In Chapter 5, we carefully considered the configurability of the Nikon D700 and its Shooting Menu banks. Now we will continue with this process by going over the Custom setting banks in great detail.
Each of those settings can be configured in different ways. When combined with the Shooting Menu, the Custom Setting Menu allows you to configure your D700 in a variety of ways.
This chapter will help you develop a much better understanding of your favorite digital shooter. Without further ado, let’s dive right into the settings and see what they each do.
First, we’ll consider the process of renaming bank A on our D700 so that we’ll know what style of shooting this bank is configured to support.
In Chapter 5, we discussed how to rename a Shooting Menu bank to a name that describes its functionality. You change the name of a Custom setting bank the same way. If you are familiar with the process, you can just name your bank and skip this first section.
Press the MENU button on the back of your D700, and use the Multi Selector to scroll to the left, then up or down until you find the Custom Setting Menu (looks like a small pencil on the left of the Monitor LCD), then scroll to the Custom setting bank line.
Notice, in the first screen of Figure 6-1, that Custom setting bank has an A after it. This means that your D700 is using bank A. If any letter other than A is showing, you are in a different Custom setting bank. Let’s set the D700 bank to A and add a bank name so that you’ll be able to see at a glance what this particular bank is set up to accomplish. Scroll the Multi Selector to the right. The Monitor LCD will change to look like screen two of Figure 6-1.
Assuming that you have not yet renamed any of your Custom setting banks, you’ll see the four default banks called A, B, C, and D, and a selection called ABC Rename. Scroll down to ABC Rename and then scroll to the right. Your screen will now look like the third screen in Figure 6-1. This is the bank rename screen. The factory default for an unnamed bank is simply a blank field. In other words, if you haven’t yet named your banks, you’ll simply see the single capital letter for that bank, followed by a blank field. Let’s rename our bank by selecting bank A and then scrolling to the right. The screen will now look like the fourth screen in Figure 6-1.
You’ll see a series of symbols, numbers, and letters on top, with a line of dashes at the bottom. The dashes are where we will put our text to rename the bank. In the upper-left corner of the characters area is a blank spot which represents a blank character for insertion in the line of text, which is helpful for separating words. If you scroll down past the uppercase letters, you’ll find some lowercase letters too.
Here is a series of steps to use while creating the new bank name. Refer to Figure 6-2 for the camera controls to use in renaming.
Use the Multi Selector to scroll through the numbers and letters to find the characters you want to use. Scroll down for lowercase letters.
Press the Multi Selector’s center button to select a character. Keep selecting new characters until you have the entire new bank name in place.
If you make a mistake, hold down the Checkered Thumbnail button while using the Multi Selector to move to the position of the error. Push the garbage can (delete) button on the top left of the back of the D700. The unwanted character will disappear.
Press the OK button to save the new name.
Excellent! You have named bank A to a more meaningful name so that you can quickly recognize the custom set of functions.
Now, scroll the Multi Selector to the left until the Custom Setting Menu appears, or press the MENU button to return to the start.