Lessons

Lesson Info

Segment 10 - Custom Menu

We're done with movie settings were going to move on to the next taps you kind of have to go left down, we're in the custom menu and we have a custom setting bank. No, we saw this before in the shooting menu bank where you can memorize different shooting moans the same thing is with the custom menu and so there's going to be different settings for this as well and as we go through here there's going to be a whole bunch of different sub groupings of custom settings. Most of these settings will be honest with you folks are things that you're going to set once and you are done with it, you don't need to worry about it again very rarely am I coming back to these settings to constantly change something for shooting purposes so let's dive into the group a dealing with auto focus and one other thing I'll mention that I don't have on the keynote here is if you make a change on a particular feature, you will notice that there is an asterix that shows up beside it. Let me go ahead and let me jus...

t see if we could do this on our camera here get a side shot in, so if I go into auto focus and I go in and I change something on it and I come back to it, you'll notice that there is an ass trick just above the a that means I've made a setting that's different than the original setting in the camera, so any time you see an ass trick that means that you've gone in and made a change on that particular setting. So this first one dealing with the continuous operation of focusing normally the camera is set in a release priority mode and what this means is that if you have the camera in continuous shooting it's more important that you can release the shutter then the picture is in focus. Sports photographers found that when cameras get a little too fussy about focusing, they don't take pictures when they want to take pictures of action and so you might get out of focus pictures if the camera can't quite get focus. But if it's pretty close, it will still allow you to focus if you don't like this, you can change it, but I generally don't recommend that it will slow the shooting process down now. We also have the same option with e f s priority selection in which case here we wanted to be ableto be and focus before you can take a picture and this is one of the reasons why when a careless person picks up one of these cameras, see if I can do this and you'll notice right now that I'm pressing the shutter release and a picture is not being taken wait there's one aah! What a terrible camera! It won't shoot pictures and it's because I need to focus on something in particular and let the focus find its mark before I take a picture and that's generally a good safety safe way of having the camera set up it's how I have my camera set up most of the time and so I just leave this in the focus priority. You can change it to release priority if you want, but I would be very careful about that. Moving on to a three still dealing with focusing focus tracking with lock on all right let's imagine a scenario you're photographing a football player and they're running down the field and a referee comes between you and the player you are focusing on. Do you want to focus on the referee? Probably not, but what if that referee is not a referee? And it's another player that they have just passed the ball, too? Now you do want it to go to that player, and so different people have different priorities as to how quickly they want their camera to switch auto, focusing to this new subject that has just come in in front of them, and so the camera is set in the middle of this range and you can have it. Stay with the background subject longer or you can have it switched to that new subject very, very quickly. And so what I recommend is leaving this on a f three until you shoot action until you find out how you work with this camera, what type of lands, what type of subjects and how with sort of interference they have and then adjust it according to your needs from there, moving on to a four auto focus activation recall earlier when we're talking about the on button on the back of the camera and back button focusing so if you want to do the back button focusing this is where you get to do it and if you do want to do back but focusing what you need to do is you need to turn a f activation off and what this is basically talking about f activation of the shutter release do you want it on or off normally? It's on on and that's where a lot of people are comfortable with their cameras but a lot of serious photographers, a lot of professional sports photographers and otherwise I prefer the back button focusing and they would turn off the activation of the shutter release there so it's a bit more of an advanced mode, but one that I have gotten very used to and would not have any other way on my camera now and so normally it's the shutter release that is being activated if you just want the back, but if you want to turn this feature off next up focus point illumination so in your camera are all these fifty one focusing points? Do you want to see these all the time or some of the time? And so you can turn these on and off as you like? Some people like to have a lot of information in there. Some people want to have it clutter free it's kind of up to you as to when you see them in the auto focus mode or the manual focus mode, and whether you can see the dynamic area or the group areas in there uh, and different people have different priorities. They're so adjust according to your own needs it's hard for me to recommend anything in this one. Next up is the point illumination the autofocus points when they're activated will light up in black if it's fairly bright out, but if it's dark out, they'll light up in red and the camera will automatically switch from black to red, according tto light levels. If you would prefer to keep it in one color or the other, you can either turn it on all the time so that their red all the time you can turn it off so they're kind of this dark greyish black or you can leave it in auto, where the camera will automatically switch back and forth. I'm fine with the camera in auto, but you might have more particular needs next up focus point wrap around so if you choose the focusing point on the far right hand side and you want to get all the way over to the left hand side focussing point rap will allow you to go right and kind of wrapped around the back of it so that your immediately over on the left hand side so it saves a few clicks here and there, and so I kind of like having that turned on next up is the number of focusing points the camera has fifty one focusing points, but if you find that you really don't need all of them there's only just a few that you go to on a regular basis, there is a specific eleven that they have chosen. If you want to reduce that, you could go from fifty one toe eleven so there's less button pressing to get to the left or to the top of that focusing area store by orientation. Okay, this is kind of an interesting one, so let's, take a look at what this does, so if we leave this turned off the way normally is out of the box and you select that right hand group of focussing points and we turn our camera vertically. What happens? Well, those same points are always chosen. It doesn't matter what position the cameras in if we store it by orientation, the camera remembers. Oh, you must want the focusing points on the right hand side of the frame. So when you turn it vertically, I will adjust to the most right hand focusing points that is available on the frame. And so this is kind of a neat option, and I found it very helpful and shooting certain types of sports photography. So I think this is a great idea. Now you can also change the mode. You might have a mode for vertical and emotional horizontal because you're shooting different types of photos. And so I think been able to customize is a great thing. And for anyone who does sports for a lot of portrait photography, I think this could be a very, very helpful tool implemented and customized to your needs. Next up, the auto focus illuminator is the little light on the front of the camera, and I like turning that off. I don't like making a big fuss about having things turn on and beeping and whirling and whizzing, and it doesn't work for very far distance. The ideas is that it turns on like a small flashlight and illuminates your subject matter, and the fact of the matter is it's only good for a few feet, so I recommend just turning this off it's also can be very distracting for people that you're shooting, the camera has many different play areas, it can focus. We talked about this in the focusing section, and if you find that you just don't use one or some of these areas, you can uncheck that box and not have that as an option that you need to pass by getting to an area that you really want to go so it's just reducing the number of options of things that you don't use, I would select all of them and keep them all selected while your first learning the camera, you can also restrict the modes that you could use on the camera. Once again, I would leave this on no restrictions so that you are able to change between single and continuous shooting. I think a lot of people do switch back and forth in those and so that's, just the first part of the custom menu that was thie a setting on, I think we're just going to move right on to the b settings, which is dealing with mita ring and exposure, the esso sensitivity steps this is normally set to a third stop where I kind of like it but some people like to set this at one stop so instance for instance when they go from I s a one hundred, the next step is two hundred and then four hundred and eight hundred not these third steps in between and that might save a few clicks for you so I think that's a good idea and understandable as well we can do these third steps in exposures as well which is the normal setting or we can change it to a half steps or we can change it to full steps most people like to keep this very, very accurate at one third just is the finest tune controls same is true when it comes to the flash exposure compensation and I recommend keeping this at one third setting as well so that you could be very precise about the settings of the power of that flash. Back at the beginning of the class I talked about how the buttons air pressed on this camera so normally for exposure compensation you have to press down on the plus minus button and turn the back dial if you want to turn this on what's gonna happen is that you're just going to turn the dial on the camera and it will adjust exposure compensation without any button pressing so it could be very, very easy and that may be good or that may be bad, but it will be very, very easy to do an adjustment with exposure compensation and so I don't recommend turning that on unless you were fairly advanced user very familiar with your camera next option b five is matrix metering there's an option to have it face detected on understand that there's a face in there and adjust exposure for it I have the feeling that this is better turned off and when you have the face detection involved in there there's some parameters of things that may or may not turn off and maybe a little less consistent. And so I think turning this off is thie safer choice if you want to give it a try and see if it works for you that's great, but I think for general city and I would just leave this one turned off for now if you do want to use the center waited metering, you can customize exactly the weight of that center waited area you could have a larger or smaller and assets most people aren't using center waited metering so this isn't an issue at all but you can customize to your heart's content fine tune optimal exposure if you find that your camera is consistently over exposing or under exposing and you don't want to compensate with exposure compensation you khun do so here in one sixth of a stock which is a very fine tune amount and so if you found you know, all my pictures were just a little over exposed you might be able to go in here and adjust it to minus one sixth to compensate for that adjustment. Hopefully if your cameras in tune and working properly, you'll never need to use this moving on to the group of sea timers and auto exposure lock. And so the first option in here is the shutter release button for auto exposure lock normally, as I mentioned before when you press down on the shutter release button and you move the camera around the camera's gonna automatically adjust shutter speeds and or apertures we're giving you different light reads if you want to turn this on what's gonna happen is when you press down on the shutter release button and you leave your finger halfway down on it it locks that exposure in and that's not something that everyone wants to do um so I generally would leave that turn off next standby timer how long do you want the camera to stay active once you have pressed that shutter release halfway down the normal time is six seconds but you could make it shorter or you can make it longer obviously leaving it on longer has more we're in terror on the battery so six seconds is a pretty sensible default system and with this self tight with the self self timer delay we have the option of I think two, five, ten and twenty seconds we can choose the number of shots so for instance if you're going to take a group shot of a bunch of people here's my photographic tip is that somebody's going to blink on the first shot so take two three or four shots even during that time and then you can also choose the interval between the shots and so if I'm going to do a big group shot and I wanted to come out right and I don't want to have to run back and forth between the camera I'm going to do a ten or twenty second delay I'm going to shoot three or four shots and I'll have an interval of about a half second or one second between the shots so it's kind of like an interval ometer in some ways with very limited number of pictures because the total number of shots you can only shoot up to nine shots using this system monitor off delay what this is going to do is it's going to go in and control when the monitor turns off in a variety of different settings so whether you're in the play back or going through the menus or live you're something else how quickly do you want the camera to kind of power down and get out of that information screen because that is using up a lot of battery power, so the shorter you have these times, the more battery life we're going to get, but for convenience, it might be nice to have these on for longer period of time, and I'll let you decide where that sweet spot iss next up, we're gonna be going into shooting and display options first one highly, highly recommend turning off the beep on your camera when when you take a photo tour with me like I, uh I went to morocco a few weeks ago, one of things I ask everyone in the group to do is to turn off the beep on their camera. I just don't want to make a fuss with everyone notices those noises going on and it's just better to be discreet in those travel situations and so I had the recommend turning off the beef on your camera. Next up the continuous low shooting mode it's set now two three frames per second, you can set it faster or slower, depending on your needs. Three is fine with me maximum continuous release this is the maximum number of shots that your will your camera will take in a continuous mode it's at one hundred and if you need to set it shorter than that, because you don't wantto philip the buffer, you can do so exposure delay mode this is going to delay the shutter release it's kind of like mere lock up it's kind of like a self timer it will delay it either by one two or three seconds and it is mainly for use in scientific environment if you had the camera mounted on the tripod and you were taking pictures and you didn't want any vibrations it would send up the mirror it would wait one two or three seconds and then it would take the picture it's just an initiate an additional way for reducing mirror shock next is the elektronik front curtain shudder and so this is something I talked a little bit about before it's something that can be turned on there's kind of a short cut to this when you are in the live you mod so what happens here is that the camera is in live you the mirrors up and the shutter is clearly not open but it starts the exposure within elektronik front curtain shudder and this is going to reduce any sort of vibration we're movement from that front shutter opening very, very quickly and the advantage to this is very, very sharp pictures no movement of the camera, no vibrations the down side is that you're not going to be able to use shutter speeds faster than one two thousandth of a second and there may be some problems or some issues with older manual lances I really figured out why yet, but that's what the technical information says and so this is something that you would use in a near up mode. So give it a try if you're shooting highly detailed subjects using a tripod it's a great new feature. No other nikon camera currently has that s oh, it's, a kind of a nice feature that is, uh only on this high end camera this time, the file numbering sequence is how the camera numbers the images that are shot on the card. And this has that ten ten thousand number sequence. And this is where you can reset it down to zero if you want, you know, if you every time you went out to shoot, you could reset it to zero. I don't recommend that for most people, normally this file sequence on basically means it's in a continuous county mode, you can either turn it off or you can reset it if you want to. Next up is the viewfinder grid display. If you recall in the viewfinder there's an electronic grid that you can turn on. Yeah, this is something that architectural photographers, landscape photographers, people with horizons sometimes like to have, but some people think it's a bit of clutter and they leave it turned off, which is kind of the group that I met next up is the esso display an adjustment. One of the little downsides of their top lcd is that it does not show you the s o up there. And so if you would prefer to see the s o as opposed to the number of pictures left you khun get that by turning the show s o on and I would recommend x I think the sow is more important than the number of pictures left because you will be able to see that in the viewfinder of the of the of the cameras. In any case and with larger cards, most people are not running out of memory real quickly, and so I think I s o is something that's more important on the photographer's mind than the number of photos left, all right, powering through this moving down to d nine screen tips, and so these air little helpful messages that help you show what's going on when you press the button on the back of your camera. Now, when you first get your camera, these air kind of helpful tips that explain what you're doing, but once you get to know the camera, they're very, really irritating because they get in the way and they blocked the rest of the screen. And so while you're new at the camera, I would leave this turned on, but once you get used to what's going on, then I would want to turn him off because you don't need him anymore information display the camera will automatically switch between two different looks to this display on the back the camera either you can have dark letters on a white background or light letters on a dark background and it switches according to how bright it is outside the camera. If you don't like this, you can turn it on to b for one setting or w for the other other setting, but if you don't mind the camera switching back and forth which I'm fine with it uh that's going to be in the auto setting next up is l c d illumination and so remember on the top of the camera there's a little lcd switch that will flip on a display for how bright or turns on a light on the top lcd well, if you want, you can have that turn on the back lcd as well at the same time and so if you want one switch to light up everything you can turn it on it's a bit too much light for me when it's dark out it's why leave it turned off but it is a neat option tohave if you are using the vertical grip on the camera you could describe what type of batteries are being used in there, whether they're lithium sze or they're rechargeable zor just standard double a's you can choose most people are just putting standard double a's, which are lr sixes, but you can adjust for the different types of batteries and if you are using that vertical battery grip, you can decide which battery does the camera use first the grip battery, which is the most easily replaceable one or the one up in the camera, which is harder to get to and so most people are going to be choosing the one that's easiest to get teo all right, newberg would like to know does exposure toe lay mode really make a sharper image? Is it depends on if you have vibrations at the time you're taking a picture at all. And so if you're ari just in standard picture taking mode, yes, it will make for sharper picture school if your system is to use a tripod and to use the mirror lockup mode, then it's not really going to make a difference, okay, because once you put it into the air lock up mode, you wait usually a second or two just kind of more manually and then you take the picture, and so it depends on how you were shooting your picture okay, I think we're good to roll all right so we're on to the ea section which is dealing with bracketing and flash and the first one is your flash synchronization speed and this essentially is thie fastest shutter speed that you can use on the camera and the top shutter speed on the camera is one to fiftieth of a second. However, you can get two three twentieth of a second in a special f p mode with a nikon flashes and so it's not a flash class but if you buy one of their flashes they do have a special way of synchronizing at a slightly faster shutter speed. The downside is that you lose t t l automated mita ring system in the camera the flash has to fire manually it is possible but it comes with a lot of caveats in my opinion the next is the flash shutter speed and this is more the minimum shutter speed that the camera would choose. So for a basic photographer I would say a sixteenth of a second but somebody who is a little bit steadier in their technique and really knows how to hold the camera properly and has v r lenses and can hold it very, very still with slower shutter speeds you can start edging that number down to maybe a fifteenth or even down to an eighth of a second as to where you would like that flash to be able to fire off that if you are using a mode like the program now flash control for built in flash the options here are t t l which I highly recommend you can also do manual exposure, which could be very handy for special effects and really getting control of the flash. But we also have a repeating mode which is a special effects mode we're not going to get into and then a commander mode where it can control other nikon flash unit's control the power of them and so tt l would be a good standard mode and if you do have those other flashes I do recommend experimenting in playing with those commander modes because there's a lot of great things that you could do with multiple flash techniques exposure compensation for the flash and so when you do exposure compensation, are you doing this for the entire scene or you just doing it for the flash that's working? And so here I would choose the entire frame for most people that it's going to do is it's going to control the flash exposure compensation as well as the ambient exposure compensation next up modeling flash there is a modeling flash that you can turn on and let me see if I can do this live on camera this was untested and so if I turn the flash on and I press the depth of field preview button it fires this very fast, but some people call a disco strobe and you'll be able to see where the shadows are lane according to where this is and this is also a great way to wear down your battery uh, just a good way to preview where the shadows are going to be, and some people hit this button and they triggers and they don't like it they can turn it off, and I could understand that to auto bracketing set with the bracketing you can have multitudes of different things adjusted for in that bracketing siri's most people are wanting to adjust the exposure, but there are some people that want to go in and they want to specifically just whether they're doing the flash or white they could even do white balance bracketing or the dynamic light, the delighting bracketing and so those were some very unusual modes. Most people are going to want to do this with auto exposure and flash where the flash and the exposure are getting brighter and darker auto bracketing when you're in the manual mode, what is going to happen in this case you can adjust the flash on lee s so for instance, if you have a very specific shutter speed and aperture set on ly, the flash will be adjusted in power, which I think is the most sense because if you're very specific about your shutter speeds in apertures, you probably don't want those to change. You can get very finicky about the bracketing order. Normally the cameron wants to shoot the normal picture first, because that way you can get everything set up with light, meter and so forth, and then it shoots a dark one and then a light one. But some people prefer it shooting a dark a normal and then a brighter one, which looks a whole lot better when you download it into a photo program and you're looking at a lot of him in a line up on your computer screen and so choose as you wish, moving to the next group of controls, specifically the controls, all right, so the switch on the back of the camera and, you know, I think I may have misstated something earlier before flipping the light switch on the top of the camera. What this will do is this will illuminate the front and the back lcd at the same time, and what I misspoke earlier, there was another setting on the lighting, and that wass is if you press any button, it would turn the lights on and that's going to waste a lot of battery power unless you're always working in the dark, and so as far as this one goes elly lcd just turns on the back light on the top control next up is control of that center button the one in the middle of that control panel in the back of the camera what does that do and there's three different modes where will work slightly differently for you shooting mode playback mode and live view and so you can go in here and you can have it do its normal thing you khun deactivate it if you hit it too often and it does something you don't want it to dio or there might be something else specifically that it will do that you wanted to jump too like in the playback mode it would instantly go to the history graham which would be a very nice thing to have for checking the exposure moving on f three the multi selectric forgetting that name I just call it the mouse with the tab so if you want teo the multi selector that restarts the media could have it re start the meeting system or you could just leave it turned off so normally when the cameras in the slightly powered down mode and you hit that nothing happens but if you want to you can have that reactivate the meter in system on the front of the camera is the f n for function but this is kind of that bonus button that you get to program into one of seventeen different functions on the camera so find something that you use on a regular basis and program it in to the function button right above that is the preview button. It by default, is set to step the field preview, and if you want to re program this to do something else that you find helpful, then you can do so right in their seventeen different functions that you khun put into that one, and you can also customize the a l a f l button on the back of the camera, and so there several things that you can put in here, I think you have sixteen different functions that you can put in there as well. I also mentioned earlier about locking the shutter speed and the aperture. So if you wanted to go to an event and have everything locked in, you could go in here and lock either the shutter speed and or the aperture, and it just locks it into the current settings that are set. So this is something that you would probably want to only shoot or do when you are in manual photography. In an environment that is going to be non changing when it comes to the lighting of it, the bracket button on the front of the camera can be used for things other than bracketing. If you want, you can have it, do you? Multiple exposures or hdr photography, so whatever one of those three is the most likely once that you were going to use on a regular basis is how you can re program it scrolling down, you can customize the command dials on the camera, so if you don't like what dialled does, what you can switch them, you can have how they work in different menus change, but I will give you a tip, and that is that you should change the rotation for shutter speeds and aperture settings, so you want to reverse the rotation for shutter speeds and apertures, and the reason you want to do this is because I don't know what they've done in japan, but they have kind of reversed the way the dial turns according to the way it looks in the exposure. So if you're trying to get things to go to the left, you want to turn the dial to the left and by default you have to go to the right, and so it'll make much more sense when you were trying to set manual exposures. If you reverse the shutter speed and aperture operation of this style, as we talked about at the beginning of the class, the button pressing protocol on this camera is normally the idea is that you have to press a button. And while the button is pressed then you have to turn the dial on the camera and this is as I say, a safety precaution and so can you release the button to use the dial's no this is normally turned off now some people like to have a little bit quicker access to their button or one finger access and so if you turn this on this is the way it works you press the button release it and then you have about six seconds in which to make that change on the dial or at least to get started making that change on the dial and so that's kind of a one finger system rather than a two finger system so if you want the two finger system than you wantto excuse me let me say this again if you want the one finger option you want to turn it on if you like the two finger option leave it turned off that's the standard system next up slot empty released now I mentioned this before and this is if you happen to have no memory card in the camera will you be able to fire the shutter and this will keep the shutter laakso you cannot fire it's your mistaken about thinking that you've taken photos when there's no memory card in the camera nikon has a little bit of ah sorted history when it comes to indicators indicating exposure not too long ago, the standard system for nikon was to have zero on the right and plus on the left. I don't know why just doesn't make quite a ce much sense that way, but if you have an older camera, say, like a nikon d three hundred, that has that system on it, and you want this meter to match the way that that meter looks, you can reverse the indicators, but I think the indicators are now set properly on this camera, with plus on the right and minus on the left, so I wouldn't mess with ease unless you're trying to match it with an older camera. The movie record button, as I mentioned earlier, can be reprogrammed to control the so so if you are a type of person who's shoots very few or little or no movies, I would highly recommend changing that button into the s o button it's, easily accessible, not too easy but very quickly accessible and it's a little bit easier to get two then the other s o button. And so I like kind of switching this over dia so but if you do shoot movies a lot, you're probably gonna want to leave this for activating the movie recording next up live view button options and let me just refresh my notes on what I'm doing on here. Oh, this would be deactivating the live you so do you want to be able to use live you some people never used live you and they want to deactivate it. I think it's a very useful tool that's uh, nice to be able to access very easily so I would leave it turned on. If you do get the vertical grip, you can customize the buttons on that grip as well as the cameras. So here is where if you want to do the back button focusing, you would want to turn the on button on so that you can focus with that back button on the vertical grip. They have a new remote out that has a function but not it, and so you can go in and you can control control there's ten different functions that you could program in tow activate by pressing the function button on the remote. So there's one extra little bonus thing that you can do via this wireless remote beyond just triggering the camera and so customise to your needs. If you are fortunate enough to have one of their big gun lenses, they have some focusing buttons on there that are designed well. They're just function buttons there lens function buttons and you can program these into about seven different functions according to your needs as to whether it starts the focus or locks the focus or a variety of other functions in there and act fact here's our modes right there and so you can lock the exposures you can preset focus points, you can disable the flash or enable the flash, and so these could be customized according to your needs, so lots and lots of ways to customize the camera from here, we move into the custom menu for just the movie settings you can control what the function button does on the front of the camera. One of the options in here is power aperture. One of the complaints on nikon cameras in years past is that when you have the camera set up in the manual mode and in the movie mode, you couldn't change the aperture. You'd have to go out of movie mode and then change your aperture and then come back into the movie moment and they've resolved that issue, and they now have a power aperture that you're able to adjust by using the function button in there. But there are some other options that you can choose in that function. You can choose the preview button as well. You can customize what this does, and this is the same options that we have in the function button, so you got two buttons and about four different choices of options in here, and you get to choose your two favorite ones and so index marking might be a good one power aperture would definitely be a very good one. Those would probably be two of my favorite functions to have set in there when you're in the movie mode. What does thie auto exposure lock, auto focus, lock button dio you can customize this to do index marking. You can have it show photo information or you can have it locking exposure and or focusing according to whatever your needs are, depending on what your needs are in the movie mode, the shutter button is normally dedicated to taking photos because it's primarily a still device. But if you want to, you can reassign the shutter release button to record movies, and some people find that just a more comfortable button depress if they're shooting a lot of movies. And so if you're buying this camera mostly to shoot movies or completely to shoot movies, I would flip that over and have a record movies it the downside is you will no longer be able to take still photos while you were in the movie mode, and so I guess that's the deciding factors if you plan to take still photos in that time for him.