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The Nikon D4

The Nikon D4 Straddles the Stills/Video Divide

The D4 is an Ideal Camera for the Professional Photographer and Videographer

The Canon 5D markII set the standard for the professional photo/video camera. It is no surprise that Nikon’s response has upped the ante in both departments. However, instead of revolution, Nikon have chosen to improve incrimentally in many areas – the main changes in the stills department have been aimed at making the camera quicker and easier to use. A 16 mega-pixel file size is modest at this level, though 10 Frames per Second is useful, particularly with Autofocus.

The improved sensor on the Nikon D4 gives the better metering and Subject Tracking and extends face detection for the optical viewfinder. Extending the ISO range from 50 -204,800 is impressive, but surely would only appeal to specific niche – perhaps ill-lit night time sports or nature photography. The Kevlar/carbon fiber-composite shutter unit boasts a standard life cycle rating of 400,000 releases. There are some ergonomic improvements, making the camera easier to handle and the buttons easier to manage. The Nikon Wi-Fi transmitter allows you to see the Live View on an iPad, which can also control shooting mode and trigger the shutter, which might also be useful for the nature photographer.

The Nikon D4 is aimed at professional photographers and videographers who want the combination of top quality video and extensive lens flexibility. It will also appeal to specialist amateurs who shoot in very low-light and want to shoot remotely.

Of course, the main big change is in the video department. Nikon have seriously upgraded their video output to full HD (1080p), full native HD (1920 x 1080p) and even allows you to feed full, uncompressed video into external viewing devices. In other words, it offers full broadcast quality video and stereo sound. An Out Mic lets you set the sound levels before shooting.

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Nikon D3400 white balance

 

Nikon D3400 white balance settings

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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Canon 1300D video settings

The Canon 1300D/Rebel T6 DSLR is a great camera for shooting stills and also movies. However, it is always a good idea to get the Canon 1300D video settings right from the start.

The Canon 1300D has a specific option for movies and in order to make any changes in the 1300D to shoot movies you need to go to the Video Mode, which is on the Mode Dial. Turn the Mode Dial round to the very bottom option which shows a video camera, and you will hear the mirror inside the camera pop up. This allows you to see your subjects through the backscreen and this is the only way you can shoot video on this camera.

The menu tab options are different when you are in video mode. You have fewer choices, but they are dedicated to shooting video. The first thing that you should decide on is your video system. This may seem a bit irrelevant – it was developed when Television systems were very different and if you wanted to show your videos on a TV screen you had to marry the cameras settings to the TV. There are two systems, one is PAL and the other is NTSC. NTSC operates in the United States and PAL tends to be the system which is operated in Europe and other parts of the world. Whilst there is not much difference, it does change the way that the camera operates very slightly. For example, when you start to look at the frame rates you will see that under NTSC you get a frame rate option of 60 frames per second or 30 frames per second. When you are in PAL you get the option of 50 frames a second and 25 frames per second. Most people these days don’t shoot on DSLR in order to show their videos on televisions. They tend to use it for social media or showing on a laptop. In which case it doesn’t make really any difference. However, also be aware that these frame rate speeds can affect the way a video looks under artificial lighting, or if you have a tv screen or monitor in the shot. That is because lights flicker and TVs work at the same NTSC rates in the USA and PAL rates in Europe. So it is worth getting right, otherwise you might find a strange flickering in your video, or the TV screen will have a black band dropping down the screen, because the camera and lights are out of synchronisation. Annoyingly, you won’t see this until you are editing afterwards. In order to change Video Mode you need to go into the menus and you go to Tab 2 and down at the bottom you have the option to change Video System.

The second options you need to think about in the Canon 1300D video settings is file size and frame rate. Although they are two choices, they are combined for you in the Canon 1300D video settings. These options are important because they will decide the quality of the movies that you produce. The canon 1300D is pretty good – it will shoot 1080p which is full HD and it will also shoot 720p which is standard HD – both these sizes are absolutely fine for YouTube or Vimeo. In order to make those selections go into Video Tab 2 and find Movie Recording Size. Press on that option and we are offered four choices. Depending on whether you’ve chosen NTSC or PAL, you maximum rates will be either 60fps or 50fps.

The next option you need to consider in the Canon 1300D video settings is exposure. When you are shooting photographs with the Canon 1300D you have many options. They are all on the Mode Dial and they go from entirely manual to semi-automatic and then to entirely automatic options. In most of these Modes the Canon 1300D is trying to get the best exposure for the stills that you are shooting, within the parameters of light etc. With shooting movies you have two options – you can either shoot Automatic or you can shoot Manual. With Automatic in the movie setting the Canon 1300D will try to get the best exposure for you and it usually works very well, so I would suggest that initially at least you shoot in Automatic until you become more confident.

When you progress to Manual, changing the various parameters in the Canon 1300D video settings can seem quite complicated. They are certainly different than the option for shooting photographs. Movie Exposure is in Video Tab 1 and you get the two choices, Auto or Manual. If you choose to go into Manual then you have much more control over the settings. You will be able to change the Shutter Speed, the Aperture and the ISO. For the Shutter Speed, rotate Main Dial on the Canon 1300D. By depressing the AV button and rotating that Main Dial at the same time you can change the Aperture. The ISO is changed by pressing the flash button and rotating the Main Dial.

The fourth option you need to consider in the Canon 1300D video settings is sound. Sadly, the Canon 1300D does not have an external microphone socket. It just has an internal microphone which works reasonably well, but can be a bit limited. In Shooting Tab 2, the second one down is Sound Recording and you can set that to one of three options. You can have either Auto, Manual or Disabled. I don’t think you should disable it entirely because sometimes it is useful to have sound, even if you don’t intend to use it in the final cut. It is helpful for editing. Auto is quite good and it will try to pick up as much sound as possible. Of course, you may not want the ambient sound, you might be trying to capture something specific. Manual is OK provided you are quite close to the sound source. On the backscreen you will see a decibel bar going across the bottom and you should try to get the sound peaking at about 12.

The next couple of options in the Canon 1300D video settings that need to be checked are in Video Tab 3 and it may seem that they are less important than other choices. However, you should take a look at them because they do affect the way that your video looks. Go to the bottom of Video Tab 3 to the Picture Style option. These options can really affect the way your movies look. They are the same options that you get with photographs and you can choose to have Vivid or Sepia or many other options and some of them are set so that they bring out the best qualities for portrait and landscape. With video it tends to be better to try and shoot video as flat as possible and so the best option to start with is neutral and so you should always set that to neutral for video until you make the decision that you want to change the Picture Style and shoot something differently. The one just above that in Video Tab 3 is Custom White Balance. It’s very important for shooting videos because if you start moving around and shooting things in different light then the one stable element – the one constant – will be the white balance.

To see more about the Canon 1300D/T6 Click here.

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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.

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

The Nikon D3400 Buttons

Nikon D3400 DSLR Camera

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.

 

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.

d3400 sample ad

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