How to Use Every Nikon Digital SLR

If you are bewildered by your Nikon digital SLR’s numerous buttons, modes, and settings, and don’t feel like reading through hundreds of pages of camera manual, don’t worry, you’re not alone. The following steps will guide you through the few settings you should care about and the basics of using every Nikon digital SLR ever made, [1] X Research source from 1999 right up to today.

Focusing tips for Nikon and Canon digital SLR cameras

How to correctly focus your SLR on a specific object, without the camera automatically choosing a focal point for you!

One of the most important skills for a beginner to learn from the start, is how to focus properly. Using a digital SLR camera will become very frustrating if you don’t understand how to set the focus on the exact object you’re trying to photograph. Take the two images below for example.

For the first photograph, the camera focused on the leaves in the front right, while the waterfall at the back was blurred and out of focus. In this case, the photographer was intending to take a photograph of the waterfall.

With the second image shown below, the photographer was taking an image of the sheep. However, as you can see, the camera focused on the tree to the right. You can tell this due to the tree being sharper than the sheep. If this was the initial intention, then it’s a good photo. However, if it was not, then it is a badly focused photograph.

How to focus on what you want? Or spot focus on single area.

So how do you ensure you’re focusing correctly on what you want to photograph and not the object on the front or to the side of it? In short, the answer is to set your AF-Area Mode (autofocus) to one of the main focal points on your camera. However first you need to understand what I mean by focal point.

For instance, follow this exercise below:

• Set your digital SLR camera on the P dial and turn it on.
• Look through the viewfinder as though your going to take a photograph.
• Press your shutter button half way down and look for a red blinking focal point. The object in your scene that the focal point is positioned over when it blinks red, is what your camera is focusing on. For the two examples shown above, the red focal blink would have occurred over the leaves in the front and on the tree to the right.
• It’s also important to note that different camera models will have a different number of focal points. For example, Canon 400D has 9 focal points. Whereas Nikon D40 has 3 focal points.

Depending on your current camera setup, it might be possible to keep pressing the shutter half way down and back up again, then half way down etc and it will focus differently each time. As you can imagine this could become tedious. Furthermore, a moving object isn’t going to stick around until your camera automatically focuses on the correct object. Therefore, you also need to learn how to set one particular focal point as the default main focus.

Examples below are shown for a Nikon D40 and a Canon 400D SLR camera. However, most digital camera’s work in similar ways.

How to focus using a specific focal point on a Nikon D40

1. Press MENU, go to the left side (if not already highlighted) and select the up and down (next to OK button) to navigate to the pencil icon. Then highlight the CUSTOM SETTING MENU on the top of the color LCD and press OK.
2. Scroll to number 3 in that menu ‘AF-Area Mode’, and choose ‘[ o ] Single Area’. Press OK to set it.
3. Then set your camera on P for this example, and look in the view finder. At the bottom you will see something similar to the image below. The part I’ve circled in red is what I will be referring to in the rest of this tutorial. You’ll notice it resembles the focus points in the centre of the screen (left, middle, right). If you don’t want to look at it though the viewfinder then you can also see it on the back LCD screen, like the image below:
4. When the middle is highlighted (part in the red circle above), any object the center focal point is positioned over when looking in your view finder, will be the main focus when the photo is taken. You are able to change this to either right, center or left by pressing the left and right buttons near your OK button.

How to focus using a specific focal point on a Canon 400D

Put your camera setting on something other than automatic, for example the P setting on your top dial.

Look through your viewfinder and hold down the button circled below in red.

While holding that button down, use the rotating dial shown below to move between the numerous focal points.

Note: If you find this does not work, it may be due to you having the shutter speed or aperture screens displayed in your LCD. You might have to hop out of that particular screen first, then set your focal point before going back into the shutter speed and aperture if need be.

How to Use Every Nikon Digital SLR

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If you are bewildered by your Nikon digital SLR’s numerous buttons, modes, and settings, and don’t feel like reading through hundreds of pages of camera manual, don’t worry, you’re not alone. The following steps will guide you through the few settings you should care about and the basics of using every Nikon digital SLR ever made, [1] X Research source from 1999 right up to today.

Part 1 of 4:

A note on nomenclature

There are a lot of similarities between all Nikon digital SLRs, but there are also some significant differences between classes of camera. These categorizations are used here for convenience’s sake and have nothing to do with image quality (a D3000 is miles ahead of 1999’s professional D1 on this count):

• High-end cameras are the more expensive cameras with instant adjustments to nearly every setting, important and unimportant, on the camera. This includes all the single-digit (D1/D1H/D1X, D2H and descendants, D3, D4) professional cameras, as well as the D300 and D700.
• Mid-range cameras typically have a mode dial on the top plate to the left of the viewfinder, rather than a drive-mode selector. They have direct buttons for white balance, ISO, shooting mode, and so on.
• Entry-level cameras include the D40, D60, and the current D3000 and D5000 models. These require you to dig through menus to set drive mode, ISO, white balance and other things, as they don’t have buttons for immediate access to these things.

Part 2 of 4:

The very basics

The main command dial is on the rear of the camera, on the top right.

The main command dial.

The secondary command dial, indicated, is on the front of the camera, near the power switch and shutter button.

The multi-selector on a Nikon D200.
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Part 3 of 4:

Setting up

There are a bunch of settings that you will want to set up once, and only once, with your Nikon digital SLR. As with everything else in this article, we’ll make some enormous generalisations that will get you out there and shooting but don’t hold true for everyone all the time. You can play with these things later, but for now, you want the basics out of the way.

Set your camera to continuous shooting. By default, your camera might be set up for single-frame shooting, which meaning that you get one shot (and only one shot) for each press of the shutter button. You don’t want this. Continuous shooting will let your camera shoot at its fastest frame rate for as long as you hold the shutter button. Doing this is more-or-less free on digital cameras, and even if you’re not shooting things that move quickly (for which continuous shooting is mandatory), there’s a good reason to use this: it results in sharper photos. Shooting a sequence of two or three shots rather than a single one means that it’s more likely that one of them will be sharp, whereas if you take just one you might get unlucky. You’re also less likely to get camera shake directly caused by you jabbing the shutter button repeatedly.

High end cameras: you have a dedicated dial for this on the top-left of the camera, with a C position, which is what you want. Push the button next to the dial to unlock it and turn the dial. Your camera might have a Ch and Cl position; this is continuous/high-speed and continuous/low-speed. This is more or less self-explanatory, so pick the one that works best for you.

HDSLR Video Tutorial: Getting Started with Your D-Movie Camera

Shooting video with your Nikon HDSLR camera is easy, once you set a few basic settings.

1. Set your camera to PROGRAM, allowing the camera to set the exposure.
2. Go into the MOVIE SETTINGS and choose the quality/frames per second. Most videos are shot at 1920×1080/30p. This is Full HD, recording at 30 frames per second. If you want to give your movie a more cinematic or filmic look, choose 24p for 24 frames per second. HD is 1280×720. The higher the image quality, the larger the file.
3. Set the ISO to AUTO to allow your D-movie camera to make changes to the ISO as necessary.
4. Set the Focus Mode. Depending upon the subject you are shooting, you may want to set a specific Focus Mode. For general video shooting, AF-S will suffice. AF-S is good to use for subjects that are not moving, AF-F is ideal for moving subjects. The other choice is MF or Manual Focus, which you may want to try as you get more experience shooting video with your HD-SLR.
5. Set the AF Area Mode. Choices are: Face Priority, in which the camera will focus on faces; Wide, Normal and Subject Tracking, which is good for moving subjects. Normal should work for most subjects.
6. Turn on Live View.
7. Press the Record button and you’re shooting video.