The Canon 100mm lens is ideal for portraits because of the beautiful background blur it produces, its sharp optics and its medium-telephoto focusing range. Knowing mount, dismount and focus your Canon lens are the preliminary steps to taking crisp pictures, although there are other factors that you must pay attention to that will play an important role in how your final image turns out. Once you have mastered these, choosing the appropriate aperture to achieve your desired blur is the next step.
Instructions
1. To mount the lens to the camera, remove the camera body mount cover from the front of the body by turning it 1/4 to the left while facing it. Remove the lens mount cover by turning it 1/4 to the left as well.
2. Line up the red dot found on the top of the camera body mount with the red dot on the lens, located on the top by the lens mount. Once aligned, insert the lens into the body and slowly turn it toward the left of the body until you hear it click into place. The red dot on the lens should now be toward the lower left on the camera body.
3. Remove the lens cap by pinching either side of it and pulling it away from the lens. Turn on your camera and hold it to your eye once you have found your subject. You can set the lens to autofocus (AF) or to manual (M) by using the switch located at the top left of the lens. This is helpful if you want the camera to autofocus on your subject quickly or if you want to use selective focusing.
4. Bring the subject into focus by rotating the focus ring that wraps around the entire lens. Because this lens is a fixed 100mm, the closest you can get to your subject while retaining a clear focus is 3 feet. Its focusing length makes it great for portraits because you can keep a good distance between the lens and your subject, which helps them feel more relaxed and frames them tighter.
5. This lens is 1 of Canon's digital lenses that means the aperture is not selected by a ring on the lens like film camera lenses. To set the aperture, find the button represented by AV on your camera, and while holding it down, turn the dial, usually found by the shutter button, either left or right. Turning it to the left will give you a large aperture helpful for a selective subject blur for portraits; turning it to the right will give you a small aperture useful for a large sharp depth of field.
6. To dismount the lens, locate the button found on the lower-left front of your camera body and press it completely down. With the camera and lens facing forward as if you were taking a picture, slowly turn the lens clockwise until the red dot reaches the top of the camera body. Slowly pull the lens out from the body and replace all lens caps and camera body covers.
Tags: camera body, your subject, your camera, body mount, camera body mount, Canon 100mm
