Movie Settings Menu In Nikon D90

Nikon D90 is the world's first DSLR camera to record HDTV movie with sound. It gives you three different options of recording movies and today we are going to discuss the movie settings menu available in Nikon D90. When you press the menu button on the back of your camera, you will be given different choices of menu settings for your camera. But right now we are interested in a movie settings option and for that, lets go to the Shooting Menu option (camera Icon) and scroll all the way down to the Movie settings menu and click OK. Actually there are not much settings to be done to record a movie with D90 but you can adjust movie quality (frame size) using this menu option and enable or disable the sound recording option. Nikon D90 shoots all the movie clips at the same rate, 24 frames per second. Here are the few options you can set under this menu.

• 1. Quality

• 2. Sound (press OK to enable or disable sound recording option)

When you select Quality and enter OK, you will be presented with three framing size options.

Nikon D90 movie settings menu

1280x720 (16:9): This option will let you shoot in HDTV quality movies in the 16:9 aspect ratio. As this mode allows High Quality movie, it consumes more space in your memory card. Main disadvantage of this mode is, it allows you to shoot only 5 min of HDTV movie. But this framing size is best viewed on big screen TV.

640x424 (3:2) : This is the default option set to Nikon D90. This mode allows you to record non-HDTV video as of normal non-HDTV camcorders and best viewed on small size monitor. This setting allows you to record 20 minutes of video. Personally I use this setting to record video with my Nikon D90.

320x216 (3:2): This mode is used to produce compact framing movies and allows you to record 20 minutes long video.

After you set the framing size, click Live view (Lv) button on the back of your camera and press OK to start recording video and press OK again to stop the recording. Nikon made it very easy and simple enough to a record video with Nikon D90.

Shooting HQ Video With Nikon D90

My first DSLR camera was Nikon D60 which I loved so much but one thing I missed in my D60 was video recording. I wished Nikon could have included video recording feature in D60. But better late than never, Nikon came with another powerful camera, Nikon D90, with the video recording feature in it. Nikon D90 is considered as the first DSLR camera to record high quality video with the sound. I am glad that Nikon brought this feature with D90 for which I waited for a year or more. I finally got my hands on D90 this march and can’t wait to do some experiments with it even though I am more interested in taking still pictures. Obviously D90 shoots amazing sharp pictures with rich color and the greater details of the subject. Nikon D90 has a CMOS sensor built into it and is able to capture 12.3 Mega Pixel photo which is enough to print large size pictures for family gathering, wedding pictures and other daily events. There is no doubt that Nikon D90 is an excellent DSLR to capture your moment of life with amazing quality photo but now D90 also comes with the additional feature of taking video which can add extra flavor to your photography life.

Despite of being excellent HQ quality movie camera, D90 has some downsides while recording the video. D90 lacks Autofocus feature while taking videos. That means you have to manually focus your subject with one hand using the focusing ring on the lens barrel and hold the camera with another hand. If you are not using tripod to capture a video, I guess it would be very hard to hold D90 along with the with the heavy lens like 18-200mm for a long time. I believe most of the people don't shoot video with D90 but rather carry a small camcorder to record the video. But we can't ignore the fact that D90 records HQ video and can use it whenever we need it in case of emergency.

What Is Bokeh Effect In Photography

There is no doubt that photography is one of the fastest growing passion among people of different ages. They want to try different techniques and tools to enhance their photographic skills. Bokeh is currently the fastest growing fads in modern photography. Bokeh term is used to represent the shape of light which is blurred in the background of the photo. But nowadays, there is a trend to use the filter of different shapes, heart or stars for example, to create customized shape of the bokeh. These customized shapes are achieved by using the bokeh filter over the camera lens. Bokeh is a photography term derived from the Japanese word for "blur" or "fuzzy". Bokeh refers to the unfocused background in a photograph. Bokeh filter is a simple filter that clips onto the front end of your lens and hence the filter blocks out pieces of light that cause the bokeh (blur) effect in your images to take the shape of the filter.

Bokeh filter produces nice shape when you use it with big aperture lens so that the foreground will be in focus and the background out of focus. The more out of focus the background lights are, the better the results will be. Soft and blurred background with smooth edges is considered as a good bokeh because sharp edge bokeh is usually unpleasant to our eyes.

Here is one of the pictures I shot at 2010 cherry blossoms festival in Washington DC. You can see the bokeh effect on the background where out of focus background images are making fuzzy circles kind of shapes. This bokeh effect was the result of shooting with small aperture value (large opening of the aperture) while maintaining the proper distance with the subject without using any bokeh filter. In other terms, we can also say that this picture has shallow depth of field. If you are interested in knowing more about DoF, please read my blog titled “what is depth of field?”.

Bokeh effect on cherry flower

Focal Length - 200mm     Aperture - f/6.3     Exposure - 1/640sec     ISO - 200

Please feel free to share your comments and question if you have any. And if you want to share your bokeh photography, you can also insert the link into the comment section. Happy Shooting!