I’ve been using the Nikon D90 as a backup body lately. Recently, however, I’ve been interested to put it through some paces in terms of the HD (720p) video feature.

The biggest drawback I found was the propensity of D-movie to figure its own exposures on the fly, while recording. Huge jumps in exposure mar scenes with dramatic lighting as D-movie skips and jumps around to different f-stops and shutter speeds… it’s just like composing a shot in Live-View, but it’s being recorded to motion JPEG. Horrible.

I almost gave up… but then I realized a little trick.

The AE/AF Lock (hold) feature. In your camera’s menu, under Custom Setting Menu > Controls, choose to Assign AE-L/AF-L button to AE lock (hold). Now, one press of that button while in D-movie mode and your exposure will stick. Yup, not earth-shattering. In fact, it’s a setting many people already use as an alternate for the half-shutter-press. Here’s a short video comparison of the default (auto exposure) and the custom (locked exposure) modes:

You still can’t set your exposures with 100% manual accuracy, (changing apertures for best depth of field, capturing fast action with speedy shutter) but at least now you CAN find an exposure that works and force the D90 to stick with it.

That’s worth a gold star in my book. This feature seems infinitely more useful now *twiddles fingers with Mr. Burns-esque aplomb*

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