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Nikon D700 User's Guide:
My Menu (Recent Settings) Menu

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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, scrolling to the left and selecting the bottom option which has an icon resembling another menu with a check. You'll see MY MENU on the color LCD.

What it Does

My Menu lets you put all the menu items you actually use in one place.

You also have the option of using Nikon's older Recent settings menu, which automatically update to contain the items you've used recently.

You select which of these two menus are used (My Menu or Recent settings) with the Choose tab option at the bottom of this menu.

What I Do with It

This feature helps immensely, since Nikon hides so many important menu items in weird locations.

My Menu        top

I use My Menu.

It's obvious how to program these: your options are at the bottom of this menu (or at the top before you put anything in it).

I have these programmed to:

Set Picture Control

My top item, to which I can get by assigning the FUNC button, lets me select among the various picture controls. I use my VIVID setting with +3 saturation for photos of things, and NEUTRAL with +1 saturation for photos of people.

ISO sensitivity auto control

I turn ISO AUTO on and off here as I go between auto and manual exposure.

ISO sensitivity settings

In this menu I set the lowest shutter speed depending on what I'm shooting. I set 1/100 if shooting people, 1/250 if shooting a long tele, and 1/8 if shooting wide landscapes.

Active folder

I use this to create a new folder for each subject I shoot.

Assign FUNC button

This makes it easy to reset the FUNC button to another clever trick. I use this profusely on my D3, but since the D700 doesn't offer variable aspect ratios, I don't reprogram the FUNC button of the D700 and could take this off the D700's My Menu.

Image review

Sometimes I want to see each shot when shooting slowly, some times when shooting bursts I don't want the monitor popping in by itself. Here is where I set this.

Ideally Nikon needs a firmware improvement whereby we can switch between these by holding the Play button for several seconds, but Nikon hasn't gotten there yet.

Non-CPU lens data

Here is where I set and select among my various manual focus lenses. You can skip this if you only shoot AF lenses, or just one manual lens. The D700 recalls the last setting whenever you pop on a manual lens, so if you only have one, set it and the D700 recognizes it by magic. If you use two or more (or use a manual-focus zoom), this lets you select which lens or focal length.

Battery info

If you're the sort of person like me who watches your digital clocks to be sure they count up properly, this menu lets you read your battery power to the nearest single percent. It also tells you how many shots you've already made on this charge, which can help you predict how many shots are left. You'll need Algebra to calculate remaining shots; the D700 doesn't do it for you.

To calculate, remaining shots = (pic meter) / (1-(bat. meter/100))

Charging life is the health of your battery. I've made many tens of thousands of shots on my many Nikons, and have never seen it read anything other than 0 (new). See How to Keep Your Batteries Healthy.

Recent settings        top

Recent settings is the older lazy-man's version of My Menu. Recent settings contains about the last 14 menu items you've set.

To use the Recent settings menu instead of the default My Menu menu, select this at the very last Choose tab option. Here you may choose My Menu or Recent settings. If you choose a different one, you won't lose what you've set in the other, although items are only added to Recent settings while you've selected Recent settings.

Cooler still is that even if you choose Recent settings, the option to assign the FUNC button to go to the top item in My Menu still gets you to that item. If you are in Recent settings and use the FUNC button to get to the top item in My Menu, clicking left gets you not to My Menu, but Recent settings.

That's it! Go make some great pictures!


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Thanks for reading!

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

          b Metering/Exposure

          c Timers/AE&AF Lock

          d Shooting/Display

          e Bracketing/Flash

          f Controls

     SET UP MENU

     RETOUCH MENU

     MY MENU MENU   You're done! Return to Top of D700 Guide.

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