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Best Types of Canon Lenses

Post author By J Bayston
Post date March 16, 2020

Best Types of Canon Lenses for each type of photography

In this blog post, I will quickly go through the best types of Canon lenses for the most popular types of photography and suggest some great lenses for each. As we know, every lens is a compromise to a greater or lesser degree. The most generalist lenses – kit lenses for example may be OK at most styles, but they won’t excel at any of them. Because cost has been an important factor, the image quality will not compete with specialist lenses – or the Canon L lenses – and because they are zooms and cover a wide focal range, the variable apertures will not allow for very shallow depths of field. Let’s take a look at some good Canon Lenses for landscape photography first.

Landscape Lenses

Landscape photography is not just about getting a perfect image of a scene and making sure that it is sharp and well exposed. Successful landscape photography evokes a sense of time, place and includes an element human interaction – even if the interaction is the effect it has on the viewer. In a way, it is a chance for the photographer to pay homage to the world around us – natural or man made. Given so much width and depth available in the frame, the landscape photographer needs to understand how to take advantage of perspective, composition, relative distance, and the interaction between the manufactured and natural world.

Often a landscape photographer will have studied the scene for some time before taking the picture – noting the angles, how the light falls at certain times of day, and how the scene is affected by different weather conditions. It could take many attempts to get that perfect shot. Landscape photography is about getting as wide an angle of view as possible – to get as much of the image into the frame as you can. You also want to have a wide depth of field to get most of the frame sharp. It doesn’t matter if you want to shoot expansive scenery or cityscapes and architecture, you are going to be looking for high quality, wide angle lenses. So, if you are looking for the best types of canon lenses to photograph almost anything in the wide world of landscapes, I would suggest one of the following:

The Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM lens. This EF-S lens gives you a wide 16mm effective focal length, allowing you to shoot imposing architecture and expansive landscapes. It is a high quality, light weight and cheap lens. A great starter for a landscape photographer.

The second suggestion would be a Canon EF-S STM 24 mm f/2.8 lens. This is a fixed lens for crop cameras, offering an effective 36mm focal length. It is very sharp and a great lens to have in your bag. It does produce some barrel distortion, but that can be corrected in edit. Again, small, light and cheap.

For something cheaper, take a look at the Rokinon FE14M-C 14mm F2.8 lens. This is a manual focus lens, so you would have to be comfortable with that, but has great sharpness at f8 and very little chromatic aberration

Our Superb Canon Lens Course is designed for DSLR owners who are thinking of buying a new or used lens for their Canon camera. There are so many lenses available for Canon DSLR cameras, that it can be quite confusing, even professional photographers. This course tells you all you need to know about lenses for Canon DSLRs – both Canon lenses and third party lenses – so that you will be able to buy your next lens with confidence. Packed with information about the best lenses you can buy for each type of photography, and showing some amazing pictures from each mentioned lens, check out this Canon Lens Course now!

Sports Lenses

Sport and action photography is about speed and accuracy. Every split-second counts, and you only ever get one chance to capture the shot. I would say that Action photography is one area of picture taking where practice is key. Like preparing for the sport itself, this could involve practicing single elements – zooming, panning, and using your autofocus, so that it comes naturally to you when you are in the field. For the very best results it’s important to have the right combination of camera and zoom lens. So let’s start with probably the first choice single lens for nearly every sports photographer:

The Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens. Whilst every lens is a compromise, this lens excels in all the areas that are important for a sports photographer. The images are tack sharp, the auto focus is extremely quick, and it is great in low light. The downsides are that it is very heavy – you would need a monopod, probably. This is an EF lens for Full frame cameras. It will work very well with crop frame cameras, but the autofocus will be slower.

For a longer focal length, try the Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM. This is an excellent lens for daytime action, though not really for low light. The image quality of this lens is considered to be outstanding and the build quality superb. The focal range of 100-400mm (160-640mm on an APS-C camera) gives you more options than say the 70-200mm especially for wildlife and sporting events.

And for a great lens with extra bragging rights, take a look at the Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Sports lens. This is a beast, weighing 3 kilos and is 10 inches long, but it has very fast autofocus, superb optical stabilisation and produces very sharp images.

Of course, some of the sports lenses would also be good for wildlife photography, but wildlife photography is all about getting your subject up close whilst keeping your distance. Usually you are shooting in reasonable light and so can exchange a little speed for extra reach.

Travel Lenses

Picking a lens to travel with is a bit different to picking a lens for other situations. Not only will you be concerned with image quality, but also size, weight and versatility. After all, you will be carrying it around with you when you are travelling and, ideally, you want to keep the number of lenses in your bag down to a minimum. So for travel photography, it’s better to try and focus on getting a smaller number of lenses that work well in a wide variety of situations. I would suggest that you choose two lenses – a walk-around lens and a fast prime. If you have decided that you only want to take one lens, then you will want a good walk-around lens – one that will satisfy your travel photography needs. The usual walk-around focal lengths are considered to be between 28 – 50mm. These lengths should be good for street scenes, travel portraits, architecture and landscape shots.

The first one to look at is the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens. This lens is one of the best types of Canon lenses around and it will allow you to shoot panoramic landscapes, more intimate city images, contextual portraits, low light images and details – in fact most of the things you might want to shoot when travelling.It is a superb fast lens – and it is weather sealed, which is something you might want to consider if you are going of the beaten track.

If you are going to by travelling in and around cities, you might want to think about a wide angle lens, perhaps the Tamron AF 28-75mm f/2.8 SP XR Di LD lens. It is not too heavy, and offers clean sharp images, being perfect for architectural and landscape pictures. It is also very good in low light.

If you want to have a little more reach, take a look at the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens. It is a favourite with photographers who want to travel light. It offers really good image quality with advanced image stabilisation – which you may well need if you are shooting mostly hand held. It is a superb portrait lens and very good for landscapes. The near-silent focusing is useful if you are shooting in enclosed spaces.

When it comes to that prime, I don’t think you can go wrong with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 STM lens or Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS USM lens. Both are excellent lenses and give you a good prime focal length for travel photography. They are also both the perfect size to fit in a pocket

Portrait Lenses

As a portrait photographer you may have to shoot various kinds of pictures, from group shots of families to professional style headshots. The challenge for portrait photographers is to tease out the inner essence of the subject. This might sound grandiose and pretentious, but a picture of someone that doesn’t reflect character or personality is really just a two dimensional representation – a passport photo.

If you are looking for a lens that provides a reasonable working distance from the individual subject, with a narrower field of view than a 50mm lens, the 85mm is the most popular focal length for portraiture.

I think the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM lens is a really good place to start. It is an excellent portrait lens, the f1.8 is ideal for shallow depth of field work that lets the portrait really pack a punch. It is very sharp and with fast autofocus.

Both Sigma and Tamron produce very good 85mm lenses, but to be honest, nothing can compete with the Canon for quality and price. Even the Canon L lens – the Canon EF 85mm f/1.4L , is not regarded as highly by photographers as this f1.8.

Whilst the Canon 85mm can be used on a crop frame camera to good effect, APS-C owners have a real advantage here because the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM is a great portrait lens when you account for the crop factor. Ideally, having a longer lens gives you a slight advantage when shooting portraits because the subject looks more natural. The effect is hardly noticeable with a 135mm lens and so it is the jewel in any portrait photographer’s kit bag – particularly an f1.8 like this.

So that was a quick overview of the best types of Canon lenses for particular kinds of photography. As I mentioned, There are other great lenses available, but if you want to get a good lens to start with, none of these lenses will let you down.

For more information about Canon Lenses, and a superb course, click here

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Nikon D3400 white balance

Post author By J Bayston
Post date January 2, 2018
No Comments on Nikon D3400 white balance

Nikon D3400 white balance is one of my favorite settings for a couple of reasons. The first is that it helps you set the camera so that you get naturally exposed pictures which is really good. And the second is that you can use that same process to be really creative with your photography. This article discusses what white balance is and what the camera is trying to do and how creative that can be and how it can help you to manage your environment.

So first of all Nikon D3400 white balance: what is it all about? Well, when you walk into a room, or even outside, the quality of the light and the tone of the light will change. It changes depending on whether you are in natural or artificial light. Your eyes and your brain filter all of that out, so usually you do not really even recognize it, but the camera will because it is quite objective, whereas your eyes and your brain are quite subjective. Usually you do not want to take pictures in a light which has a color cast. If you do not notice the ambient color, then after the shoot, you could discover that your pictures either have quite a yellow or orange tinge, or have quite a blue tinge. The Nikon D3400 white balance – and setting the white balance – allows you to set the camera so that, effectively, it sees what you want to see and it sets white. The important thing to remember about white is it is not a single color, it is a combination of all colors and so once you set white with the camera, the camera is able to set all the other colors accordingly.

There are two ways of looking at the Nikon D3400 white balance. The most obvious one is when you are looking at the back of the camera as you press the i button and Nikon D3400 white balance is third along the top line. That gives you the option to select the white balance that you want. However it does not let you change the white balance within those settings. If you want to do that you need to go into the MENU OPTION and then go into SHOOTING MENU, then you go down to white balance and you will see that you have all the options that you would see when you look in the i button, but, should you press your multi-selector to the right, it will give you the option of either deciding to have a different option within that main sub-option (so for fluorescence, for example, you have seven further options in fluorescent which are all slightly different) or if you do not have different options then you have an option which allows you to change that option within the camera. You can do that by using the multi-selector and you can make either more green or more magenta or blue or more red. Personally, I think this is probably far too detailed unless you are going for a very specific look, but the general way of changing, which is to go back and just look at the general options in white balance when you are in the shooting menu, should be sufficient for you to decide your best option. But if you want to go in and change cloudy for example and make it a little more red or a little more blue then you can do so but you can not make those changes to that option from the i button.

So lets have a look at what the Nikon D3400 white balance options are when we come out of menu and we will have a look through them with the i button. The first one is AUTO. This tries to select the most obvious white balance itself. It has quite a good auto detection for white balance and in most cases you will be fine on AUTO with the Nikon D3400. It is fairly broad brush but it is pretty good for most circumstances. The next one is INCANDESCENT or tungsten. As I mentioned, that has quite a yellow tone to it because it is more like candle light or home and residential lighting which tends to be tungsten lighting and so it will try to take some of that warmth out – some of that orange and yellow and add some of the blue to make whatever is white in that picture more white and less yellow. The next one beyond that is FLORESCENT. That is a little bluer and it is the sort of lighting that you get in offices – the sort of strip lighting that goes across the top – which gives a very blue tone to things. And as a consequence of that the camera will try to add a little yellow to the picture. Then we get on to DIRECT SUNLIGHT. Now direct sunlight is actually a lot bluer than you might imagine and so it does try to add a little more yellow to that just to give it a more natural look. The one after that is FLASH. When you fire the flash, whether it is the built-in flash or an external flash, that is a very cold white shade. So as a consequence of that it does try to add some more yellow to give a more natural tone to the color, and especially, obviously for skin tones which is quite important. Then the next two which are CLOUDY and SHADE move further up Kelvin scale from and obviously then the environment becomes more and more blue as you move up there and so it will be trying harder and harder to add a little yellow and a little orange just to warm that picture up and make it look less cold. Obviously if you are shooting in shade or in cloud then as I said before there is a natural inclination for you for it to look slightly blue, slightly cold, so you want a little orange to warm that picture up.

At the moment, we are looking at setting the camera to get the most natural exposure, but imagine that you are shooting in a fluorescent office, but want the picture to look like it is a room with natural sunlight. This would be a good opportunity to change the Nikon D3400 white balance to shade and the camera will automatically warm the image up for you, changing the whole feel of the picture. That is how the white balance can work for you to create more interesting pictures.

For more information about the Nikon D3400 click here

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Tags cameras, Nikon D3400 DSLR, Other Nikon Products, photography, videos

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Lumix TZ20

With the Lumix TZ20, Pansonic have taken their excellent technology and produced a camera that makes sharing your images so much easier with GPS geo-tagging. It is amongst the best in category with its 14 Mega-pixel files and remarkable Leica 16x zoom lens. This is equivalent to 24-380mm and the image zoom within the camera can take magnification to 21x (500mm). The 24mm setting is superb – especially good for ultra-wide angle shots. The lens is covered with a unique anti-glare coating. The autofocus is quick and accurate and the image stabilization means that the pictures are usually sharp, even at full zoom and when hand held.

14 MP files are easily big enough to blow up to poster size and it can shoot a very impressive 10 frames per second in a single burst. ISO extends to 6400, though this is not a camera designed especially for low light photography.

The Lumix TZ20 has a GPS unit with a cache of landmarks already loaded,so you can let the camera geo-tag your shots ready for sharing on social media sites. they camera will automatically store the tagged pictures in alphabetical order for speedy retrieval.

The LCD touch screen is clear and bright. you can use autofocus by just tapping on the subject on screen and you can tap to take the picture as well. The 10 FPS burst can be used to produce 3D images – just press the button and the camera will choose the two best images for the 3D effect.

The TZ20 can record full HD video. The autofocus and and image stabilization works with video and makes a huge difference to the quality, particularly if you are shooting on the move. There is an inbuilt stereo Mic. Many of the scene modes for stills transfer over to video. These include Portrait, Soft Skin, Transform, Self-Portrait, Scenery, Food, Party, Candle Light, Sunset, Beach, Snow, Aerial, Pinhole and Film Grain. It has a HDMI socket so that you can play your video straight onto a TV. It takes SD memory card and SDHC memory cards and has a built in memory of about 18MB.

OUR EXPERT SAYS

What a great travel camera! The TZ20 combines a superb lens, fast burst speed and excellent image quality to produce a great all-rounder. The geo-tagging facility is really clever and the image stabilizer turns a good stills camera into an astonishing video camera. The HDMI socket means you can see your work on your TV as soon as you get home.

Panasonic Lumix TZ20 Features

16x Optical Zoom Lens (21x including digital): Excellent quality lens and the built in image stabilizer is superb.

Full HD video: Good quality and it can plug straight into your TV.

Built-in GPS Function, Geo-tagging and landmark recognition: Means your images are Social Media ready.

Touch-screen LCD : Intuitive and quick.

3D Photo Shooting Capability: Easy with the 10FPS burst mode.

Find out more about the Lumix TZ20 here.

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Nikon Coolpix L26 – camerawize

Post author By J Bayston
Post date January 1, 1970
No Comments on Nikon Coolpix L26 – camerawize

The Nikon Coolpix L26 is an excellent camera for beginners. It is a described as a no frills camera- and is one of the cheapest around, but has a surprising array of features and still retains the quality you would expect from Nikon. The 5x lens is the usual high Nikon standard and it produces a 16 mega-pixel file. It has an easy to use auto mode (with 18 simple options) and has a larger than average LCD screen. Portraits are easy with the Smart Portrait System, which has blink warning and skin toning.

It slips into video recording at the touch of a button and can shoot remarkably crisp 720p video.

The L26 takes AA batteries and is available in silver, red and black.

The Coolpix L26 is ideal for someone who just wants a basic point and shoot, a youngster showing an interest in photography, or to take to places you wouldn’t want to take an expensive camera. Although it seems basic, it is capable of taking some great shots.

<h2 align="CENTER">Nikon Coolpix L26 Features</h2> 16 MP File Size:This is really impressive. You can blow pics up to poster size Easy Auto mode: This optimizes all the settings to ensure good photos 5x optical zoom lens (26–130mm): Not the biggest range, but a great quality lens 720p video recording: One touch recording and really good quality video e-VR (vibration reduction): Similar to the system on other nikon compacts 7.5 cm (3.0-in.) LCD screen: Larger than other cameras in this bracket ISO up to 1600 and Motion detection: All these contribute to your picture quality Best shot selector: Selects your sharpest shot for you 18 scene modes: All the popular styles catered for here Wireless transfer: Transmit your pictures directly to your phone or computer <a href="http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/coolpix/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Click here for more information about this camera</a> <div class="meta-info"> <div class="meta-info-wrapper">03-27-2018,<a href="/category/cameras/" rel="category tag">cameras</a>, <a href="/category/news-and-reviews-about-nikon-products/" rel="category tag">Other Nikon Products</a>, <a href="/category/photography/" rel="category tag">photography</a></div> </div>

Nikon Coolpix L26 Features

16 MP File Size:This is really impressive. You can blow pics up to poster size

Easy Auto mode: This optimizes all the settings to ensure good photos

5x optical zoom lens (26–130mm): Not the biggest range, but a great quality lens

720p video recording: One touch recording and really good quality video

e-VR (vibration reduction): Similar to the system on other nikon compacts

7.5 cm (3.0-in.) LCD screen: Larger than other cameras in this bracket

ISO up to 1600 and Motion detection: All these contribute to your picture quality

Best shot selector: Selects your sharpest shot for you

18 scene modes: All the popular styles catered for here

Wireless transfer: Transmit your pictures directly to your phone or computer

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Nikon D3400 buttons – camerawize

Post author By J Bayston
Post date January 1, 1970
No Comments on Nikon D3400 buttons – camerawize

The Nikon D3400 Buttons

The Nikon D3400 buttons allow you to get into the inner workings of the camera easily. Whilst the Mode Dial is a useful short cut to se the camera to shoot in specific styles, the buttons will give you more control over your pictures and videos.

The Nikon D3400 buttons at the top begin with the ON/OFF switch. You can see that that rotates either clockwise or anti-clockwise. Within that switch is the shutter button and this is what you press to take the picture. The next large thing on the top of the camera is the MODE DIAL. This is really important because it is the thing that you are going to turn to most of all – particularly in the early stages of your photography with this camera but pretty much all the way through. The MODE DIAL will tell the Nikon D3400 what mode you want to use to take the picture, and the mode in this sense means what style of picture or the circumstances in which you are photographing so that the camera itself can change the settings and the parameters to take the picture with the best exposure. Unless you are in M for manual, in all the other modes the camera will decide the best exposure for you and that’s very important to remember.

If we go to the other Nikon D3400 buttons on the top of the camera then the one with the red dot is the VIDEO off and on button and the one across from that with the plus and the minus is the EXPOSURE COMPENSATION BUTTON. This button allows you to change the exposure in any of the modes here, except for the manual mode. So if you think it’s a little dark or a little bit too bright then you can use this button to either underexpose or over the overexpose the picture slightly and that gives you a little control over the auto settings and the auto modes so it’s a very useful one to have. The INFO BUTTON has two purposes – if you are looking through the viewfinder, then on the back screen the various details of what you have got in terms of aperture and shutter speed etc. are available here. They will show here if you press the info button when you are looking through the viewfinder then it will switch that back screen off. Now that can be quite useful because the back screen does drain the battery somewhat, so it is a useful thing to have if you are going to be shooting all day and you do not necessarily need to see what is on the back screen. If you are in Liveview which means that you are looking through the camera and looking through to the subject through the back screen, then the INFO BUTTON gives you a lot more information around that screen telling you the information you need to know, whether you’re shooting either stills or video, and so it is a very useful button for that. Also on the top is the hotshoe. It is called the hot shoe because it has electrical connectivity going through it. If it did not it would be called the cold shoe. This hot shoe is designed primarily for a flash. It is either a flash gun or an off-camera flash. They are essentially both the same but if you put a flash gun on here – a type that shoots TTL (which is Through The Lens) then the flash gun will talk to the camera and that means that it dedicates itself to the camera. So, in other words, the camera will give it information that it automatically picks up anyway to set its own exposure. It will tell it the distance that the subject is away from the camera and it will give it the lighting conditions and as a consequence of that, the flash will set itself to get the best exposure. So it is a very useful thing to have and also with regards to the camera flash here. <h2 align="CENTER">The Nikon D3400 Buttons on the back of the camera</h2> <h2 align="CENTER"><a href="/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/nikon-d3400-back.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8115" src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/nikon-d3400-back-1024x768.jpg" alt="nikon-d3400- buttons back" width="669" height="502" /></a> </h2> At the very top is the viewfinder and that is what DSLR photographers traditionally look through when they are trying to compose and take their pictures. At the top corner here is the diopter or the DIOPTRIC ADJUSTER and this is for people who do not have 20/20 vision and who need to adjust the focus of the viewfinder to match their eyesight. Bear in mind that it will not actually change the focusing mechanism of the camera, it is purely just so that when you look through the viewfinder you see things as sharp when the camera sees them as sharp. The way you check this is by looking through the camera when it is on autofocus and focusing on something and then turning the adjuster until it also looks sharp to you. <a href="/nikon-d3400/d3400-sample-chapter/"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-6567 size-large" src="http://www.camerawize.photography/wp-content/uploads/1970/01/d3400-sample-ad-1024x220.jpg" alt="d3400 sample ad" width="669" height="144" /></a> Just to the right of the viewfinder is a very useful button. It is the AE lock or AF lock – auto exposure or auto focus locks. Now, by setting this button, which you can do in the menus you can set it to either lock the AUTO EXPOSURE or lock the AUTO FOCUS and that can be quite useful. If you focused on your subject in the middle of the frame and you just want to move the subject left or right – off center – then you can press the auto focus lock and the Nikon D3400 will maintain that same focus and allow you to move the lens slightly left or right to move the subject left or right of the frame without refocusing. Likewise, the AUTO EXPOSURE LOCK means that if you want to set the exposure of the frame and then move the Nikon D3400 so that it’s shooting in what would be a different light and therefore require a different exposure then the camera won’t reset the exposure and you can shoot the original exposure. There are reasons why you might do that for example if you were taking a picture of somebody against a bright sky and you don’t want to use the flash then you could use the exposure lock by exposing the camera for the subject light rather than for the light of the sky and so the exposure of the picture will be set to the subject rather than the sky is that background. So there are reasons why you would want to do that and it is a very useful button to have. If you are in playback menu then by pressing the AE or AF lock button then you protect the picture that you are looking at, or the video that you are looking at which is also useful feature. Next in the Nikon D3400 buttons is the MAIN DIAL. This is used primarily for navigation. It allows you to move either across when you are choosing different selections of, say, white balance or auto exposures and it also allows you to navigate across other elements of the menu. There are two ways of navigating through the menu. The other is the Multi-Selector which is below that with the OK in the middle and that allows you to go up and down as well. It is actually more useful in most cases for navigation, but the rotate dial is also very useful in certain circumstances. Now the button that is between the main dial and the multi-selector is the LV button. If you press the LV button you will hear the mirror slot up and what that means is that the light coming in through the lens is coming straight through to the back screen – not being bounced up to the viewfinder. With this camera you can only use the viewfinder OR the Liveview screen. You can not use them both at the same time. The Liveview screen is actually very useful for composition and for understanding the sort of picture you are taking and you have to use live view when you are shooting video. So that is what the LV button does – it changes between the viewfinder and the live view screen at the back. If we look at the two buttons beneath the multi-selector which we have discussed then the first one is the DELETE BUTTON which is signified by the waste bin. This operates when you are in playback mode. When you are in playback mode on the Nikon D3400 and you see a picture or a video that you no longer want, if you press that delete button it will first ask you if you are sure you want to delete it and then if you press it again it will delete it. <iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iwmg9VhLYHY" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen">

Next to the delete button is the SHUTTER CONTROL BUTTON. Now it is not the shutter release button, which is on the top and allows you to take the picture, but the shutter control button gives you the options for when you press that shutter button. So, for example, the first option is single frame which means that you press the shutter button once and you take one picture. The next one is continuous which means that if you press the shutter button then you will take five frames per second probably up to four or five seconds before it has to start to buffer which means of course up to 20 or 25 frames. The one after that is the quiet shutter release. Then, after that, you get on to the self timers. The self timer can be very useful because if you want to take a picture of a group and be in that group, then you can set it on to the initial one which is ten seconds and then you can press the shutter button and then run round to the front and be in that picture, which is very useful. The next two are with connection to the remote control the infrared remote control which you can buy as an accessory to this camera and it allows you to set the shutter and to release the shutter by remote control using infrared. It has a two-second delay and it has an instant shutter release. The two-second delay makes sense of course because you do not want to be photographed if you are going to be in the group holding the shutter release infrared light. So it gives you two seconds to put your hand down. The instant one is if you are away from the camera but you have infrared connection to it and it means that you can fire that shutter release straight away.

The buttons on the left hand side of the camera are really very useful and quite powerful. The one at the very top is the PLAYBACK BUTTON and that allows you to see the pictures or the videos that you have taken. So by pressing that button and then using the multi-selector to navigate your way through, you can see either the stills or the videos that you have taken and by looking at the magnifying glasses which are just below the MENU BUTTON either the plus or the minus, if you find a still image that you want to examine more closely then you can use the plus to go into that and look at it more closely or to come out of it again you can use the minus magnifying glass. With the minus magnifying glass you can look at multi images on the back as well so if you press that when it is a full frame then you will get four images and then you will get nine and then you will get even more if you press it on more time, and that gives you an idea of how many pictures you have taken and if you wish, I guess the sort of progress that you are making in terms of the images that you are taking if you’re doing a specific shoot, or you are trying to take a picture of something in particular. The one we missed out there is the MENU BUTTON and that really is important because that allows you access to the menus. Now the one criticism that I would aim at Nikon here is that they have not given us enough menus. we have essentially got four. We have got a PLAYBACK MENU, a SHOOTING MENU, a SETUP MENU and a RETOUCH MENU and then the one below that is just a RECENT SETTINGS MENU. So we have essentially four menus with an enormous number of selections in each of them. That means that it can be quite difficult to find what you are looking for and I would either say this is a criticism I have of this camera. There are other cameras out there which have more menus with fewer subcategories and navigating through them is a lot more simple, but this is what we have got and we shall go through the menus in a different video.

If we go down again to the magnifying glass we also have next to it a question mark and that is also very useful because if we get to a point where we are looking at one of the options in the camera and the question mark pops up at the bottom of the screen, then by pressing this button we get a brief guide as to what it is we have selected. The final button here is the i button and it is very useful because it gives you quick access to the settings that you can change when you want to take a picture. Please remember that if you are in one of the manual modes M, A, S, P, then you have access to – and are able to change – more settings than if you are in an automatic mode, because the automatic mode makes many of those selections for you and you do not have the ability to change them.

On the left hand side you have got two sockets, one for USB and one for an HDMI lead. The USB allows you to connect your camera to a computer and transfer your pictures across and the HDMI lead socket here allows you to connect your camera to a TV in order for you to see your pictures or your videos on a television. You do not get either of these leads in the box so you would have to buy them, but they are useful ways of connecting to other devices and particularly with the USB lead if you want to transfer your pictures onto a computer without having to take your card out and have a card reader. On the other side you have the card socket and this is where your SD card goes. it is a full size SD. On the bottom is the door for the battery compartment to allow you to place the battery. The only other thing on the bottom is the socket which allows you to attach the camera to a tripod. It is a standard fit – if you buy a tripod for a DSLR it will fit this camera so there is no need to worry about that.

Now let us take a look at the front Nikon D3400 buttons. The first thing we see is the infrared receiver and when I mentioned using the infrared shutter button the ML-L3 then that is the receiver for that infrared signal. You do not notice it usually. The second thing to look at here is the redeye reduction lamp and that is very useful when you have the flash operating because sometimes when you photograph people the light bounces directly out of their eyes and creates a red-eye effect. This light will flash an instant before the flash goes off and will cause the pupils to contract and therefore reduce the possibility of redeye. It is also the self timer indicator so if you have got the camera set to self timer then this will flash to indicate that it is on properly, and finally it can also operate as the auto focus assist illuminator which means that if the camera is trying to focus on something in very poor light or focus on something that’s got very little contrast then the light will go off to help it focus better. Then, going around to the other side of the camera then the first thing to look at here is the lens release button and obviously you need to press that button in order to release the lens. Above that and above the badge for the D3400 those three little indents there, they are the internal microphone. It operates reasonably well over a short distance, but just remember if you are videoing not to put your fingers over that.

Then we get onto to quite interesting buttons they are the FUNCTION BUTTON and the FLASH BUTTON. The function button allows you to select specific functions which you can change by pressing that button so you can change image quality and size, ISO, white balance or active d-lighting. Personally I would change that to ISO and the reason I would do that is because it is very useful when you are shooting video. The button above that is the flash mode button and if you press it then it will pop up the flash and allow you to use the flash even if the setting or the mode you are on doesn’t think you need it and that can be useful when you want to use fill-in flash at a time or a point where the Nikon D3400 does not actually think you require it. But that is not all, because if you’ve popped up the flash then if you press this button again then it will give you options for the flash mode. Now there is a video on flash and flash guns so I am not going to go into much detail here but the flash modes on offer here are fill-in flash, red eye reduction, slow sync with red eye, slow sync rear curtain and slow sync and then back to fill-in flash. That is a really useful way of changing the purpose of the flash very quickly. But again that is not all because if you press the flash button and the exposure button which we have mentioned already then you get to change the flash compensation by using the main dial again at the back. You can increase the flash compensation by one stop or you can reduce it down by three stops and that is very useful if you have taken a picture with the flash and you think it is either a little too bright or a little too dark. So by using those two buttons in combination you can actually change the flash compensation very easily and very quickly.

For more about the Nikon D3400, click here

,cameras, Nikon D3400 DSLR, photography

Tags cameras, Nikon D3400 DSLR, photography