Canon has announced 7 new online classes priced between $19.99 and $59.99 are available on their online learning page. This marks a departure from Canon’s free Digital Learning Center or DLC. These courses contain multiple learning elements including: Video lessons, PDF guides, a user forum, quizzes, and photo assignments.

Offerings

Here’s a list of the first classes in the new online learning area of Canon.

  1. Understanding EOS Camera Operations
  2. Photo 101: How to Take Great Pictures
  3. Printing Basics & Beyond
  4. Great Landscapes Made Easy
  5. Child’s Play: Simple Tips for Photographing Children
  6. Getting Started with Flash Photography
  7. Canon Inside Guide: EOS Rebel Series

Closer look

As a Canon shooter I am always mystified by the menus of “with this setting it is possible to…” in the instruction manual. (Yes, I admit I actually read them.) I thought that the class Understanding EOS Camera Operations would cover say, how to set up back button focusing. Or focus micro adjustments. I checked into the learn more section to see the lessons for the course.

Canon Classes-001
Courtesy: Canon USA
  1. Adjusting Image Color
  2. What is Image Control?
  3. All About Exposure
  4. Camera Setup
  5. Exploring the Menu
  6. A Few Photo Fundamentals
  7. Introduction
  8. Working with Autofocus
  9. Using Flash
  10. Working with Live View
  11. Shooting Video
  12. Wrap Up

I appears to be a basic although thorough discussion for beginners. Understand I have not viewed the videos so the depth into which they go is uncertain. There is a place for customers to review the courses so that might be helpful sometime in the future.

Printing Basics & Beyond

Canon has picked a winning team for this class. While I don’t know Angelica Li, Eddie Tapp is a close friend and mentor of mine and has been for decades. Eddie has a down home way to teaching the important things one needs to know to make good prints. He is an X-Rite Coloratti (as am I.) He makes color management very approachable in a charming understandable “Hey!-I-can-do-that! way that is engaging. Even though I haven’t seen the specific color management chapters in this lesson, i know Eddie will present it so that anyone can grasp and use it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuOMFqR6tYo

Thoughts…

how to make good pictures

Courtesy: www.kaaterskillbooks.com

My opinion is that Canon has targeted beginning photographers who want to learn more to become better amateurs. Rudy Winston hosts the class How to Take Great Pictures which reminds me of Kodak’s book of a very similar name first published 98 years ago. Rudy, it has to be said, has forgotten more about photography than the rest of us combined have ever known. I can only imagine how very worthwhile this one must be.

That said, I hope that Canon would provide some of its customers the courtesy of free access to these resources with proof of purchase of a qualifying camera. While Kodak did sell How to Make Good Pictures, it also made them available to camera stores to give to customers who purchased Brownies.