Monday, December 15, 2008

My menu: or the choices we make.

What have you added to the "My Menu" tab in the D700?

I have decided to make a choice about activating D-Lighting if I'm going to use it in uneven lighting situations.  So, that's one item (Candy jars, Sycamore, IL, with Nikon AF-S 24-70 f2.8, at f5.6, ISO 5000).


Another option I singled out and added to "My Menu" was battery order and battery information.  Even though I have the MB-D10, I don't want to rely on the battery icon that appears on the LCD.  In my experience, it can go from one notch below full, to very urgently low in the blink of an eye (Chicago Christmas Market, with the same gear above, but with lens wide open). 


Then, I also added "Image Area" (the choice between DX and FX coverage).  Why not?  At times it does come in handy (Chicago, a view from the Daley Plaza, shot just like the cats photo above: lens wide open and fast ISO; only difference is that I turned off the Auto D-Lighting).

Now, the photographs above DO NOT illustrate necessarily any of the functions I added to "My Menu," and I've used them just to show what this camera can do.  Oddly enough, I tend to use it more and more for very low light situations, in which the WB gets, let's say, "challenged."  The jury is still out (to me) about whether it is better to use the Auto or to select a choice.  In a few situations, the Auto has worked well, and given me the same results that the Tungsten choice yields (under tungsten light, of course).  I also used it with the flash option, and the results seemed better than Auto.  The problem I face is that choosing constantly can be a drag.  Hence, Auto is the least bothering choice, and also the most convenient.  

I will be using RAW sometime soon... hopefully, before I leave for San Francisco, on Dec 26.  Who knows, if it is possible, I may post from there and share what can be done with RAW, even if I had to turn it into jpegs first.  

3 comments:

Bob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bob said...

Great question, I thought there would be some common choices here but my menu choices ended up being completely different from yours. Here is what I have at present

-Auto ISO Sensitivity
-Virtual Horizon
-Long exp NR
- High ISO NSR

Its to bad there have not been more replies to this post. It would be interesting to see other photographers choices.

Unknown said...

my menu: (concert shooter)

- active folder
- world time
- image comment
- lcd brightness
- shooting menu bank
- custom setting bank

these are the things i must check before each concert jaja :)