11

Ten Special-Purpose Features to Explore on a Rainy Day

In This Chapter

Cleaning the image sensor

Customizing the Information display

Creating your own menu and custom storage folders

Adding text comments to images

Changing the function of some controls

Consider this chapter the literary equivalent of the end of one of those late-night infomercial offers — the part where the host exclaims, “But wait! There’s more!”

The ten features covered in these pages fit the category of interesting bonus. They aren’t the sort of features that drive people to choose one camera over another, and they may come in handy only for certain users, on certain occasions. Still, they’re included at no extra charge with your camera purchase, so check ’em out when you have a few spare moments. Who knows; you may discover that one of these bonus features is actually a hidden gem that provides just the solution you need for one of your photography problems.

Keeping the Image Sensor Clean

The image sensor is the part that does the actual image capture in a digital camera. If the sensor is dirty, you may notice small spots or other defects appearing in the same area of all your pictures. The Setup menu offers a few features related to this issue:

Clean Image Sensor: Through this option, you control the camera’s automated, internal sensor-cleaning mechanism. By default, this automatic cleaning happens every time you turn the camera on or off. But you can adjust this behavior or request an immediate cleaning session via the Clean Image Sensor option, featured in Figure 11-1.

Figure 11-1: Use the Clean Image Sensor option to set up automated cleaning of the sensor or start the cleaning mechanism at any time.

Lock Mirror Up for Cleaning: If you frequently change lenses in a dirty environment, the internal cleaning mechanism may not be adequate, in which case a manual sensor cleaning is necessary. You can do this job yourself, but I don’t recommend it. Image sensors are pretty delicate, and you can easily damage them or other parts of your camera if you don’t know what you’re doing. Instead, find a local camera store that offers this service. Sensor cleaning typically costs from $35–$75, depending on the level of cleaning that’s required.

Whether you do the job yourself or have the cleaning done for you, choosing the Lock Mirror Up for Cleaning option, also found on the Setup menu, is the first step in the process. Choosing the command moves the camera’s mirror out of the way so that you or the camera tech can access the sensor. Make sure that your battery is fully charged before taking this step; otherwise, the menu option is dimmed.

Image Dust Off Ref Photo: This Setup menu feature is tied to an automated dust-removal filter found in Nikon Capture NX 2, an advanced photo editor available for purchase from Nikon. After enabling the feature on the camera, you take a picture of a piece of white paper and then tell the software to use that image as a reference to the dirty areas of the sensor. (Areas that show up as specks on the white background are classified as dust.) With that information, the software knows where to apply its dust removal filter in your other images. This feature works only with Raw (NEF) photos and isn’t a cure-all — it may not always remove dust successfully. Rather, it’s designed as a partial remedy until you get your camera cleaned. I don’t cover Capture NX 2 in this book, but if you’re interested, you can download a 30-day trial from the Nikon website.

Changing the Look of the Information Display

By default, the Information display appears as shown in the left example in Figure 11-2, with the three large circular graphics representing, from left to right, the shutter speed, f-stop, and ISO settings. Notice that as you adjust the f-stop setting, the center of its circle grows or shrinks to represent the opening and closing of the aperture. (Chapter 7 explains apertures and f-stops fully.)

Figure 11-2: You can alter the display style of the Information screen.

If you prefer, you can switch from the default display style to the simpler design shown on the right in the figure. To do so, select Info Display Format from the Setup menu, as shown on the left in Figure 11-3, and press OK to display the second screen in the figure. From here, you can set the display format separately for the P, S, A, and M exposure modes and for the remaining automatic modes. Highlight your choice, press the Multi Selector right, and then select the display style you prefer. You can choose from two styles, Graphic (the default) and Classic (the simpler display), and for each style, you can select from three background colors: black, blue, and light gray.

Figure 11-3: Modify the look of the display through this Setup menu option.

Keeping the Information Display Hidden

Just below the Info Display Format option on the Setup menu, the Auto Info Display option offers another way to customize the Information display. When this option is set to On, as it is by default, the Information display appears when you press the shutter button halfway and release it. And, if you disable the instant image-review feature (via the Image Review option on the Playback menu), the Information display also appears after you take a picture.

Turn off the Auto Info Display option, as shown in Figure 11-4, and the screen appears briefly when you first turn on the camera, but after that, you must press the Info button or the Info Edit button to display it. Instructions in this book assume that you stick with the default setting (On). But because the monitor is one of the biggest drains of battery power, you may want to set the option to Off if you have a lot of shooting left to do and your battery is running low.

Figure 11-4: Turn off this option to prevent the Information display from appearing automatically.

Annotate Your Images

Through the Image Comment feature on the Setup menu, you can add hidden text comments to your picture files. Suppose, for example, that you’re traveling on vacation and visiting a different destination every day. You can annotate all the pictures you take on a particular outing with the name of the location or attraction.

The comment data is stored as part of the file metadata, which you can view in Nikon ViewNX 2, the free software that ships with your camera. The first part of Chapter 6 shows you how to access the metadata. You also can view the comment in the Shooting Data playback display mode, covered in Chapter 5.

Here’s how to enable the feature:

1. Display the Setup menu and highlight Image Comment, as shown on the left in Figure 11-5.

2. Press OK to display the right screen in the figure.

3. Highlight Input Comment and press the Multi Selector right.

A keyboard-type screen appears, as shown in Figure 11-6.

Figure 11-5: You can tag pictures with text comments that you can view in Nikon ViewNX 2 and in the Shooting Data playback display mode.

Figure 11-6: Highlight a letter and press the OK button to enter it into the comment box.

4. Use the Multi Selector to highlight the first letter of the text you want to add.

If you scroll the display, you can access lowercase letters in addition to the uppercase ones shown on the initial screen. Just press the Multi Selector up and down to scroll the display.

5. Press OK to enter that letter into the display box at the bottom of the screen.

6. Keep highlighting letters and pressing OK to continue entering your comment.

Your comment can be up to 36 characters long. Use these text entry techniques:

• To move the text cursor, rotate the Command dial in the direction you want to shift the cursor.

• To delete a letter, move the cursor under the offending letter and then press the Delete button.

7. To save the comment, press the Zoom In button.

You return to the Image Comment menu.

8. Highlight Attach Comment and press the Multi Selector right to put a check mark in the box, as shown in Figure 11-7.

Figure 11-7: Highlight Attach Comment and press the Multi Selector right to select the check box and enable the comment feature.

The check mark turns on the Image Comment feature.

9. Press OK.

You return to the Setup menu. The Image Comment menu item is set to On.

The camera applies your comment to all pictures you take after turning on Image Comment. To disable the feature, revisit the Image Comment menu screen, highlight Attach Comment, and press the Multi Selector right to toggle the check mark off. Press OK to make your decision official.

Creating Your Own Menu

Keeping track of how to access all the D5200’s options can be a challenge, especially when it comes to those that you adjust through menus. To make things a little easier, you can build a custom menu that holds up to 20 of the options you use most frequently. Check it out:

1. Display the My Menu menu, as shown on the left in Figure 11-8.

Figure 11-8: You can create a custom menu to hold up to 20 of the settings you access most often.

If the Recent Settings menu appears instead, scroll to the end of the menu, select Choose Tab, press OK, select My Menu, and press OK again. The My Menu screen then appears.

2. Highlight Add Items and press OK.

You see a list of the other camera menus, as shown on the right in Figure 11-8.

3. Highlight a menu that contains an option you want to add to your custom menu and then press the Multi Selector right.

You see a list of all available options on that menu, as shown on the left in Figure 11-9.

Figure 11-9: Highlight a menu item and press OK to add it to your custom menu.

A few items can’t be added to a custom menu. A little box with a slash through it appears next to those items.

4. To add an item to your custom menu, highlight it and press OK.

You see the Choose Position screen, as shown on the right in Figure 11-9, where you can change the order of your menu items. For now, just press OK to return to the My Menu screen; you can set up the order of your menu items later. (See the bulleted list following these steps.) The menu item you just added appears at the top of the My Menu screen.

5. Repeat Steps 2–4 to add more items to your menu.

When you get to Step 3, a check mark appears next to any item that’s already on your menu.

After creating your custom menu, access it by pressing the Menu button and choosing the Recent Settings/My Menu screen. (If you want to switch to the Recent Settings menu, select Choose Tab and then select Recent Settings.)

You can reorder and remove menu items as follows:

Change the order of menu options: Display the My Menu screen and highlight Rank Items, as shown on the left in Figure 11-10. You see a screen that lists all your menu items in their current order. Highlight a menu item, as shown on the right in the figure, press OK, and then use the Multi Selector to move it up or down the list. Press OK to lock in the new position of the menu item. When you’re happy with the order of the menu items, press the Multi Selector left to return to the My Menu screen.

Figure 11-10: Choose Rank Items to change the order of menu items.

Remove menu items: Again, head for the My Menu screen (the left screen in Figure 11-10). Select Remove Items and press OK. You see a list of all the current menu items, with an empty box next to each item. To remove an item, highlight it and press the Multi Selector right. A check mark appears in that item’s box. After tagging all the items you want to remove, press OK. You see a confirmation screen asking permission to remove the item; press OK to go forward.

Creating Custom Image Folders

By default, your camera initially stores all your images in one folder, which it names 100D5200. Folders have a storage limit of 9999 images; when you exceed that number, the camera creates a new folder, assigning a name that indicates the folder number — 101D5200, 102D5200, and so on.

If you choose, however, you can create your own, custom-named folders. For example, perhaps you sometimes use your camera for business and sometimes for personal use. To keep your images separate, you can set up one folder named DULL and one named FUN — or perhaps something less incriminating, such as WORK and HOME.

Whatever your folder-naming idea, you create custom folders like so:

1. Display the Shooting menu and highlight Storage Folder, as shown on the left in Figure 11-11.

Figure 11-11: You can create custom folders to organize your images right on the camera.

2. Press OK to display the screen shown on the right in Figure 11-11.

3. Highlight New and press the Multi Selector right.

You see a keyboard-style screen similar to the one used to create image comments, as described earlier in the chapter. The folder-naming version appears in Figure 11-12.

Figure 11-12: Folder names can contain up to five characters.

4. Enter a folder name up to five characters long.

Use these techniques:

• To enter a letter, highlight it by using the Multi Selector and then press OK.

• To move the text cursor, rotate the Command dial.

• To delete a letter, place the cursor under it and press the Delete button.

5. After entering your folder name, press the Zoom In button.

You return to the Shooting menu, and the folder you just created is automatically selected as the active folder.

If you take advantage of this option, remember to specify where you want your pictures stored each time you shoot: Select Storage Folder from the Shooting menu and press OK to display the screen shown on the left in Figure 11-13. Highlight Select Folder and press the Multi Selector right to display a list of all your folders, as shown on the right. Highlight the folder that you want to use and press OK. Your choice also affects which images you can view in playback mode; see Chapter 5 to find out how to select the folder you want to view.

Figure 11-13: Remember to specify where you want to store new images.

If necessary, you can rename a custom folder by using the Rename option on the Storage Folder screen. (See the left screen in Figure 11-13.) The Delete option on the same screen enables you to get rid of all empty folders on the memory card.

Changing the Function of the AE-L/AF-L Button

Set just to the right of the viewfinder, the AE-L/AF-L button enables you to lock focus and exposure settings when you shoot in autoexposure and autofocus modes, as explored in Chapters 7 and 8.

Normally, autofocus and autoexposure are locked when you press the button, and they remain locked as long as you keep your finger on the button. But you can change the button’s behavior. To access the available options, open the Custom Setting menu, navigate to the Controls submenu, press OK, and then highlight Assign AE-L/AF-L Button, as shown on the left in Figure 11-14. Press OK to display the options shown on the right in the figure.

Figure 11-14: You can set the AE-L/AF-L button to lock autoexposure only.

The options produce these results:

AE/AF Lock: This is the default setting. Focus and exposure remain locked as long as you press the button.

AE Lock Only: Autoexposure is locked as long as you press the button; autofocus isn’t affected. (You can still lock focus by pressing the shutter button halfway.)

AE Lock (Hold): This one locks exposure only with a single press of the button. The exposure lock remains in force until you press the button again or the exposure meters turn off.

AF Lock Only: Focus remains locked as long as you press the button. Exposure isn’t affected.

AF-On: Pressing the button activates the camera’s autofocus mechanism. If you choose this option, you can’t focus by pressing the shutter button halfway.

After highlighting the option you want to use, press OK.

The information that I give in this book with regard to using autofocus and autoexposure assumes that you stick with the default setting. So if you change the button’s function, remember to amend my instructions accordingly.

Assigning a Duty to the Function Button

Tucked away on the left-front side of the camera, just under the Flash button, the Function (Fn) button is set by default to provide quick access to the ISO setting: While pressing the button, you rotate the Command dial to adjust the setting. But if you don’t use that function often, you may want to assign some other purpose to the button.

You establish the button’s behavior via the Assign Fn Button option, found on the Controls submenu of the Custom Setting menu and shown on the left in Figure 11-15. After highlighting the option, press OK to display the screen shown on the right in the figure. Here’s a quick description of the possible settings.

Figure 11-15: You can assign any number of jobs to the Function button.

Image Quality/Size: Pressing the Fn button while turning the Command dial cycles through the available Image Quality and Image Size settings.

ISO Sensitivity: Pressing the button while turning the Command dial changes the ISO setting.

White Balance: Pressing the button while turning the Command dial cycles through the available White Balance settings (available only when the Mode dial is set to P, S, A, or M).

Active D-Lighting: Pressing the button while turning the Command dial changes the Active D-Lighting setting (again, only in P, S, A, and M exposure modes).

HDR mode: Pressing the button while rotating the Command dial adjusts the HDR setting. See Chapter 7 for more about HDR.

+ NEF (RAW): This setting relates to the Image Quality option, introduced in Chapter 2. If you set that option to JPEG Basic, Fine, or Normal and then press the Fn button, the camera records two copies of the next picture you shoot: a JPEG version plus a second image in the NEF format. Note that this feature doesn’t work when you shoot in the Effects mode and select Night Vision, Color Sketch, Miniature Effect, or Selective Color as the effect.

Auto bracketing: Pressing the Fn button while turning the Command dial lets you select a bracketing increment for AEB (automatic exposure bracketing) or white-balance bracketing. For ADL (Active D-Lighting) bracketing, you can use the button and Command dial to turn bracketing on and off. Bracketing, explained at the end of Chapter 7, is possible only in the P, S, A, or M exposure mode.

AF-area mode: Pressing the button while turning the Command dial changes the AF-area mode, an autofocusing option you can explore in Chapter 4 (for Live View shooting and movie recording) and Chapter 8 (for viewfinder photography).

Live View: The button takes the same role as the Live View switch: Just press the button to toggle Live View on and off.

AE/AF options: The final five options on the menu enable you to set the Fn button to perform the same actions you can assign to the AE-L/AF-L button. See the preceding section for a description of each.

After selecting the function you want to assign, press OK to lock in your choice.

Using the Shutter Button to Lock Exposure and Focus

The Timers/AE Lock section of the Custom Setting menu offers a third button tweak called Shutter-Release Button AE-Lock, as shown in Figure 11-16. This option determines whether pressing the shutter button halfway locks focus only or locks both focus and exposure.

Figure 11-16: If you turn on this option, pressing the shutter button halfway locks exposure and focus.

At the default setting, Off, you lock focus only when you press the shutter button halfway. Exposure is adjusted continually up to the time you take the shot. If you change the setting to On, your half-press of the shutter button locks both focus and exposure.

As with the AE-L/AF-L button adjustment described a couple of sections ago, I recommend that you leave this option set to the default while you’re working with this book. Otherwise, your camera won’t behave as described here (or in the camera manual, for that matter). If you encounter a situation that calls for locking exposure and focus together, you can always use the AE-L/AF-L button. Chapter 7 provides details.

Reversing the Command Dial Orientation

When you shoot in the P, S, A, or M exposure modes, you rotate the Command dial to adjust shutter speed and aperture settings. By default, rotating the dial to the right raises the value that’s being adjusted: the shutter speed in S mode, for example, or the f-stop in A mode. In M mode, rotating the dial to the right increases the shutter speed, and rotating the dial to the right while you hold down the Exposure Compensation button raises the f-stop value. In P mode, rotating the dial to the right raises the shutter speed and lowers the f-stop.

If that setup seems backward to you, you can tell the camera that you prefer to rotate the dial to the right to lower the values and rotate left to raise them. Just choose the Reverse Dial Rotation option, as shown on the left in Figure 11-17. Look for the setting in the Controls section of the Custom Setting menu. Press OK to access the second screen in the figure, where you can modify the dial orientation separately for Exposure Compensation and shutter speed/aperture adjustment. To reverse the dial orientation, highlight the setting and press the Multi Selector right to place a check mark in the box. In the figure, for example, I set the camera to reverse the dial orientation for both Exposure Compensation and Shutter Speed/Aperture. Note that the Exposure Compensation setting also affects the dial’s performance when you adjust Flash Compensation.

Figure 11-17: For people who like to go left when everyone else goes right, the Reverse Dial Rotation option reverses the orientation of the Command dial.