Nikon® D90 Digital Field Guide

Chapter 2. Nikon D90 Essentials

In This Chapter

Exposure modes

Scene modes

Release modes

Metering modes

Focus modes

Autofocus Area modes

ISO sensitivity

White balance

Picture Controls

JPEG

NEF files

Live View

When you familiarize yourself with the basic layout of the D90 and all the various dials, switches, and buttons, you should find it much easier to navigate to and adjust the settings that allow you to control and fine-tune the way you capture images with your camera. In this chapter, I cover some of the most commonly changed settings of the camera, such as the Exposure and Metering modes, autofocus (AF) settings, white balance, and ISO. All these settings combined create your image, and you can tweak and adjust them to reflect your artistic vision or to simply ensure that you create the best possible images in complex scenes.

Exposure settings include the Exposure modes that decide how the camera chooses the aperture and shutter speed and the Metering modes that decide how the camera gathers the lighting information so that the camera can choose the appropriate settings based on the Exposure mode. In this chapter, you also learn more about ISO, which also plays into exposure, and exposure compensation. Exposure compensation allows you to fine-tune the exposure to suit your needs or to achieve the proper exposure in situations where your light meter may be fooled.

In this chapter, I also explain the Autofocus modes, which decide which areas of the viewfinder are given preference when the camera ...