Custom Settings D300

CGeezer

CGeezer

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John
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I was wondering as you can save the custom settings for the D300 to a CF Card is there a resource available to actually download complete basic shooting bank settings for certain situations. Say Portrait, Landscape etc.

Does anyone know of such a place?
 
Ahh as usual I got it wrong then :)

Thanks for the speedy reply. Would have been a good feature though :)
 
So if you format your cf card do you lose your custom controls?
 
No offence CGeezer but I think the concept of 'downloading settings for landscape/portrait/etc' is a bit of a red herring.

What settings are you after exactly? You think turning on or off 3D tracking is going to make your landscapes better?

It's a total misnomer and will just distract you from what you're trying to do. Camera settings mean b****r all - the only ones you need to know, especially for landscapes or day to day, are aperture, ISO and shutter speed!

With the very small exception of shooting challenging sports at high speed, there is b****r all to change in the custom settings menu that has any impact on taking pictures. And letting yourself think there is, will distract you from what you should be doing, which is thinking about angles, DOF and what to exclude.
 
Sorry just to expand on my comment above to make it a little bit more useful.

In any given situation it may be helpful, though ultimately won't make a difference to your photos, to tweak certain settings. For example, if the AF Assist light is coming on because it's a bit dim, but you're trying to shoot candid and it's blowing your cover, you may wish to turn it off. Or if you're shooting a football match and the crowd keeps on waving their hands infront of your lens and blowing your focus, you may wish to tweak the lock on time.

But the implication that you can just download some generic setting that is 'right for portraits' or 'right for landscape' is frankly just silly. You never need to change those things, it can just be helpful when a specific challenge arises to know that they can be tweaked.

Frankly, the only difference between landscape and portrait, if we're talking about rules of thumb, is that one is F/8 and the other is wide open. Beyond that, it's case-by-case.

Besides anything else, if these settings files are changing things that you don't know about or understand, you're just going to get unpredictable or confusing behaviour from your camera.
 
Bazep - you would keep a (small) CF card solely for saving your custom settings on, they are quite cheap to buy, and worth saving one purely for settings if you find them useful.

loplyg - there are a huge number of settings that can be changed on the cameras other than just speed and aperture, unlike in the days of film. Think focus points, custom flash settings like manual or commander mode, white balance, af activation button, iso setting, auto iso or not, bracketing, etc, etc, etc. Some of these settings matter less if we shoot in Raw, but lots of 'togs shoot away happily in jpeg, and get amazingly good images.
The very fact that so many respected forum members have custom settings saved to their cameras demonstrates how useful the custom settings are.

....and is f8 the only setting you use for landscapes?:gag:
 
I completely agree, it's just none of my banks are ever used, I reset the camera (usually) when I start out. I was just thinking that I was not using all the features on the camera to it's full potential. This is why I love the TP meets I have four or so hours of constant grilling of other photographers with my questions :lol: thanks for the explanation :thumbs:
 
I have to put my hands up here and confess that although I've had my D300 for over a year, I've never truly got to grips with the difference between the shooting menu banks and the custom setting banks.

I've read up on them extensively and I'm normally fairly geeky with my camera settings but, try as I might, I just can't understand the difference between the two.
 
david357 said:
Bazep - you would keep a (small) CF card solely for saving your custom settings on, they are quite cheap to buy, and worth saving one purely for settings if you find them useful.

loplyg - there are a huge number of settings that can be changed on the cameras other than just speed and aperture, unlike in the days of film. Think focus points, custom flash settings like manual or commander mode, white balance, af activation button, iso setting, auto iso or not, bracketing, etc, etc, etc. Some of these settings matter less if we shoot in Raw, but lots of 'togs shoot away happily in jpeg, and get amazingly good images.
The very fact that so many respected forum members have custom settings saved to their cameras demonstrates how useful the custom settings are.

....and is f8 the only setting you use for landscapes?:gag:
Click to expand...

Cowasaki kindly gave me a 32mb CF card for that very reason. I am going to change my mind now and agree that if I had some settings saved and could just load them on it would avoid my dim grey cells missing an essential setting maybe. Hense my original question :)
 
I wasn't thinking I could load a bank then magically all my photo's would be perfect but if there were a few standard written in stone settings I.e. Turn on focus light for portrait and off for landscapes then I could load the basic settings and tweak the rest to suite. I'm only using this as an example :lol:
 
You can also save picture controls, so can save things like Velvia film settings and Nikon D2X mode - all good things to try.
 
david357 said:
....and is f8 the only setting you use for landscapes?:gag:
Click to expand...

It's about as specific as you can get when talking about camera settings without any knowledge of the individual case.

Things like Picture Controls are better done in PP rather than in camera IMO, as then you have the options open, and save time whilst shooting (who wants to be swapping cards and loading settings whilst shooting something important)?
 
david357 said:
Bazep - you would keep a (small) CF card solely for saving your custom settings on, they are quite cheap to buy, and worth saving one purely for settings if you find them useful.
Click to expand...

right, got ya. thx
 
CGeezer said:
This is why I love the TP meets I have four or so hours of constant grilling of other photographers with my questions
Click to expand...

:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:





:lol:

As to the original question... I am one of the few who on getting a new camera reads the manual, then I set it up as I see fit and NEVER touch anything again :)

Which means I've already forgotten most of what the camera does that I didn't find interesting or useful :lol:

DD
 
loplyg said:
Things like Picture Controls are better done in PP rather than in camera IMO, as then you have the options open, and save time whilst shooting (who wants to be swapping cards and loading settings whilst shooting something important)?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I still think these options are useful. You can store four custom settings on camera, so you can save the ones you use most often without need to use the card, except to back up the settings.

As I said in my earlier post, not everyone shoots in raw, so in-camera settings then become useful. One of my mates shoots in jpg only, and all his settings are applied in-camera, with very little pp work done, and his images are superb.
 
david357 said:
Sorry, I still think these options are useful. You can store four custom settings on camera, so you can save the ones you use most often without need to use the card, except to back up the settings.

As I said in my earlier post, not everyone shoots in raw, so in-camera settings then become useful. One of my mates shoots in jpg only, and all his settings are applied in-camera, with very little pp work done, and his images are superb.
Click to expand...

ah, this kind of answers my other question - do the pic controls only come in to play on jpeg format (I guess the raw is the raw).
 
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