52-Second No-Option Quick Tour for Movies

To begin taking movies immediately, just follow these easy steps:

1. Press the ON/OFF switch on top of the camera. The lens pops out of the camera body, a green LED illuminates around the ON/OFF switch, the start-up sound plays, and a live preview of the scene displays on the LCD monitor on the back of the camera. I’ll show you how to add a “welcome” screen in Chapter 4.

2. Set the movie shooting mode. Rotate the mode dial (the largest dial on the camera’s right edge) to the icon of a movie camera. (It’s five clicks counterclockwise from the green Auto setting.) This is an automatic mode. Some overrides can be set for serious movie making but we’ll get into all that in Chapter 7.

3. Set the autofocus mode. By default, the camera will set focus automatically in Movie mode, as discussed in item 5, but Nikon provides an option you might want to consider: full-time autofocus. When it’s set, this will cause the camera to vary the focus if a subject moves toward the camera or away from the camera while you are making a video clip. If that’s likely to be useful for your first movie, press the MENU button, and scroll to the right using the multi selector dial (around the OK button) or by pressing the right side of the dial which acts as a button. This will highlight the Autofocus mode item. Press OK and scroll down to the AF-F Full-time AF option; press OK again to confirm your selection.