the end of this chapter, has details.

❯❯ Speaker: When you play movies, the sound emanates from the speaker.

Front odds and ends

On the front-left side of the camera body are a few more things of note, labeled in Figure 1-16.

FIGURE 1-16: Press the Flash button to bring the built-in flash out of hiding.

❯❯ Flash button: Press this button to bring the camera’s built-in flash out of hiding when you use the P, Tv, Av, M, B, C1, or C2 exposure modes. In the other modes, whether the flash pops up depends on the flash mode setting, which we explain in Chapter 2.

❯❯ Lens-release button: Press this button to disengage the lens from the lens mount so that you can remove it from the camera. See the first part of this chapter for details on mounting and removing lenses.

❯❯ Connection port covers: The covers hide ports for connecting the camera to other devices; see the next section for details.

A couple of sensors and a button are on the right side of the camera, as shown in Figure 1-17:

❯❯ Remote control sensor: When you use the optional Remote Controller RC-6 wireless remote, the sensor detects the signal from the remote.

❯❯ Depth-of-field preview button: When you press this button, the image in the viewfinder offers an approximation of the depth of field that will result from your aperture setting, or f-stop. Chapter 8 provides details.

❯❯ Red-Eye Reduction/self-timer lamp: When you set your flash to Red-Eye Reduction mode, this lamp emits a brief burst of light prior to the real flash: the idea being that your subjects’ pupils will constrict in response to the light, thus lessening the chances of red-eye. If you use the camera’s self-timer feature, the lamp blinks to provide you with a visual countdown to the moment at which the picture will be recorded. See Chapter 2 for more details about Red-Eye Reduction flash mode and the self-timer function.

FIGURE 1-17: Here’s a look at the right-front doodads.

Connection ports

Hidden under the covers on the left side of the camera, you find inputs for connecting the camera to various devices. The left side of Figure 1-18 shows what lurks beneath the first cover; the right side of the figure shows the connections found under the second cover.

FIGURE 1-18: These three rubber covers conceal terminals for connecting the camera to other devices.

Starting with the left side, the available connections are

❯❯ Microphone jack: If you’re not happy with the audio quality provided by the internal microphone when you record movies, you can plug in an external microphone here. The jack accepts a 3.5mm stereo microphone miniplug.

❯❯ Headphone jack: Likewise, if you want a better listening experience, connect your headphones to this 3.5mm terminal and monitor sound while recording or playing back movies in style.

❯❯ Remote-control terminal: As an alternative to using a wireless remote controller to trigger the shutter release, you can attach the Canon Remote Switch RS-60E3 wired controller here.

The controller is a worthwhile investment if you do a lot of long-exposure shooting (such as nighttime shots and fireworks). By using the remote control, you eliminate the chance that the action of your finger on the shutter button moves the camera enough to blur the shot, which is especially problematic during long exposures. And unlike a wireless remote, which must be positioned so that the signal reaches the sensor on the front of the camera, a wired remote can be operated from behind the camera.

❯❯ HDMI terminal: For playback on a high-definition television or screen, you can connect the camera via this terminal, using the optional HDMI Cable HTC-100.

❯❯ USB connection terminal: This connection point serves two purposes: You can connect your camera to a computer via a compatible USB interface cable (not supplied), a topic discussed in Chapter 6. You use the same terminal to connect the camera to Canon’s optional GP-E2 GPS receiver. It’s worth noting that this terminal no longer supports audio/visual playback. Do not attempt to connect your 80D to a television using Canon’s AVC-DC400ST A/V cable or equivalent.

If you turn the camera over, you find a tripod socket, which enables you to mount the camera on a tripod that uses a quarter-inch screw, plus the battery chamber. And finally, hidden inside the battery chamber is a little flap that covers a connection for attaching the optional AC power adapter kit ACK-E6. See the camera manual for specifics on running the camera on AC power.