The PICTURE CONTROLS on the Nikon D3400 are similar in many ways to the kind of effect you might have if you put a filter on the front of your lens. Filters change the exposure of your image, sometimes quite subtly, and you can manipulate the picture controls when you’re in the semi-auto modes, which are M, A, S, and P. You can’t control them when you’re in the auto modes. , although they still apply. For example, if you look in PORTRAIT MODE you will see the Picture Control is for Portrait and if you are in LANDSCAPE MODE you will see the Picture Control is Landscape. They’re grayed out, so you can’t change them, but they’re there, so it’s fair to say the Picture Controls apply across the entire mode dial, so it’s worth knowing what they do. Here is a brief summary of what the picture controls do and the kind of effects they will have on your still images and also your videos.
So the first Picture Control on the D3400 is STANDARD PICTURE CONTROL and this setting applies some sharpening and a small boost to contrast and saturation. Basically, this is the daily setting for image control. It is the one used in the automatic settings and is probably the one you will use most often in M, A, S and P.
The next of the D3400 picture controls is NEUTRAL. The neutral setting applies only a small amount of sharpening with no other modifications and this can be very useful if you intend to work on the image later in your editing software, because it means it looks the most natural and you can apply whatever you want. wants to make the image more easily. The VIVID picture control really increases contrast and saturation and also increases sharpness. Now this is useful if you want to print directly from the camera or your memory card without having to do any post-production work, but it is often too saturated and the color tones look unnatural. It’s really not good for portraits because it doesn’t do skin tones very well.
Next up in the D3400 picture controls is the MONOCHROME option. However, the Nikon D3400 will change the image to a monochrome image, which is not just black and white. You can also change it to a sepia image or blueprint image. I would recommend that if you are going to take a photo and turn it into a monochrome image, that you take the photo in color and then go into the retouch menu in the camera and change it there because then your original will always be there as an original color image. The PORTRAIT D3400 Image Control only gives you a small amount of sharpening which can work to make skin appear a bit softer in the photo, and also works to ensure skin tones are as accurate as possible. The LANDSCAPE option in the D3400’s Picture Controls is very similar in many ways to the Vivid Picture Control, but gives the blues and greens a little more lift and is ideal, really, for shooting landscapes and natural views.
The final option you have in the Nikon D3400’s picture controls is FLAT, and it’s really designed for video. The reason for this is that it really desaturates the image and footage. When you’re editing a video, it’s much easier to put color and saturation in post-editing the video than it is to take it off, so it produces very low-contrast flat footage so you can apply whatever you want to apply. your editing and make the video or movie look exactly how you want without restricting and restricting it by having too much saturation or too much color.
Well, that’s the Nikon D3400 Picture Controls and how they can affect your images. However, you can subtly change the picture controls if you wish. You can only do that on semi-auto settings, but if you’re in M, A, S or P and you go into SETUP MENU and go to SHOOTING MENU, then under white balance you have the option to SET PICTURE CONTROLS. Now if you choose that, you’ll get a list of all the picture controls that we just looked at and if you push the multi-selector to the right, you’ll be able to access the inner workings of each of those picture controls and change them. You can change the SHARPNESS, CLARITY, CONTRAST, BRIGHTNESS, SATURATION and HUE and you can do this by pressing the multi-selector which gives you units of 1 or you can use the rotary dial on top which gives you units of 1/ 4, so you can see that it can be quite subtle in the way it changes these image controls. Now they only work for M, A, S and P because if you go back to auto settings you only get the standard controls, which you didn’t edit, but it’s worth knowing because you can subtly change the picture. so it looks exactly how you want it to look.
Ok, now let’s take a look at the EFFECTS of the Nikon D3400. You could tell with the Picture Controls that, to a certain extent, it was mimicking the kind of things you could do with analog photography, either with smart print effects or with the filters, which you could put on the front of the lenses. . But with the effects here, these are purely digital and they’re pretty impressive. One of the usual things I think about them is that you can set them up before you take the photo or, in many cases, record the video and that means you can see it through the rear screen and decide if it’s right for you sooner. you press the button or you press record. Now that’s really impressive, but you can also do most of the effects after you’ve taken the still image by going to the RETOUCH MENU and going down and looking for them there. There are a couple of changes when you’re in the video settings.
The first of the Nikon D3400’s effects is NIGHT VISION MODE and it’s really for use in very low light so you shoot in black and white which allows the camera to push the ISO to its upper limit. The image itself is quite grainy, but that’s to be expected in low light conditions and I really don’t recommend using this effect unless you really have to. The VIVID option in D3400 Effects really boosts saturation and contrast, so it can really give you a very bright and punchy still image or video. POP will also increase the overall saturation of the image, although that tends to work more with pastels than with brighter colors. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION will take a photo and make it look like an illustration. It sharpens outlines and simplifies coloring for a kind of comic book or poster effect. The TOY CAMERA EFFECT on the Nikon D3400 gives the impression of a photograph taken on an old-style camera with a plastic lens. There is some vignetting around the exterior and you can change the color tone to a little blue or a little yellow.
MINIATURE EFFECT modifies a photo by blurring the edges, making the subject in the middle stand out more. In fact, if something is shot at, say, a 45-degree angle and from a distance, it can give the impression that the subject is a toy or a model in a diorama. In video it has a really clever effect of making a time lapse video, again with the blur thumbnail effect around the outside, but it speeds up the process of shooting the video, giving you a time lapse effect. It doesn’t record sound at this point, so it will be silent.
In SILHOUETTE MODE on the Nikon D3400 effects, the camera sets the exposure for the brightest part of the image so you can outline your subject against the brightest background. Use the HIGH KEY SETTING when shooting a light subject against a light background: the camera applies some exposure compensation to slightly overexpose and add some brightness to the image. Use the LOW KEY SETTING when photographing dark subjects against a dark background. This mode also boosts the highlights a bit to get better definition between the shadows and the highlights. SELECTIVE COLOR in the D3400’s effects is a really useful way to create an impressive image. Essentially what it allows you to do is choose up to three colors to keep in the image while making the rest of the image black and white. Again, you can do this while taking a photo or video or you can do it later for still images only in the retouch menu. It’s very easy to do.
Picture controls like I say work in all modes on the mode dial but you can change them in M, A, S and P and I’ve shown you how to do that and when you’re looking at the effect remember you can apply them before taking a photo or, in many cases, after and when you shoot a video, you can apply most of them to video, and the ones that don’t translate instantly from stills to video can also give you some really cool effects so that’s well worth it. look at. They may not be the usual everyday image requirements, they may not be the things you immediately go to all the time, but they are there and I think they can really pack a punch with your stills and your video.
