The Nikon D3400 set up video.
Hello, in this video we're going to look
at how to set up your Nikon D3400 for
the first time.
Welcome to the Camerawize Channel.
In this video we are going to
show you how to set up your Nikon D3400
for the very first time.
The first thing you need to do is to get your
battery and to charge it.
When you
buy the camera you will receive a
battery and a battery charger and,
although the battery may look like it is
fully charged, it is worth just getting it
an extra hour or so in the charger to
make sure.
The reason for that is
that by fully charging and then fully
draining your battery as you use it, it
does extend the life of your battery.
Once you've charged it, you then place it
into the camera which is in the socket
here at the bottom.
It can only go in
one way - it goes in with these
contacts at the top and it goes in
only one way, so if it doesn't
go in very easily you're putting it in
the wrong way.
Then you just close
the door.
The next thing you need to do
is attach the lens.
If you bought the
kit lens, which is a great buy,
then you will get that in the box
with the camera.
If you look on
the side of the camera here, there is a white
dot and if you look on the side of the
lens you will see also there is a white
dot.
So, take off the
two caps very carefully, match up the two
white dots, gently fitting it into the
bayonet socket and then twisting it anti
clockwise until it clicks.
Now, although you get nearly everything you need
in the box when you buy the camera, for you
to take pictures pretty much straight
away, the one thing you don't get when
you get box is a memory card.
Of course you need a memory card to store
the pictures and the videos that you
shoot on the camera.
We suggest getting a
SanDisk card and the reason for that is
that sound discs will guarantee the life
of the card.
It is important to
remember they won't guarantee what's on
the card but if the card fails SanDisk
will replace the card.
It is a little extra.
The way you put the card into the camera
is on the side socket here.
You open it
up by pulling it slightly forward and
you put the card in facing to you.
Just push it in until it clicks and what
you'll notice is that when you push it
in completely a green light flashes on
the back of the camera to say that it's
being done properly.
If you need to take
the card out then you just press the
card and it's on a spring and it will
just bounce out again.
Then you can
put it back in.
Very straight forward.
On the other side are two other ports.
These are very useful because they are a
USB port which allows you to transfer
your pictures directly from the camera
to a laptop computer and beneath that an HDMI
port which allows you to show your
pictures on a TV.
Neither of these
leads are available in the box so if you
want to do either of those things you
need to buy the leads separately.
Once you've inserted your memory card
the next thing to do is to switch the
camera on.
But first
take off the lens cap and
activate the lens.
What I mean is
that you press the button on the side of the lens
and you extend the lens out.
You need
to do this in order for the camera to
work because if you don't the camera
won't take any pictures.
Once you've
done that you can switch on the camera.
Once you have done that you will see
in the back screen that you've got
various choices to make.
First, choose your
language and you do that by moving the
cross keys left to right and up and down.
Then select the language and
pressing ok.
Ignore the SnapBridge option for now.
You choose your date in a
similar fashion and you also then choose
your time zone in exactly the same way,
by using the cross keys on the back.
All of these things can be changed later
anyway so don't worry too much if you
get them wrong or in fact if you don't
want to worry too much about them now
and bypass those options and to return
to them afterwards.
The next thing to
do is to format your card.
If it is a new card or an old card, for that
matter, you need to ensure that it's
formatted correctly for this camera.
The thing to do now is to press the
menu button.
That will take you into
the menus and the menu that you are
looking for is the Set Up menu.
That is the spanner icon, so you go down
here and then the second one down is
format memory card.
Now there's always an
element of danger when you format memory
cards, particularly once you started
using the camera.
If you format the
memory card, you delete everything on it.
Even pictures that you think you have
protected will be deleted so you need to
be very careful when you format cards.
However when you're doing it for the
first time you are perfectly at liberty
to go to YES and click OK and it will
format the memory card and attune it to
this camera properly.
Well you can
shoot pictures with this camera now, but
the best thing to do is to select your
image quality and your compression
quality before you do so.
The first thing
to do is to go back into menu.
In this instance we're looking at the
Shooting Menu and if you go to down then
the first thing you come across is IMAGE QUALITY.
Now image quality talks about
compression rates not about the file
size but the compression rate is
important.
You can shoot RAW images with
this camera but I would recommend
initially at least, shooting JPG.
The option I would choose would be JPG FINE
Because that's the best compression rate
for this camera.
Once you
have done that, you move one down to
IMAGE SIZE and again there's no point
shooting medium of small images with
this camera I would say the best thing
to do is to shoot large images.
The memory card will probably be
enough - a 16 or 32 gigabyte memory -
to shoot hundreds of pictures so you are
not limited by memory space as we once were
so there's no reason not to shoot
large and not to shoot fine JPG images.
As we are in the Shooting Menu, why
don't we go down one more from IMAGE SIZE
to ISO sensitivity.
When you switch the camera on for the
first time, then the settings are set so
that the Auto ISO sensitivity control is on
That means that when you're in
the basic Preset Modes the camera will choose
the ISO setting.
If you look below
the Auto ISO sensitivity control it will
set the maximum sensitivity according to
what's chosen there and when you get the
camera and you switch it on to the first
time the maximum is 25600.
I would
say that when you're taking normal
pictures you probably don't want to go
above 1600 probably 3,200 at the most.
By leaving it
as it is, you allow the camera to choose
far higher ISOs than you otherwise
might wish.
So if you go into this
setting I would suggest that you make
the maximum setting as I say 6400
and I would also switch the ISO
sensitivity control OFF because that
then means that you have more control
over the ISO in the basic settings and
also in the manual settings.
After setting the ISO I would stay in the
Shooting Menu and move one down again to
white balance.
It is important.
Initially I would put white balance
on auto.
What white balance does is it
sets the white in the picture.
If you
know anything about colors you know that
white is a combination of all colors and
so once the camera can set white, it can
also set the values for all the other
colors.
So it is very important and it is
also very important if you're shooting
somewhere where the balance of light is
not normal, for example if you are
shooting in an office where the light
may be slightly blue, or if you are
shooting at home under artificial light
where the natural color of the light
might be slightly yellow.
Now you are not
going to see this with your naked eye
because your brain manages to filter
that those tones and those colors out,
but the camera will see it and it's
important that the camera is
initially is on AUTO
so that it can set the white balance
itself and try to balance all of the
different color components that it sees
through the lens.Nnow you're in a
position to take a picture or shoot a
video.
You can either do this through
the live view screen which enables you
to see what is through the lens or you
can do this through the more
conventional DSLR way which is to look
through the viewfinder.
The viewfinder can be attuned to your
eyesight.
So if you look through the
viewfinder and although the camera says
what you're looking at is sharp, it
doesn't look sharp to you, you can use
the dioptric adjuster which is on the
side here to change the focal length of
the viewfinder which means that you can
look through it and it looks sharp when
in fact the camera says it looks sharp.
That's very useful so take some
moments just to focus and refocus on a
few different things and just check that
the viewfinder, when you're looking
through it, looks sharp when the camera
says that it is sharp.
One of the things
that I change almost straight away is
the AUTO TIMER.
Cameras have
timers on them now in order to help save
the battery charge and that means that
sometimes they switch themselves off and
it can be really annoying.
But you can
set your own auto timer length by going
into the camera and into the Menu
Settings.
Go into menu and you
go into the Setup Menu then by going
down on to the next page - there are quite
a lot of settings here - you will see
AUTO OFF TIMERS as an option.
If you select
that then you can either select Short,
Normal or Long which is a fairly generic
term that talks about how long the
camera will be on before it switches
itself off or how long the back screen
will be on before it switches itself off.
Or you can go down to CUSTOM and you can
select those lengths of time that you
prefer.
That's what I do.
I go down to
CUSTOM and check the ones that I want
which are playback and menus, image review
which is the length of time the images
on the back screen for you just to look
at after you've taken it.
Live view which
is the live view screen and the standby
timer which is how long the camera is
on standby before it switches itself off.
I'm going to be doing some more
videos about the Nikon D3400.
If you
want to see those then please press the
like button below just to give me some
encouragement.
The next thing I'd be
looking at here is the monitor
brightness.
Now the reason for that is
that sometimes either in direct sunlight
or even when it's very dark, you might
want to change the brightness of the
back screen monitor so you can see the
picture or the video more clearly.
The way to do that is to go into MENU
and go down again to Set Up Menu and move
down from the Memory Card option which
we have seen before, to MONITOR BRIGHTNESS.
In order to go in you click on that
and then you can move it either up five
or down five.
Now just to bear in mind
that changing the brightness of the
monitor does not change the exposure of
the picture the two are not related, so
you could have a very bright monitor to
see the detail of what you are
photographing and it won't affect the
photograph itself.
But it is a good way
of checking detail and making sure that
you've got the right composition for
your picture if the lighting conditions
behind the camera aren't so good.
There are a couple more things to
mention before the end of the video.
The first one is the beep.
When you set
up your camera for the first time you
will notice that when you start taking
pictures, when the camera focuses
correctly, it will beep and that is great
for the first few times, but after a
couple of days that will really start to
annoy you.
So the thing to do is go into
MENU and then coming to Set Up Menu and
two pages down at the bottom you will
see BEEP and I would suggest you select
that and you turn it OFF because it will
otherwise drive you mad.
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Now the
last thing I want to show you is very
useful once you have taken your pictures.
If you go into Playback Menu, once you have
taken a picture and go down to playback
display option then you will see that
you have options that give you
information on the picture once you have
it.
so you've got the options of
showing the highlights, the RGB histogram,
shooting data and overview.
These are
really useful bits of information and
they're useful for you to recall and go
back to once you've taken the picture
and you just want to see what settings
you have or actually during the live
shoot when you can look through the RGB a
histogram or the tonal histogram where
your picture may be failing or just not
working to its optimum.
So they are very
useful things to have and by allocating
and switching those on when you go into
Playback Mode and you look at your
pictures by pressing the Cross Keys up
or down, you will be given these pieces
of information with the picture also
viewable on the view screen.
It is a
really useful way of just keeping
control and keeping an eye on the
various options and settings that you
have when you take a picture so for
example it will give you as I say the
histograms but also the ISO.
It will give
you the focal length, it will give you
all the various autos in terms of white
balance or whether the flash was on etc.
In the old days when you were
shooting with film you would have taken
a notebook and written all of this down,
but because it's available on the back
screen it makes it a whole lot easier.
They are the basic settings for the Nikon D3400.
If you want to know more
about this camera then why don't you
download our unique guide which tells
you all about the Nikon D3400 and
compares it with other cameras which are
available now.
You can download it either
from here or from the link in the
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it ABSOLUTELY FREE so why don't you go
to it straight away and download it now
and we'll see you very soon.
That is how you set up your Nikon D3400 DSLR camera.