Chapter 3. Setup: Playback and Shooting Menus

The Nikon D300 is undoubtedly one of the most customizable, tweakable, fine-tunable cameras Nikon has ever offered. In fact, this versatility has made the D300 popular among professional photographers as well as advanced amateurs. If your camera doesn’t behave in exactly the way you’d like, chances are you can make a small change in the Playback, Shooting, Custom Settings, and Setup menus that will tailor the D300 to your needs. In fact, if you don’t like the menus you can create your own using the clever My Menu system.

This chapter will help you sort out the settings for the Playback and Shooting menus, which determine how the D300 displays images on review, and how it uses many of its shooting features to take a photo. The following chapters will focus on the Custom Settings menu (Chapter 4), and Setup, Retouch, and My Menu options (Chapter 5).

As I’ve mentioned before, this book isn’t intended to replace the manual you received with your D300, nor have I any interest in rehashing its contents. You’ll still find the original manual useful as a standby reference that lists every possible option in exhaustive (if mind-numbing) detail-without really telling you how to use those options to take better pictures. There is, however, some unavoidable duplication between the Nikon manual and the next three chapters, because I’m going to explain all the key menu choices and the options you may have in using them. You should find, though, that I will give you the information you need in a much more helpful format, with plenty of detail on why you should make some settings that are particularly cryptic.

I’m not going to waste a lot of space on some of the more obvious menu choices in these chapters. For example, you can probably figure out that the Beep option in Custom Setting menu CSM #d1 deals with the solid-state beeper in your camera that sounds off during various activities (such as the self-timer countdown). You can certainly decipher the import of the two options available for the Beep entry (On and Off). In this chapter, I’ll devote no more than a sentence or two to the blatantly obvious settings and concentrate on the more confusing aspects of D300 setup, such as automatic exposure bracketing. I’ll start with an overview of using the D300’s menus themselves.