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Custom Menu: AF/MF & Button/Dial

Now we're gonna get into the Custom Menu and this is a rather complicated area where they have put in a lot of features. This is actually the vast majority of the menu system here. It is all broken up into different categories. I have had a hard time figuring out what these categories actually mean. Let me explain how I think about these things now. So, A, Autofocus, A stands for Autofocus. That's pretty easy. What do we have in B, Buttons and Dials, so B stands for Buttons and Dials. That's very easy. Release and Drive modes under C, I just think of release, c, c, c a lot a C sound in there. Next up we have Displays, Beepers, PC, okay fine Displays, D for Displays. E stands for Exposures, okay. Next one, we have Flash and Custom settings, so F stands for Flash, very easy. Next up, under G we have Quality, Color and White Balance. I'm stretching a little bit here, but you know giant prints equal giant quality and so that's when you really gotta have the quality setup to a very high sta...

ndard. H means for Record and Erase. My thinking is here today gone tomorrow so we gotta think about erasing things. I Movie, well that's like an Apple product, iMovie, that's easy to remember. The Built-In EVF on the camera, letter J, how are you ever gonna remember that? Well, John likes an EVF, and so EVF is J. Alright, so the best one is the last one, how are you gonna remember the Utility items for K? K stands for knight as in the Dark Knight, Batman has a utility belt, and so knight utility belt. If you're tryin' to remember where things are, try to use those little ideas on how to remember where those features might be. Alright, so in any case, diving into group A, things dealing with the subject of Autofocus. First up is the Autofocus mode that we use, and so here we have something that we've talked about before, single, continuous, the different tracking options. Generally speaking you're gonna probably wanna be in single autofocus mode. Although, I'll be honest with you, a lot of the times I prefer the manual focus mode, because I like doing something called back button focusing. If you like back button focusing, you could set manual focusing here, and use the function one button on the back of the camera for focusing, if you follow along in the next couple of minutes, 'cause I'm gonna tell you the secret second part of the step to getting back button focusing setup for ya. And then, we can also change these for the Movie mode as well, how do you want the camera to work when it's flipped to the Movie mode, 'cause it might be different then what you want for standard still pictures as well. Next up, Full-time Autofocus, I would leave this turned off. This is where the camera is focusing all the time. We generally don't want the camera focusing all the time. I like it focusing only when I'm telling it to focus, uses a lot of battery power otherwise. Next up, is the Auto Exposure Lock, AFL, lock button on the back of the camera, which is also known as the Fn1 button on the camera. You can choose this to work in different manners when your in single autofocus, continuous autofocus, and manual focus. Most of the time I leave this in one, but for those of you who like back button focusing, who just a moment ago, put your AF mode in manual focus. If you set this MF mode for the A data exposure lock, autofocus lock the MF option to Mode 3, it will trigger the autofocus system when your camera is in a manual focus mode. It is essential an autofocus override when you're in manual focus. It's perfect back button focusing, but it's a little bit complicated on how to get there, 'cause you have to make two of those settings. You have to set your still picture to manual focus and then come in here to the Manual focus option and set it to Mode 3. There's some other options you might wanna take a look at that kinda plays around with where the camera locks exposure or not. There's a lot of little customizations in here. Next up, Reset Lens, there are some times when you are shooting photos and you turn the camera off and you turn the camera back on, and some people don't want that lens to reset on focusing or where it was zoomed to. It's fairly unusual, I think most people would want the lens to be reset back to its kinda default standard infinity position. But, if you're turning your camera on and off and you don't want that lens to change position at all, then you would turn this thing off. Bulb/Timer Focusing, this is just whether the question, if you have the camera in the Bulb Focusing mode, which is those really long timer shots of more than 30 seconds, do you want to be able to focus the lens? Well, possibly the person who is doing some very creative nighttime exposure, might like that. That's why I put the red setting, the advanced user's setting on allowing this to happen. More basic user probably doesn't wanna bump the focusing accidentally, and so it would be turned off for that recommendation. The Focusing Ring can be adjusted to the standard focusing way, which is the arrow focusing arrow pointing towards infinity. Nikon lenses focus in the opposite direction, so if you're coming from the Nikon world of cameras and you want everything to work the same as a Nikon camera, you would go with the Nikon version in there, which I believe is the clockwise direction. The Manual Focus Assist, and so this is the option where the camera will automatically magnify in for you, so that you can see more clearly how you're going to focus. We have two options, we have a Magnify option and a Peaking option, so let's take a look at a couple of short videos on how this works. In this case, I'm wanting to focus so I start manually focusing the lens and it automatically zooms in, as you can see in the bottom right hand corner. I can then adjust focus for that zoomed in area. And then, when I press the shutter release at the end it backs off to the entire screen area. Another option, is Focus Peaking, and what you'll notice is as I manually focus, the area in focus highlights shimmering in white, so you can see the depth of field or the area that is in good focus, as I move the focusing forward and back on this. And so, different types of manual focusing require different types of aids. You might prefer one or the other. In general, I leave 'em turned off until I'm working with a particular project where one of these is most useful. You can set one of the function buttons to be a Home position position button, so that if you are changing focusing points you can simply press one of the function buttons and the camera will return to a basic focusing system. For instance, you might choose the three points in the middle as your default focusing system and while you might be changing it all around for different situations, with the single press of a button, it'll go back to its Home position and you'll be there ready for any sort of focusing situation that you would encounter in a very very quick manner of speaking. Here is where you can program that in. The AF Illumination is a light that turns on the camera, which from a technology standpoint, if you, hey, that's kinda cool, but it's also kind of irritating, especially if you're the subject or another photographer and somebody else's camera is shining a light on your subject. This is something I'd recommend turning off, because it's really not that powerful, and it doesn't help that much, but it sure can annoy other people. The Face Priority is something that we've already talked about. There is a shortcut button by just using the arrow pad in the info button on the back of the camera, but we could set it here as well. AF Area Pointer, this is just simply letting you know where the active autofocus point has been turned on. It's just gonna light up in green, it does so relatively briefly. If it bothers you, you could turn it off, but I think it's helpful knowing where the camera is focusing. The AF Targeting Pad, this is kinda nice. It allows you to use the touch screen on the back of the camera, to move the focusing point around, even with the camera held up to eye level. It's just a quick, easy way of moving the pad around. If you find that you're bumping the screen with your nose or holding the camera, you can turn this off, but it is a nice way of quickly moving that focusing bracket around. Continuing to the next collection, B for Button, so we have a lot of Button controls in here. First up, is our Button Functions, where we can go in and control the exact functions of all of our little function buttons and our arrow controls, left and down, and choosing which ones you want to control different features. It can be very helpful in customizing the camera the way you want it to work. Dial Functions, so we have the Front Dial, we have the Back Dial, that have kind of their default parameters, and if you want them to change and work differently, so that they turn the other direction, or they do something different, you can do so here in the Dial Functions. I can't say that I have a particular change that I like to make in here, but if you're not used to shutter speeds in the front or the back, you can switch it to the opposite side. For instance, in the program mode, if you wanna get in and change where the shutter speed, versus the F numbers are changed, that would be the manual mode, you could change what side the shutter speeds are changed on versus the F number, With the program, you could change where does the program shift happen, versus the exposure compensation, front dial versus back dial. If you don't like the way the dial turns, for instance, if you look at this light meter right now, it's +2, it's over on the right hand side. My brain says that I want the dial to go left, because I wanna get this meter back towards the zero setting, and so my brain wants to turn the dial to the left, but the dial is currently programmed for dial position one, which means going to the right. I guess it's going to the left if you think about the front of the dial, but I think the dials should be reversed and so, I am going to highly recommend changing this to Dial 2 option. I think it's gonna make manual exposure a little bit more logical as you look at the exposure indicator and start turning the dial. Highly recommend Dial 2. Mode Dial Function, so on your Mode Dial, the iAuto and the ART mode on the top of the camera can be reprogrammed to perform whatever you have programmed into Myset 1, 2, or 3, or 4, and if you recall, these were in the first shooting menu number one under Reset Myset. You can set up the camera to your parameters, and in this case you can actually go to those, rather than going into the menu system, by simply turning it to the iAuto and ART mode, where it essentially erases those modes and lets you put in your own custom functions if you don't normally use those modes. Other cameras will often have this as a memory recall or a custom one and custom two setting. It may not say it on the dial, but that's what it's doing.