NIKON ACADEMY – CONTINUED

right edge of the viewfinder or

LCD screen. As you move the camera to compose your shot, these indicators will show you how far away you are away from having a level image. To get a perfectly level picture, the aim is to have just a single bar showing on each indicator.

The second visual aid is a grid overlay display, which is very useful for architecture, interiors or landscape photography.

You can use this to align any vertical or horizontal lines in your image against the grid overlay lines to ensure they are level. Depending on your camera, this grid display can either be viewed in the viewfinder or the on the rear LCD in Live View mode.

You can also use the grid line display to help with composition guidelines, such as the rule of thirds. Although the grid lines on some cameras aren’t set out in a traditional rule of thirds grid, it is still easy to use these grid lines to help you position key elements in your frame either on the left, right, upper or lower third of the frame. For example, you could place the sky on the upper area of your image with the horizon running across the upper third of the frame.