Browsing in the Menus with the command dials

First off, a word about the photos below: one of these two is a shot of Santiago Calatrava's wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum. The other, is the side wall of the Chicago Lyric Opera theater. I'm sure you can guess which is which...

Now, let's go down to business.  I offered a little tip last time: how to check your menus without pushing the round wheel, officially known as multi-selector, in the camera back.  In fact, you should be able to navigate through it with your command and subcommand dials.  

This is how you do it.  Turn on your D700 first.

Now that it's on, push the Menu button.   Go to the Custom Setting Menu, then to the Controls section, which is F.  Now, look for F9:  Customize command dials.  Click OK.  In the menu you will find "Menus and Playback" as one of the choices.  Click on it to turn it on.  Return to the Custom Setting Menu. 

Now that you're in the main menu... Play with it!  Let's assume you are in the Playback Menu and that your first choice, which is DELETE, is already highlighed and on top of the menu.

• Now, turn your main command dial (the one in the back of the camera, right in front of you) to the right, and you will find it goes downward, highlighting selections as it goes down.  Turn it leftwise and it goes up. 
  
• But you didn't want to do anything with Playback!  You turned on the menus to check, say, Vignette Control.  What do you do?
  
• You turn the Sub-command dial (the one in the front of the camera, right above the grip) towards the left.  Now, the cursor-selector is on the Tabs (in which the options are Playback, Shooting, Custom Setting, Setup, Retouch and MyMenu).  
  
• Turn your main command to the right just one step and you'll find yourself in the Shooting Menu.
  
• Turn your subcommand dial to the right.  This will take you from the Tabs to the Shooting Menu. 
  
• Active D-Lighting should be highlighted.  If not, that's because it wasn't the last choice you used when you turned to this menu the last time.  
  
• Turn your main command dial to the right one step... and voilà!: you are in Vignette Control.
  
• Things get better... Turn your subcommand dial to the right again...
  
• Here you see your choices: High, Normal, Low and Off.  Pick the one you prefer by rotating the main command to the right or left, and then, only then, push the OK button.
  

You're done... and you haven't used the multi-selector at all!   Ain't that cool?

I'm sure this option must be in the manual, but I didn't bother finding it or even looking for it.  I simply stumbled upon this by accidentally turning one dial while I was looking at the menus.   In essence, you use the main command to navigate them, and the subcommand dial to switch around.  The logic is pretty intuitive, because you turn the subcommand to the left when you want to go to the Tab, or to the right, when you want to go into a particular menu. 

For another cool choice with the Nikon D700 (and I believe you can use it in the D300 as well), go to D-Town TV and watch the first episode of Scott Kelby's and Matt Kloskowski's TV Nikon camera tips show.  Episode No. 1 will show you how to review your photographs in Playback without using the multi-selector, and using only the main command in your camera.  The best thing is that while you can turn from shot to shot with the main command, you can review the technical information with the subcommand dial.  

Goodbye to using that multi-selector again! 

One important last word:  check out Scott and Matt's weekly episodes and make sure to add their site to your bookmarks.  You can always find them in the list of relevant Nikon links to the left of this text.  They are really good; in fact, their first episode really convinced me to buy the Capture NX 2 software, even though I had pretty much decided against it.  In the meanwhile, have loads of fun with your toys!