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Nikon D750 Menu: Custom Settings

It's time to dig in to the really nerdy stuff which is the custom menu so you'll be wondering as we get through this, would anyone ever change everything in here? No it's highly unlikely most of these items are items that you're going to make a change once too if you have any interest in it at all and you may never come back to it so these air grouped into further subgroups so we have a menu within a menu here. One of the things to take note of is that if there is an ass trick by the letter number of what you are controlling, that means you have changed it from the factory default setting and so if you see that last direct, that means you've changed or somebody else has changed. All right let's get started with the auto focus collection when you were in the continuous focusing mode the camera has a priority of releasing the shutter release, which means if you press down on the shutter release, the camera will take a picture whether it's in focus or not sports photographers have found t...

his to be the best system, but if you want to alter it to be focused priority you could do it but I wouldn't leave it in release it is just the opposite when you were in single serval priority for focusing the camera wants to make sure that you are in focus before you can take the picture and this is a normal system here, but if you do want to change it, you can focus tracking with lock on. All right, so imagine a scenario where you're photographing a soccer player and as you were photographing the soccer player, the referee crosses in front of you. Do you want the camera to pick up that referee? Probably not. If that is the case, then you would want to move this to maybe four or five, which means that your camera stays locked on the subject that is currently there and ignore something that is suddenly entering the frame before you make that change on your camera, think about another scenario, maybe where you are trying to shoot a track race and you're trying to photograph whoever is gonna win the race and one runners in front, but then somebody else crosses in front. You want your camera to switch immediately to whoever is in the front, in which case you might change this to a f to r f one. So it depends on if you are photographing a subject and sticking with it, or do you always want whoever is closest towards you in general, if you're not sure, just leave it at three, but if you shoot a lot of sports you may want to come back to this to see if it is something that you want to adjust for the type of sports that you were shooting, moving on to a four focus point illumination so the focus points are going to turn on your camera for a variety of reasons you can have it on you could turn them off in manual focus for instance, you can display the type of display it has when you're in the group area, whether they're big boxes or little boxes and this is just simply a matter of personal preference it's not bad toe leave him turned on at first, and if you don't like him, you can come back to this and turn him off a f point illumination so normally in your camera when it's bright out the camera will show you the focus point in black when it gets dark out it's going to show you the focus point in red so that you could more easily see it against a black background and the camera will automatically switch back and forth according to the light levels and that's where I would normally leave it on if you wanted to leave this on, it would focus in red all the time or if you left it off it would focus in that grey or black all of the time, but I think auto is the easiest to work with a six focus point wraparound this one's kind of cool so imagine you focus to the point way off on the right hand side and you want to get way over to the left hand side would you have to pass that control pad over and over and over again? Most likely, but if you turn the wrap on you, press it to the right and you kind of wrap around and immediately go over to the left and so it's just a little bit quicker way of navigating throughout the entire range of focusing point, so I think that's kind of cool believe that one turned on the number of focusing points if you find that you just aren't using or don't need all fifty one or you want to be able to change focusing points a little bit more quickly, you can reduce it from fifty one down tto eleven points storing the points by orientation imagine you have selected a group of focusing points over on the right hand side shooting horizontally and then you decide to shoot vertically. Now those points are on the top of the frame because that's what those points have moved if you want to turn this feature on and you've done the same thing rather than keeping those points locked in, the camera will choose the nearest points that matched that location so you're still focused over on the right hand side and it depends on what type of sports and how you use your camera but I think this is generally a kind of a good idea it allows you to shoot verticals and horizontal tze with similar composition but just switching between vertical and horizontal and keeping those focus points in the same place and so hopefully this works for you but this is where I think it works very well for a lot of photographers scrolling down the built in auto focus illuminator I mentioned this the little light on the front of the camera this will come on to help focus under low light situations. Many people find it annoying to have that light pointed in their face and so I like to turn it off simply because I like to be a little bit more discrete with my operation of the camera. All right, so we're moving on to the next grouping I believe you could just keep scrolling down and you'll hit b one which deals with me tearing and exposure issues. Most of these were not going to do any changes on the s o changes in steps of one third increments if you wanted to change it to one half you could the same thing with exposure values as faras shutter speeds and apertures most people like one third because it's the smallest imprint increment that most people can really see with their own eyes easy exposure compensation so exposure compensation normal exposure compensation is if you remember pressing that plus minus button and turning the back dial on the camera some people don't like pressing that button. They just want to be able to turn the dial either on the back or the front of the camera in order to change exposure compensation depending on what mood they're in and so more advanced user might like this because it's going to make the camera a little bit quicker to work with with less button pressing. But many users may not like it because it might be a little too easy to change the exposure in that manner. Next up is matrix metering. There is an option where the camera will actually analyze them the scene and recognize faces and adjust exposure for the face that is in the image and I would say go ahead, leave this turned on it's giving the camera a little bit more information if for some reason you find that it's not working for you you can turn it off but I think that's highly unlikely. If you liked center waited metering, you can go in and customize it under b five so you can change it from an eight millimeter circle in the middle of the frame to twelve fifteen or twenty millimeters in size, so just choosing how much of that information is waited exactly in the middle of the frame I hope you don't need to use fine tune optimal exposure what's going on here is if you found that your camera was over exposing or under exposing everything by a small amount you could correct for it by going in and doing this you can change and actually one sixth of a stop it's a very, very small increments so hopefully you'll never need to do this is only happiness if your camera's light meter was drifting a little bit to one side next grouping timers and auto exposure lock when you press down on the shutter release button, the camera will continue to adjust exposure according to what's in the frame. If you want the camera toe lock in its exposure by pressing halfway down, you could turn this feature on most people don't do this, but it is an option. The standby timer is a menu that allows you to go in and control how long the display stay on in a variety of states. Well, in this case how long the metering timer stays on in the viewfinder and on the top deck of the camera, so if you need a little bit more time to decide on shutter speeds and apertures, you can lengthen this, but it does use more battery power self timer allows you to go in and control exactly how your self timer works, how many seconds it is, how many pictures it takes and so if you're gonna do a group shot let's say you got all your friends and family around you got no one to take the picture, so you set the camera, you put it on a tripod here's what I recommend take at least four shots in time them about one two, three seconds apart because you're always gonna have ah, blinker in the group that blinks and give yourself three or four shots and you should be able to get one shot without people blinking or doing something crazy in that particular photograph, so it makes group shots a little bit easier so you don't have to run back and forth to the camera. Next stop monitor off delay this allows you to go in and customize it, how quickly the camera will shut down the monitors to save battery power, and this is all of it careful balance between battery life and convenience. So I think where the camera comes set is a good place to start, but if you want to leave things on longer or you don't need him on to say the battery power, you can go in and customize thes, as I said, I don't think they need a lot of change to start with, but you can tweak the camera as necessary remote on duration, so if you do have this m l l three remote you can control how long your camera stays active, because if you are going to be using this, the camera needs to be actively looking for a signal so it can't be a slave. How long do you want your camera to remain awaken once again, this is a balance between convenience and battery life. If you have this and you need more time to get in the shot, or more time between shots, you might raise this time up. If you don't have this, it doesn't really matter where you say this, because you're not even turning it on. Next grouping is de shooting and display, so one of the first things I recommend for users is to turn off the beep. The beep will automatically focus well, it automatically beep, win you focus, I should say, and so, in this case, it's kind of helpful tip for beginners to let him know that their camera has properly focused. But once you become used to the camera once used to the visual display in the viewfinder that we talked about as faras notifying you when it's in focus, this is just one of those distractions that some people confined a little annoying, including your subjects, and so I recommend turning off the continuous low speed can be programmed to different levels. We talked about this before anywhere between one and six frames per second. Three frames per second is a nice, convenient numbers. So there's not a great reason to change it unless you find that it doesn't work with something that you are shooting, the camera has a hundred shot limited release. You can only shoot one hundred pictures in a row in this camera. Oh darn. Didn't you want to shoot more than one hundred in a row? Well, if you did want a limited to only five or ten shots, you could most people don't use this that I know the exposure delay mode is essentially the exact same as the self timer mouth it's, a way to delay the exposure by one, two or three seconds. If you were hooking this camera up for astronomy type purposes to a telescope and it would have very high magnification and there was subtle movements after the shutter or after the mere popped up, you would put this into a two second delay so that you could press the shutter release and then all the vibrations would have a chance to settle out. So this is usually in a very technical or scientific environment that you might want to use this feature flash warning, if you remember when we talked about the display in the viewfinder there's that read. Or orange lightning bolt on the right hand corner that is blinking at you when it's low light conditions and if that irritates you, you can turn it off here. Some people want to leave it left on to remind them to use flash or to use a tripod or make accommodations for the slower shutter speed file number sequence this should be normally kept on what it does is it basically keeps a running count of all of your images up to ten thousand and then automatically restarts if you wanted to go in and re start it at zero at any given time, you could go in and manually reset it. Here there is a grid display in the viewfinder that some architectural photographers or landscape photographers like for making sure the horizon this level it's an option. I prefer to turn it off just because I like to have a little clutter in the viewfinder is possible. But if you find it helpful, by all means turn it on because I am I am a fan of those grids. They can be very good, easy, I sl. So if remember, changing the so was a matter of pressing the s o button and turning the dial on the camera. If you turn easy, I s o on what's gonna happen is you can just turn that dial without pressing the issue well, that and so this will make it a little bit quicker to change I s so for instance, if you're in the aperture priority mode and you just quickly want to turn one dial without having to use two hands to do it and so generally I would say most people better not turn this on because it's a little too easy to make changes that you weren't intending to change. But for a skilled practitioner who knew what they were doing, it is a way to speed up the operation on the camera, scrolling down a little bit further information display the info display on the back will change according to the light levels and if you want the camera will normally in the auto mode switch between a light background, a white background or a black background. Actually, I should change that around black lettering or white lettering in according to the light levels. If you want to choose black lettering or white lettering all the time you can most people are perfectly happy with the auto setting lcd illumination you remember when we rotated the on dial all the way over to the edge toe light up the control panel well that's the normal way that you would turn that light on if you wanted to turn this on the lcd illumination feature what's going to happen is that control panel will light up in that red green or that yellow green color any time you press a button on the camera which can be a little bit distracting in some dark environments for other photographers it's very helpful to see what the camera is doing in its changes and so in general I would leave this turned off unless you are specifically needing it turned on if you do get the vertical grip for this camera you can use a battery in the grip as well as one in the camera and for the battery that is in the grip there's different types of batteries that you can put in there remember those double a batteries that I talked about and we also have rechargeable double a's and lithium doubles and this would allow you to tell the camera what type of battery is in there to adjust the voltage that it's getting from those batteries you can also keep a battery in the camera and you can choose which one of the two batteries you are wanting to use first and this might come into play if you're leaving the camera turned on for a long period of time and you need to replace one of them more quickly than the other next grouping is bracketing and flash this first one is the maximum shutter speed that your camera can use when the flash has popped up max ink is one two hundredth of a second so this is the obvious choice there is an option of doing an f p flash we talked a little bit about this high speed flash you do lose t l automation of the flash and so I don't recommend it unless you're trying to do something very manual and very, very particular. The flash shutter speed is choosing the slowest shutter speed that the camera will choose when you're under low light conditions, normal users might choose a sixteenth of a second mohr advanced users that are better at holding their camera very steady can choose something slower like a thirtieth or fifteenth of a second. This also depends on the look you want from your image and what lenses you are using, but I could very well seeing see setting one fifteenth of a second for many of the more advanced users out there flash control for the built in flash normally the flash when it fires its using a t t l system it's measuring light through the lens but if you want to you can set it up in manual you can set up as a repeating flash you can set it up as a commander flash which can trigger other flashes and right here this one feature is probably worth a three to five hour class in itself and unfortunately we don't have time to dive into this, so what we're going to have to do is unfortunately bid this ado very quickly here normally you're going to leave it in t tl, you might want to do a little exposure adjustment as we talked about in an earlier section with your flat exposure adjustment in the t t l but it's a lot of fun if you want to get in and play around with the manual controls on this very creative stuff that you khun d'oh exposure compensation for flash. And so in this case, when you are using exposure compensation, that plus minus button on the top of your camera and the flash is popped up, do you want this controlling the basic exposure or the basic exposure? And the flash unit on top is well, so the more advanced user is just going to want to control the basic exposure so that they will go in and customize the flash to do what they wanted to do. And so that's why, I say background only for that. But for many users who are not too sure about separating the flash from ambient exposure, you could leave this on entire frame and that's going to make the entire frame either a little bit lighter or a little bit darker with that compensation modeling flash. If you press the preview button while the flashes on it fires a burst of light at you, I don't know if this will work, but we have a camera in front on and I have the flash on if I press this button it turns this strobe light on and it can show me where the shadows are if I have something that might be obscuring like a hood in front of my lands I could see if that's obscuring my subject it's also I think I just tastic way of irritating people and wearing the battery down not highly recommended all right next up auto bracketing set so we talked a little bit about bracketing shooting at different exposures and that's the most common way of bracketing but you can also do this with the flash power with white balance and the active delighting option that's where it goes in and adjust the shadows on the highlights in the picture most people are going to leave this in a e and flash or e only where it's just adjusting the exposure but if you want it experiment and play with the other settings they can and they are there for those people who need that some people get very particular about the bracketing order that they shoot the normal bracketing way is to shoot the normal picture first and then the dark one and then a light one but sometimes for convenience in various editing programs it's easier to have the dark the medium and the light and so the normal system allows you to take your normally exposed picture first and that's why they call it the normal way next up is the basic controls of the camera the ok button on the back of your camera normally doesn't do a lot of stuff, but you can control what it does in the shooting mode the playback mode as well as the live view mode if you want to go in and you can customize this to do different things, whether it's going to show thumbnails or hissed a grams, go ahead, take a look in there, poke around, see if there's something that you want to set that helps you out and shortens your workflow in pressing buttons on the camera. The function button is on the front of the camera on the lower side, and this is a button that you, khun pre programmed to do, one of nineteen different functions and so there's a lot of different options, and then what you're going to need to do is just take a little bit of time to scroll through and see what the options and what works for the type of photography you're going to do. The preview button is basically the same. The only difference is that it is pre programmed right now at the beginning to do depth of field preview, which I think it's a pretty handy feature and valuable in many aspects of photography, but if you don't find it valuable, then switch it out to one of the other functions the a l auto exposure lock button on the back, the camera can be reprogrammed to work in a number of different ways normally it's locking exposure. You can have it lock just the focus, you can have it do both, or you can have it do a number of other things as well, depending on what you want have chosen from the options in there customizing the command isles, the front dial, the back dial. Do you want to switch their operation? How do you want them to work? Most of this is just very personal way of working, but I will give you a recommendation that I think will help you out when setting manual exposure. One of the things that bothers me in this camera is that when I put the camera in manual exposure and I'm looking at the exposure meter as I turn the dials, it feels like I have to turn them the opposite direction to go where I want it to go. So what I highly recommend is to go into reverse rotation and check off the box called shutter speed aperture. What this will do is he will reverse the rotation of the dials to make logical sense with the view that you see on the screen, and so I'm a big proponent of having the visuals makes sense, and I think this will help a lot of people who are doing manual exposure and looking at that light meter so just switch the shutter speed and aperture up option you don't need to check off the exposure of compensation that one seems to work fine on its own make that just a little bit more logical next up the release button to use the dial if you recall most of the buttons on the camera like the white balance quality and s o require you to press the button this's the off position you have to press the button and turn the dial that's the only way that you're going to be able to change the white balance for instance if you want you can switch this here we go on and now what happens is it works like many other cameras out on the market and the way this works is you press the button and then you have about six seconds to start making a change with whatever feature it isthe if you wait more than six seconds it resets and turns off and you have to press the button again. Some people prefer one system. Some people prefer the other it's really a matter of personal choice but the normal system is to have this feature turned off slot empty road release lock is a really strange way of saying when your memory card is not in the camera can you take a picture so if you leave this in lock, if you forget to put a memory card in your camera, your set of release will not even fire, which I think is a nice safety protocol to make sure that you don't start taking pictures and thinking you're getting them, but not actually getting anything on the memory card because there's no memory card in there reverse indicators. Okay, this is another kind of weird nikon thing. Nikon, for many years had a system where they had the plus of the exposure on the left hand side, and they have recently switched it to putting plus on the right hand side, which seems a little bit more logical. But if you have an older camera and you want to have this match the older camera, you can reverse it so that this is the same as those older cameras. Many of the cameras for the last two or three years have allowed you to switch back and forth either direction, and so it's just they've kind of switched from putting the plus on left to switching and putting the plus on the right. Next is f nine assigned the movie record, but so if you are a still photographer and you shoot very little videos, I would recommend resetting this button to control the isos it'll make. Changing eso is a little bit quicker because you only need one button to do it with or at least one hand you don't need to stick your left hand up to hit the button on the back of the camera. If you do want to shoot movies from time to time, I would leave this turned off you can control the a button on the back of the vertical grip if you have the vertical grip attached. If you have the w r t ten wireless remote, you can customize what that function button does on that remote we are getting close to the end folks of this one this is long and detailed, so a lot of these things were gonna be seen for the second time once again, these air specified just for the movie reprogramming the function button there's about eight different options that you can choose for it to do in here. The same thing is true with the preview button currently it's set to mark those index is that you can jump back to very quickly by turning the front diallo the camera when you're playing your movie is back you can re program the a button on the back of the camera if necessary you can change the shutter button from taking photos to starting the video recording, so if you were really serious about shooting movies and you didn't care about shooting still photos you can have that record movies, but seeing how it is mainly designed this a still camera that's. What my guess is your main intention is most people are going to want to leave it on taking photos. That way, they could take photos any time they wanted to, even in the movie mode.