The Photography Tip of the Week #074

Posted by Philip in Photo Philosophy, Podcast

Keep it firm

074 Photography Tip of the Week (audio)

It’s time to check your camera, even though it’s working just fine.  Your lenses are clean, there is no dust on the body and your strap is secure.  But there is another thing you may need to check… the firmware.  Firmware is the software that runs inside your digital camera.  From time to time the camera manufacturer will post updated software (or firmware) for your camera.  These updates often include speed enhancements, new features and sometimes fixes to the way the images are processed.  In short there is generally no reason to not upgrade the firmware.

So take a moment to go to your camera manufacturer’s website and see if there’s a firmware update for your camera model.  If you don’t know where to go just search on “firmware update cameramodel” where the cameramodel is the model of your camera.  They will have detailed instructions on how to check what version you have so you can see if your camera needs updating or not as well as how to perform the update.  In most cases the update is as simple as putting a file on a newly formatted memory card.  You put it in your camera with a fully charged battery and it does it’s magic.  Having a fully charged battery is very important.  You don’t want the camera to lose power part way through the update cycle.  In some cases you can just connect the camera to your computer and update directly without transferring to a memory card.  It really is that simple.

One thing you may have to do after the update is to change the date and time and any other user specified information like your copyright info or special settings. So don’t update your firmware right as you are heading out the door for your next photo session.  Pick a nice afternoon when you have plenty of time.  It shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes to perform the update, but I find that I like to use the time afterwards to look through the menus and see what new functions and abilities are buried within.

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