Camera settings that I prefer

Few basic camera settings that will help you to take great pictures. These are the ones that I prefer as I got good results. You can use your own settings as per your wish.

Quality
I use the basic large file quality. I prefer smaller files. Using the fine quality just blows up your file size and the fineness in the picture is not even considerable. Even the large JPEG basic quality gives you good results.

Exposure compensation
I set the exposure compensation to -0.7; most of the digital SLR’s in market have a defective metering. When exposure is set to -0.7 it gives you good results as compared to the default exposure.

Shutter advance mode
I set my camera to the continuous mode. I get one shot with one press. In case I need to take more shots to compare then I can keep the button pressed and take multiple pictures keep the good ones and delete the not so good ones. D40 can take up to 2.5 snaps per sec.

ISO
I prefer using the ISO auto more and ISO 200. The camera lighting meter checks the overall lighting and sets the ISO on it’s on. For out door photography I usually set it to 200 and it gives me better results than ISO auto. Nikon D40 supports ISO 200 – ISO 1,600.

White balance
I set my camera to auto white balance. I let the camera decide it. The auto mode works great most of the times with Nikon D40. I have tried all the modes at same location with same lighting conditions and diffident modes at different locations with different lighting conditions. Results of auto mode are much better than other modes. So finally I decided to leave it to auto mode.

Optimize the image
This option is available in the menu. I set it to use the vivid color. It gives good results.

Image Sharpness
Image sharpening is set to auto. I prefer auto because you have to keep changing the sharpness for different situations. Any way the results on the auto more are good so I do not bother to fiddle with the sharpness setting. For those you are lazy this is good camera as it does most of the things by its own. Acts like a normal aim and shoot camera but gives results as they are expected from a SLR.

Tone compensation
The Nikon D40 automatically adjusts the contrast and dynamic range to each shot. Again I do not disturb this as it works well in auto mode.

Color mode
This setting is one of the most important one. It gives colors to your pictures. If you want good outdoor and indoor pictures with D40 select the IIIa mode. It gives brighter pictures. Don’t even try to use any other modes unless you have all the time in the world to experiment with the other modes.

Saturation
I prefer (+) saturation. That gives much better and brighter pictures. That’s the default mode on D40.

Hue
I leave this one to default. I do not change it as it messed up the exposure and contrast of the picture for some reason. At the end you don’t get good pictures so leave it to default i.e. 0.

Focus mode
I always use the AF mode; the camera will focus on the object on its own and give good pictures.

Modes
Most of the digital SLR’s have many automatic settings like landscape, play, action, portrait and night etc I just ignore all these modes and the auto one of course.

I prefer one of the 4 manual modes P, S, A 7 M.

P mode – This is program automatic exposure mode. Here the camera decides the exposure time and the aperture settings. This is the simple one and saves lot of efforts of yours. We can even set it to manual if you want to do some experiments. The ideal combinations are displayed on the screen as decided by the exposure metering.

A mode – This is aperture priority mode. This lets you select the aperture values manually and the D40 will decide suitable shutter speed for you.

S mode – This is shutter priority mode. Here you can set the shutter speed manually and the D40 will decide the suitable aperture value for you.

M mode – This is the manual exposure mode. Here you can set the aperture and the shutter speed manually. The only thins is you have to try lot of combinations to take good pictures unless you are pro with the manual mode.

I hope this will give you a basic idea of how to use a digital SLR. The settings are good for any SLR from the same range. It can be Cannon or Nikon; this will work well with 95% of the cameras. Let me know if this article is useful for you.