How to Use Guide Mode on Nikon D3200:- The Nikon D3200 offers six automatic scene modes, which select settings designed to capture specific scenes in ways traditionally considered best from a creative point of view (portrait, landscape, baby, close-up, sports, night portrait). But if you want more, the advanced playback option available in Guide mode makes it easy to manipulate depth of field and motion blur to a greater extent than Scene modes allow.
How to Use Guide Mode on Nikon D3200
Guide mode enables you to adjust the amount of background blur, while Scene modes adjust the depth of field for you. Additionally, while Sports mode always tries to use a fast shutter speed to freeze movement, Guide mode allows you to use a slow shutter speed to blur a deliberately moving object, which can create an increased sense of motion. Some advanced guide mode settings also help you manipulate the overall exposure. You can select a setting that ensures sky colors remain vivid in sunset photos, for example.
The following steps show you how to troubleshoot the guide mode feature.
Set the mode dial to manual.
You see the initial guide mode screen on the screen
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Highlight Shoot and press OK.
You see the screen shown on the right in the previous figure.
Highlight Advanced process and press OK.
Use the multi selector to scroll up and down through the list of picture options.
You have these options:
- Soften backgrounds: Select this option to create a short depth of field, which means that your subject will be in sharp focus but objects at a distance will appear blurry. Remember that despite the option’s name, objects at a distance in front of the target will also appear softly focused.
- Bring more into focus: Select this option for any shot where you want a great depth of field so that foreground and background objects appear sharp.
- Freeze Motion (People): Choose this setting to capture any subject—human or not—moving at a moderate pace, such as a trumpeter in a band or a duck swimming across a pond.
- Freeze Movement (Vehicles): Select this option for any fast-moving target, whether it’s a passing car, a ball player kicking the ball across the field, or a running dog.
- Show water flow: Select this option to get help setting the camera to blur motion. Why does Water Flowing appear as the setup name? Well, when you’re shooting a waterfall (or any flowing water), a slow shutter speed makes the water blurry enough to give it a romantic, blurry look. But you can use this setting to blur any moving object, not just water. With colorful themes, blurred motion can create a fun abstract effect.
Using a tripod is essential when using a slow shutter speed. Otherwise, camera shake can blur the entire image, not just moving objects. Remember to turn off vibration reduction when using the tripod. For most people, shutter speeds of less than 1/60th of a second cause problems.
- Capture reds at sunset: This setting chooses a white balance setting that helps ensure the reds of the sunset stand out in your shot.
- Take bright photos: The camera screen suggests using this setting for shooting food or small objects. This setting is also useful when photographing a scene dominated by white objects, such as a white board on a white tablecloth – a type of image known in photography circles as a high key image.
- Take Dark (Low Light) Photos: This photo is the opposite of Take Bright Photos; The camera intentionally underexposes the image to create a darker image. Again, the feature used to produce exposure change is exposure compensation.
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The low key in the name of the setting refers to the fact that the main objects in the image tend toward the darker end of the brightness spectrum. Try this setting when photographing dark subjects, such as a black cat on a gray carpet. (And don’t ask why the Take Bright Photo setting doesn’t have an alpha key in its name.)
- Reduce Blur: This mode is designed for times when shooting in low light or when you’re using a long (and possibly heavy) telephoto lens and don’t have a tripod handy. The camera increases the light sensitivity of the image sensor automatically to allow for a faster shutter speed. This faster shutter speed can help eliminate blurring that can occur due to camera shake.
Make your choice and press OK.
A screen with some basic information appears.
After reading the information screen, press OK.
You see a second screen that presents an adjustment related to the scene option you selected in step 5.
Use the multi selector to adjust the picture settings as indicated by the message that appears on the screen.
As you do this, the small image preview refreshes to show how your image will be affected. (The change in the preview can be very subtle, so don’t drive yourself crazy if you can’t see much of a difference when you change the setting.)
Click OK.
On the next screen that appears, choose Use Viewfinder and press OK to exit the guided menus and take a picture. Or, to play with additional options, select More settings, press OK, and follow the onscreen instructions until you finally return to the screen to make adjustments.
As you can see from exploring these steps, the statement in the first paragraph of this article that manual mode “makes it easy” to adjust image settings uses “easy” as a relative term. You have to wade through a lot of menu screens, and some of them aren’t quite as user friendly. However, any time you need a reminder of what setting to change to achieve a desired creative goal, these guide mode screens can provide a helpful help.
When using Guide Mode, remember these last two points: First, if you turn off the camera, all Guide Mode settings will be restored to defaults. Second, some settings you create for Guide mode, such as image size and image quality, only affect Guide mode shooting.