CUSTOMISE YOUR CAMERA

Adam Waring shows you how to set up user settings on your camera, so that you can access the optimum settings for different shooting scenarios in a jiffy

- Adam Waring

30 MINS

We all love to try our hand at different genres of photography: one day we’ll be up at dawn shooting landscapes, the next taking family portraits, and the day after we’ll be trying to capture fast-paced sports. Fortunately, your DSLR or mirrorless camera is almost infinitely configurable to help you get great results all manner of scenarios.

But how many times have you picked up your camera to capture whatever happens to be unfolding in front of you, only to find that the settings are primed for the last thing you shot, and wholly unsuitable for your current subject? We’ve all done it: fired the shutter to capture a fleeting, unmissable moment, and then realised the 2-sec self-timer had been set in conjunction with a bracketing sequence from the previous day’s landscape shoot.

Many cameras have a variety of ways to help you set up your camera for the shooting scenarios you use most often, then quickly access these go-to settings. We’re using a Nikon camera for the purposes of this tutorial, but the principles of creating and using custom settings are the same whichever type or make of camera you’re using.

On Nikon cameras, user settings are found on the mode dial of D7xxx, D7xx and D6xx DSLRs, as well as most Z-series cameras. Simply save your settings to one of these presets, and the next time you want to shoot that type of subject, turn the dial to the corresponding ‘U’ setting. Other models use ‘banks’ for switching between shooting and custom settings.