The low price, great versatility, and excellent image quality of the Nikon d5600 has ensured that it just keeps on going from strength to strength amongst the photography community. It has easily positioned itself as one of the dominant entry-level DSLR camera bodies on the market and huge numbers of photographers pick it up with each month that passes.
With so many people who are entry-level or beginner photographers choosing to use the Nikon d5600 as their camera body of choice each month, we see a ton of people asking questions to try ensure that they get the best performance possible out of the camera. Due to this, we have decided to publish our ultimate list of Nikon d5600 photography tips to try and help as many of our readers as possible.
Now, keep in mind that this list is meant to be a general list of tips and tricks in an attempt to try and help as many of our readers as possible. These tips are aimed towards beginner and intermediate level photographers to try working in a number of different photography niches. In addition to this, we have tried to include as many free suggestions as possible while also offering ways that you are able to save money on those that do have a cost to help keep them budget friendly.
Due to this, some of these tips and tricks may not be applicable to you as you may be working in a photography niche that has no need for them. That said though, we feel that our list is extensive and hope that we are able to help as many of our readers as possible so without further ado, lets get into it.
Take Advantage Of An Online DSLR Photography Course
Our first tip has to be to take advantage of a decent online photography course. Although the vast majority of people usually instantly disregard this as they think that it is going to be expensive, there are some excellent courses out there that you are able to enroll on for free. In addition to this, as a reader of Photography Paws, you are able to claim a no-obligation trial of Skillshare premium too.
This means that you are able to enroll in a huge number of world-class photography courses created by some of the best photographers in the world to up your game without having to spend a cent. In addition to this, with the Nikon d5600 being an entry-level DSLR camera body, we would highly recommend this DSLR photography course as it has an excellent reputation amongst the DSLR photography community and has a huge number of great reviews.
As we mentioned, with the trial offer for Skillshare premium, there is no need for you to spend a single cent to get access to these world-class photography courses either. This ensures that if you are on a tight budget, you are still able to enroll on the course and get all of the excellent information offered on it.
Turn Off The Beep
Although some people do prefer to hear the beep of their Nikon d5600 when capturing a photograph, we would highly recommend that you get used to using your camera without the beep sounding. After playing around with your Nikon d5600 for a few days, you should have built up the confidence in it to know when it has or hasn’t captured a photograph making the beep redundant.
On the flipside of this though, there are a number of different popular photography niches where having your Nikon d5600’s beep turned on can actually become an issue. For example, say that you are using your photographing a clients wedding, the last thing they want is the beep of your camera spoiling the ceremony. The beep can also cause issues with wildlife or bird photography too as it may scare the subject away.
Get A Decent Tripod
With the Nikon d5600 being more of an entry level tripod, we know that a large number of people new to photography who are total beginners maybe reading this article. If this is the case and you are a beginner, there is a high chance that you have not started to build up your collection of camera accessories yet.
Although you are able to get some decent image quality out of your Nikon d5600 when doing handheld photography, we would highly recommend that you invest in a decent tripod as soon as possible. There is no need to break the bank as there are a bunch of great, sub-one hundred dollar tripods on the market these days such as the Zomei Z699c.
Not only does the image stabilization help to improve your image quality of your photographs with your Nikon d5600 but the tripod also offers you somewhere to safely place your camera mid session. Say you are out in the middle of no where on a landscape photography session, depending on your lens and other camera accessories, your Nikon d5600 can quickly get heavy.
Being able to leave your camera mounted to your tripod without having to hold it in your hands offers a little break from supporting your Nikon d5600 and your lens without you having to put it on the floor. With so many photography niches offering better photograph quality when you use a tripod, this really is one of the first camera accessories that you should be looking to invest in.
Come Up With Your Own File Naming Structure
This one has even caught the best of us out as many people get trigger happy with their cameras and end up capturing way more photographs than they initially thought they would. Having your own file naming structure for your photographs allows you to quickly and easily find the photographs you need without wasting time.
A large number of people who are just stating their photography journey do seem to overlook this and just use the default Nikon d5600 file naming convention as it is easier. Trust us, in the long run, taking the time to use your own naming convention for your photographs will pay off and prevent you having to potentially waste hours and hours when it comes to finding a specific photograph.
Increase Your Lens Collection
Although the various kit lenses available for the Nikon d5600 are of surprisingly good quality and can usually perform well for a large number of common photography situations, they definitely do have their limitations. This is to be expected of a kit lens as it is more of a general purpose lens for beginner photographers that is a jack of all trades and a master of none.
Depending on the particular photography niches that you are planning to be working in, the standard kit lenses can end up getting your surprisingly far though. That said, if you are planning to work in night photography or any other low light photography niches or something with a fast-moving subject then we would highly recommend you start to invest in specific lenses.
Thankfully, the Nikon d5600 does have a wide selection of compatible lenses available for it with many of them being budget friendly. On top of this, you can usually find pre-owned lenses on sites such as eBay to help drastically reduce their cost so you can pick up new lenses without you having to break the bank too.
Play With Your Auto Focus
Although modern auto focus systems are considerable better than they once were, there is still usually a little bit of customisation required. Not all camera bodies and lens based auto focus systems work perfectly with each other right out of the box. This is why we always recommend that our readers sit down with their Nikon d5600 and their new lens to have a little play.
If there is any lag or issues then there is a high chance that it is just down to a few settings being slightly off and some light tweaking should be able to fix it. That said though, there Nikon d5600 rarely has these issues anyway but it is always best to test prior to a photography session so you are able to iron any issues out.
Develop Your Manual Focus Skillset
On the flipside of this though, a large number of photographers, especially entry level photographers are starting to overlook the importance of their manual focus skillset. This is a huge mistake but so many people end up letting their auto focus system do all of the work. Your auto focus will only be able to get you so far and there are some photography niches such as night photography where many systems will not work at all.
This is why we try to stress that anyone new to photography puts the time and effort in to actually practise their manual focus skills and develop them. Although it can be annoying at first, most people are able to quickly get to grips with it and it is an important skill to have moving forward in your photography journey.
Experiment With Your Camera Settings
For an entry level DSLR camera, the Nikon d5600 is surprisingly versatile and its camera settings offer tons of different things that you are able to tweak to ensure that you are getting the best performance possible for your session. This is why we always recommend that you take some time to play around with your camera settings and get a feel for how to best tweak it for optimal performance in different situations.
Although many people just Google their camera body to try and find the settings that they should be using, we definitely feel that this is a mistake and should be avoided. These camera setting configurations can be helpful for an absolute base line to use but they will almost always still need to be tweaked for your optimal settings.
This is due to each location having its own unique features that in turn required unique settings for the best image quality possible out of your Nikon d5600. Things such as distance from subject, lighting, and colours all come into play so learning how to optimised your d5600 for this can really be worth the time.
Take Advantage of Your Fn Button
Another common thing that we see constantly overlooked by entry level and beginner photographers is that they will leave their function button with nothing assigned to it. Although there is nothing strictly wrong with this, assigning a pre-set to your Fn button can help save you time during your photography session allowing you to get more done in less time.
Now, the pre-set that you will assign to your Fn button is going to depend on you and the photography niche that you are predominantly working in. If you find yourself always having to go through your functions and waste time then it is probably a good idea to try and assign it to your Fn button for easy access.
Plan Your Photography Sessions
We know that this one sounds very simple but even professional level photographers commonly make this mistake. Google and some popular photography smartphone apps offer you everything that you could ever need to plan your Nikon d5600 photography session prior to leaving your house.
This lets you check the lighting, weather, and pretty much everything else that you could ever need without issue. This may end up saving you countless hours as we have lost count of the number of people who have overlooked this simple step, traveled miles to their photography location only to find it is raining and not be able to capture their photographs.
Take Advantage Of Your Range Finder
Again, this tip will depend on what you are planning on doing with your Nikon d5600 but if you are manually focusing your frame then take advantage of the cameras range finder functionality. This can make manually focusing the lens much easier than trying to focus without it, especially if you are new to photography and still getting used to using your manual focus.
Switch Over To RAW
In our opinion, there is little to no reason to still be saving your photographs as JPEG and we would highly recommend that you get used to saving your work in RAW format. This helps to ensure that you are getting the absolute best image quality possible without sacrificing image quality.
Time was, the large file size of RAW photographs would be a pain so many people would use JPEG to save space. The issue with this is that the compression algorithm of the JPEG file size can drastically reduce the image quality of your work. In this day and age, memory cards are much cheaper than they used to be making it much easier to capture all of your photographs in RAW rather than JPEG.
Take Advantage Of Auto White Balance
Using the Auto White Balance (AWB) on your Nikon d5600 can be a great way to retain the ambiance of anything that your are photographing. If you are working in the real estate or architecture photography niches then this can present a quick and easy win for you but it can also be useful for other niches too. When developing your own photography style we would highly recommend that you play around with AWB to see if you like it.
Change The Self Timer Settings
This one is going to depend on the actual photography niche that you are working in too but you can easily tweak the settings of the self timer on your Nikon d5600 to meet your needs for specific situations. This can be useful for selfies or anything else where you need a timer on your camera. Although the default timer settings can be ok for some, they are usually too short for most practical uses.
Get Out And Capture Photographs
Actually get out there and start to capture as many photographs with your Nikon d5600 as possible. You can plan as much as you like to try and offer yourself the best chance of success possible but in our opinion, nothing makes up for actually getting out there and putting the work in with your Nikon d5600.
The more photographs you capture with your camera, the better you will become at photography as you start to notice more and more subtel little things that you would otherwise have missed. This can also help a beginner photograph develop their own unique style and skill set extremley quickly too. As your DSLR has no limitations of needing physical film, you can simply delete any photographs from your memory card that you dont like to just keep on snapping away.
Conclusion
That brings out article to a close and we hope that you have found it useful. As we mentioned back at the start of the article, we know that most of our readers will not require all of these tips and tricks for improving your Nikon d5600 photography as some are very specific to the photography niche that you are working in.
That said though, we do hope that you have found some value in our article and that we have been able to give you some ideas on things that you are able to implement to improve your skillset. As always, get out there and keep on capturing photographs as that is the best way to improve and test the various settings on your camera as it is surprising how much of a different even a slight tweak can make.
