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d1 - d7 Shooting/display
How to Get Here
Press MENU, go to the left and select up and down to the pencil icon. You'll then see CUSTOM SETTING MENU on the color LCD. Click down to d SHOOTING/DISPLAY and click to the right.
What it Does
This menu is a random jumble. These ideally belong in other menus.
What I Change
I change d1, d3 and d4, two of which are very important.
I'm sorry that Nikon put a menu called Shooting inside a menu called Custom Setting, since it has nothing to do with the larger Shooting Menu. This is something else that needs to be reorganized. Sorry.
d1 Beep top
This is the annoying "Look at me, I'm an idiot" confirmation beep.
The D5000 is an amateur camera, so this defaults to ON.
For God and man's sake, please set this to OFF. Otherwise you annoy everyone with your camera beeping for no good reason.
Like all Nikons, you know if you've got good focus by looking at the screen, and if you're blind, see the Focus OK dot on the lower left of the finder.
d2 Viewfinder grid display top
This activates hairlines in the finder.
Set them ON to help keep everything straight and level, or OFF to clean up the finder.
d3 ISO display top
This lets the ISO show in place of the frame buffer counter when your finger is off the shutter button. I use this option.
It returns to the frame counter as you hold the shutter.
d4 File number sequence top
This ensures your file numbers keep counting up.
Nikon goofed, and left it OFF by default. Left this way, you'll start from DSC_0001 every time you reformat a card! Over time you'll have hundreds of photos on your computer all called DSC_0001. It will drive you crazy and it will be too late to do anything about it.
Please reset this to ON for sanity's sake.
If you ever do want to reset to DSC_0001, use the Reset option.
d5 Exposure delay mode top
This makes the D5000 wait about a second after the mirror flips up to release the shutter.
Try this if you're using a long lens on a tripod with exposures of between 1/60 and 1/2 second, where mirror shake is the biggest problem.
Use the superb $18 ML-L3 remote release for best results.
d6 Date imprint top
This lets you permanently stamp the actual image with date, time or relative timing. it has nothing to do with the EXIF data which all digital cameras record along with the files where it isn't visible unless you read the file on your computer.
Set this ON, and it burns orange numbers into the lower right corner of every picture as you take it.
This is just like film cameras that could be set to burn data onto the film.
If you set this on by accident, you'll need Photoshop to edit it out.
d7 Live view display options top
This controls how much junk appears on your LCD in live view.
My D5000 User's Guide continues below.
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Ken
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