Customize your Nikon

Maybe your Nikon does more than you think? Master your custom settings

Your Nikon DSLR or mirrorless came from the factory set up to work in a particular way. Nikon’s engineers have spent a lot of time thinking about how cameras are used and how to make more advanced options accessible and easy to apply.

However, we don’t all take pictures in the same way, and the default settings can sometimes seem counter-intuitive. For example, when you turn the command dial to apply exposure compensation, do you keep turning it the wrong way by mistake? If you think it’s the wrong way round, you’re not the only one! And when you use the Auto Exposure Bracketing feature, does it annoy you that the camera shoots the ‘correct’ exposure first and then the ‘over’ and ‘under’ shots? You can change both these behaviours – and a whole lot more – using your Nikon’s Custom Setting menu.

WHICH NIKON DO YOU HAVE? 

The level of customization depends on your camera. With the most basic models your options are limited, but as you go further up the range, the settings become much more extensive, and you can store groups of custom setups for different shooting scenarios – check our table overleaf to see where your own camera fits in.

At first, the menus on the back of the camera make it tricky to work out where to find custom functions. There is some logic to Nikon’s menu system, though. The Photo Shooting menu (‘camera’ icon) shows settings you might want to change from shot to shot, such as Active D-Lighting, ISO, Noise reduction or image size/quality settings. Menus such as Playback and Movie Shooting work in a similar way.