Nikon D40 Continuous shooting mode

To enable the continuous shooting mode on the Nikon D40, go into the Custom Setting Menu (pencil icon). Scroll to item 4: Shooting mode. Choose Continuous in this menu to enable continuous shooting. With this setting, the D40 will take 1 shot if you just press the shutter once, and keep on shooting if you press and hold down the shutter. In fact, there is not much reason to use the Single shooting mode, so you can just leave this as the standard.

Nikon D40 - Highlights on or off

When you are looking at your pictures in playback mode, you can turn on the highlight function to check your exposure. What this will do is take the part of the picture that is too bright and has lost all detail and blink it on and off to highlight it. If a large portion of the image is highlighted in this way, you have overexposed the picture, or the contrast in the frame is far too high.

To turn on the highlights, press down twice in playback mode. The first press will take you to the histogram, and the second to the highlight.

To turn off the highlights in the Nikon D40, press up twice to go back to the normal playback mode.

Nikon D40 Self timer

To turn on the self timer on the Nikon D40, go to the Custom Setting Menu (pencil icon). Go to item 4: Shooting mode.

Choose Self Timer to enable the self timer mode.

The wait duration of the Self timer can be set on a separate menu, this is item 16: Self-timer. You can choose between 2, 5, 10 and 20 seconds.

2 seconds is useful when taking photos at night, you can press the shutter and take you hand off to prevent camera shake by pressing the shutter. 10 seconds is the classic time needed to press the shutter and run back to join your friends. 20 seconds is better if you have to run a long distance!

Read about the Nikon ML-L3 Remote Control to see how you can avoid all this running!

Nikon D40 - Modes

This is the "point and shoot" automatic mode. The camera will take care of all settings in this mode. While this is fine for most settings, flash is not one of them. Thus, shooting in auto mode, you may become tired quite quickly with the flash popping up automatically at the worst moment possible to ruin many shots.

This is the same as automatic mode but with flash off. So it offers basically the same convenience of auto mode but without the occasional nasty surprise of the flash popping up when it feels like it. If you think you are an absolute beginner, you can use this mode pretty much all the time.

I assume that anybody who has ever picked up a camera can decide for themselves if they need flash in a shot or not. So, if you need to use the flash, press the flash button to let it pop open, set auto mode and flash away. If you don't want to use the flash, stick to flash-off mode.

Portrait mode will set the auto-focus on the closest subject and soften or blur the background using a large aperture. It will also play with optimizing the image to produce soft skin tones. White balance and metering are also set automatically.

Landscape mode tries to give you as much of the scene in focus as possible using a small aperture. Flash and the auto-focus assist are disabled.

Child mode... no idea...

Sports mode will set a high shutter speed to allow you to freeze the action. The autofocus will work continuously as long as the shutter is held half pressed.

Macro mode allows you to take close up shots of objects. The flash will pop up as needed, and the camera will focus on the center auto focus point.

Night potrait mode tries to strike a balance between the subject and the background in low light. The flash will pop up automatically if needed. Shutter speed can be quite slow so take care about camera shake.

Nikon D40 Official camera manual from Nikon

The user's manual from Nikon is called:

The Nikon Guide to Digital Photography with the D40 Digital Camera

You can find it here.