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Nikon D700 User's Guide:
Custom Setting Menu
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© 2008 KenRockwell.com. All rights reserved.

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Nikon D700

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August 2008    Top of D700 Users Guide    D700 Review    More Nikon Reviews

 

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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.

What it Does

The Custom Setting Menu screws with the camera's mechanics and meters and timers and focus and many other little things.

Nikon has subdivided these various menu functions into groups, and color coded them as Autofocus, Metering/Exposure, Timers/AE Lock, Shooting/display, Bracketing/Flash and Controls. The seemingly unrelated things separated by slashes (/) are Nikon's grouping.

I use Nikon's names as headers for each section, so please excuse me if they make little sense.

What I Change

I change a zillion things, all explained on the next pages where I detail everything.

Complaints and Organization

Nikon is pretty sloppy about naming and organizing the menus, sorry.

This menu is also all about shooting, just like the Shooting Menu. It's tricky to remember if something is in the Shooting Menu or the Custom Setting Menu.

I would rename these. If I did, I'd rename the Custom Setting Menu as the Camera Menu and the Shooting Menu as the Film Menu.

I use the D700 daily and rarely can remember in what menu Nikon has hidden what. I use the My Menu menu to put the items I use often.


[C] Custom Setting Bank       top

There are four selectable memory locations which store all the settings in this menu. They are called A, B, C and D. You may add your own names to them for convenience. I leave my A blank, and call B "Studio."

Nikon did another bone-headed thing by naming the Shooting Menu Banks A, B, C and D, and then using the same names (A, B, C and D) for these Custom Menu Banks. They should use 1, 2, 3 and 4 for one of them to prevent confusion. Don't worry: I have an engineering degree and these confuse me, too.

If you use remote flash, one of these banks is a good place to save the settings.

If you have anything set away from the defaults you'll see CUSTOM and A, B, C or D on the top LCD. Regardless of which is selected, if all the defaults are selected (you can do that with Reset below) you won't see CUSTOM on the top LCD.

There is no "SAVE" command. The bank you have selected is updated immediately as you change settings. If you've never selected one then you've been working in the A bank.

You can save names for each, but you can't lock any of these banks. If you have a bank you don't want altered, don't shoot actively with it. Anytime you change anything in the Custom Setting Menu you are changing the settings of whichever bank you have selected. To save a Bank you must work in another, since there's no way to lock them. Nikon confuses us all by letting us save names which stay locked while the settings wander all over the place as we change them in shooting.

I ranted about this back at Shooting Menu Banks.


[R] Reset custom settings        top

This resets everything in the selected Custom Shooting Menu Bank (just described above) to the defaults. The next six pages describe all the settings affected. Reset only affects the bank (A, B, C or D) in which you're working.

Play with everything below to your heart's content, since if you screw anything up this reset will fix it. Choose a bank you don't use and you won't change the bank you do use.

Once you hit YES it resets. It doesn't ask "are you sure?" first.


I've divided the rest of this menu into several pages because it's so long. I've divided it up as Nikon did in its own submenus.


PLUG

My D700 User's Guide continues below.

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Ken


Back to Top of D700 User's Guide or Top of Nikon D700 Review

KNOBS and BUTTONS

     FRONT

     TOP PANEL

     BACK

MENUS

     PLAYBACK   

     SHOOTING MENU

     CUSTOM SETTING MENU

          a Autofocus < < NEXT

          b Metering/Exposure

          c Timers/AE&AF Lock

          d Shooting/Display

          e Bracketing/Flash

          f Controls

     SET UP MENU

     RETOUCH MENU

     MY MENU MENU

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