How To Setup Your Nikon Z6II & Z7II | EVERYTHING You Need To Know

all right what's going on guys dan watson and this is the nikon z62 and the z72 we've actually had these cameras for more than six months now but we've just wrapped up some big shoots with them and also some huge firmware updates have come out for this camera that have really kind of changed things for us so we just threw out a six month review on this camera actually blink probably over here if you want to go check that out on this but i want to run you through all of the settings that i would use and change and kind of how they work to set this camera up if you're someone who just picked up this camera maybe because of that review on there or if you want to pick up this camera this will kind of help you get started also i do have a kit down below with all links to all the accessories and lenses and all that kind of stuff our favorite stuff for the nikon z62 and z72 also depending on which camera you have pretty much all of these settings apply to both of these cameras but we're going to go over this specifically for the nikon z62 so let's kind of get into it and we'll start at the beginning of how i set this camera up for photos so let's jump into the menu and we're going to start at the photo shooting menu because we're really focusing on the photo aspects of shooting with this camera not really the playback or anything like that the first thing you'll probably notice is that my camera is named z62 because i highly recommend naming your cameras uh if you or someone like me when you're shooting with a z61 z62 z7s you'll never know what camera you shot this with just by looking at the file name so i always like to name it in my case i name it the kind of camera that i'm shooting with the z62a or z62b if you have multiple z6 cameras something like that so i always do that the primary slot function this is not that big of a deal if you're shooting with an sd card you will bank at the sd card slot if you're shooting with a cf express you can do it that way if you're shooting dual cards it's whatever is going to be your primary card the one that you're probably going to take out of the camera put into the computer and back up this is going to mean that every time you hit playback to look at the photos you've taken on the camera this is the card it's going to look at so if you also delete an image it will not delete from both cards it will only delete from your primary slot selection so you need to be very careful and select the one that you're going to be using to back up your files later so next up is the secondary slot function this is going to tell you what that second slot is going to do overflow is going to mean that once one slot runs out it will automatically take pictures on the next one backup will shoot to both and raw primary jpeg secondary means it'll shoot raw to your primary card and jpeg to the secondary card this could be good if you want to save some file space and maybe shoot raw to the cf express card and jpeg to the the sd card also if you're shooting fast high speed that might be a good way to do as well the raw primary jpeg secondary because the jpegs don't take up as much space so they'll write faster to the sd cards and raw files will now choosing image area this will probably be set up to fx when you set up the camera that just means full frame dx is going to be your aps-c crop mode and then 1x1 or 16x9 which i never use and the image quality is also pretty important right here definitely shoot raw i always recommend shooting raw you have a whole lot more file that you can play with if you're someone who is not very familiar with it or you're not going to be editing some of your photos you might want to shoot raw plus jpeg fine that's fine means high quality jpeg on that one that's probably going to be the way to go you can use your jpeg files if you're not going to be editing and then keep your raw files for later when maybe you learn how to edit and get an advanced program or something like that for me i only shoot jpeg because i like being able to look at the card in the pictures and have at least a jpeg files that are going to show up and give me an option in case i want to use them plus if i'm shooting and i want to send a file over to my phone to be able to upload to instagram or something like that i do have a jpeg option in there so i shoot raw plus jpeg and i'll usually shoot a lower quality jpeg image because i'm not using those as my main source they're just kind of a backup preview file now along those lines image size for my jpegs i select small because i'm not using them for anything except maybe a preview file or to upload to social media or someone if you're primarily shooting jpeg you will absolutely want these to be the full large 24 megapixel files for me though i'm just using them for preview so i select small raw files always shoot large definitely if this is your main file shoot large even if you're shooting something is probably going to end up on instagram it's going to be better to always shoot the maximum resolution of the camera itself unless you absolutely can't like you're running out of space or something like that now this nef raw recording nef is the name of the file sizes used for nikon's raw files if you click on this there's two different options one is compression i personally shoot a lot less compressed this is going to be very high quality files but not quite as big on the file size as if you shot uncompressed lossless means that there's pretty much no loss in quality that's being involved with these is just compressing the files slightly you can shoot compress it'll be even a lower file size actually quick tip for you if you hit the um minus zoom out button on this it will actually give you a help menu for all of these types of things you can actually see how much compression is going into this so that's a huge help right there you can see 35 to 55 compression in compressed and you're getting about 20 to 40 in your lossless compress so for me lossless compress is saving quite a bit of file size on there and you're still getting perfect image quality on this now iso sensitivity i don't personally change this at all because i don't shoot auto iso i'm shooting everything in manual so for me i'm going to set this as i'm shooting with the camera to whatever it is not something i'd use in the menu but if you're someone who shoots auto iso this is where you'll want to set that you can set it to on and you can program in your maximum sensitivity that it can go up to i wouldn't use this high i would set my maximum of maybe 12 000 that's about the most you can shoot with this camera and still look good minimum shutter speed will just depend on what you're shooting i shoot a lot of portraits stuff like that i might make the minimum shutter speed at 250th of a second so that it will never pick an iso low enough that will require a shutter speed lower than that i never want a blurry photo so whatever the minimum shutter speed for you would be what you would pick on that but again i don't shoot auto iso so i just leave that off now white balance is set to kelvin right now i typically shoot kelvin when i'm shooting video and can just dial it in or i will shoot auto when i'm shooting photos and because i'm shooting raw it means that i can change my white balance in post so shooting raw is absolutely fine by me but if you're shooting kelvin i'll show you a little secret you can actually program one of these buttons on the front to be able to change your white balance so i just hold that down can scroll and look how easy it is to change my kelvin balance on there so if you're someone who really likes to dial in your white balance i recommend shooting kelvin programming one of your buttons for that and then you can really easily just make your files a little bit warmer colder now set picture control on this one not something i change very much i shoot standard for photos for video i will use this flat profile right here i really love that but for photos i keep it standard i don't shoot auto because i want it to be consistent i don't want the camera to make changes i am not aware of so either standard or if i'm editing a jpegs this is primarily going to affect jpegs it doesn't affect raw files at all if i'm going to be editing my jpegs in post then i will shoot something more like neutral or i'll go into the standard profile right here and i will actually edit the sharpness down a little bit and the contrast down a little bit so i have a little bit more room in posts for making those changes now manage picture control that really doesn't matter just gives you some save options on that one color space srgb is probably going to be the way to go for most people on here unless you have a printer that's adobe hrgb a monitor that's adobe rgb and you're controlling all of those aspects if not shoot srgb active d lighting this is in jpegs and allows the camera to get a little bit more dynamic range by raising the shadows a little bit uh i usually have it off but i have a set to low right now i'm fine with either of those options long exposure noise reduction i do recommend turning this on and that is because when you're shooting a long exposure the noise that comes into that is very hard to get rid of in post so i do recommend that one on however high iso noise reduction i do turn this off because i would prefer to do my noise reduction in post in the software i'm using however if you're shooting jpeg and going straight out of the camera to instagram or facebook or not editing your photos you will want to turn this on i would set it too low or normal never use high it's going to apply too much noise reduction low or normal are going to be your best bets on that one vignetting control if you're using a native lens this allows the camera to control vignetting on this i actually like a little bit of vignetting in my images so i will either turn this to off or low never any higher than that a little bit of vignetting actually looks pretty nice in most cases diffraction compensation again this is just fixing lens issues i'll usually leave these on or turn them off and fix them in post auto distortion same thing flicker reduction i usually use this off i'm not shooting in artificial lights for photos very often but if you are and you are getting flicker on the lights the camera can try and detect that and delay the shoot in order to control that but it will slow things down a little bit so usually leave it off but if you're someone who's shooting aperture priority or shutter priority you will rely on metering i would either do matrix metering or highlight weighted metering is very interesting right here these cameras if you're shooting raw have amazing dynamic range so highlight weighted will expose a little bit more for the highlights so you might find that your subject gets a little bit dark however boosting shadows or exposure in post is tremendously effective with the nikon z62 and z72 because they have such amazing dynamic range so this will preserve the highlights a little bit better let your subject go a little bit darker but in the end you'll probably get a better looking image when you do that so either matrix or highlight weighted are the ones that i like to use we're not going to go over flash on this because it completely depends on the flash system you're using focus mode afc you can do this in different aspects of the camera you can control this with your buttons on the back that's where i would usually do it not in the menu but continuous is where it would be if your subject is moving single focus of where you would be if your subject is not moving af area right here this is going to be interesting because it's really going to depend on what you're using right now however something new for the z62 is this wide area af with either people or animals and that's going to mean face and eye detection for people or animals this means that you can actually move the frame around and it will only look for faces and eyes in that area this is extremely useful for us because we shoot a lot of weddings the bride might be coming down the aisle and i don't want any eyes from the guests on the side of the room to be distracting the af system on here i highly recommend shooting wide area af but it really depends on what you're shooting on which mode that you'll actually use on this now vibration reduction is basically the ibis system in body image stabilization you should always keep this one on auto bracket and flash again this is not something that we would actually use because we're not shooting flash on this one multiple exposures again we won't really look at it hdr if you want to shoot hdr jpeg in the camera you can do it also interval timer in case you're doing like time lapses and stuff you can shoot the interval timer here or time lapse movie will actually record a movie file already inside the camera so it's a great way if you want to make something quick now focus shift is going to basically allow you to do focus stacking if you're shooting like macro stuff that could be helpful silent photography this is kind of important on here i leave this to off because this is going to enable the electric shutter of the camera this camera doesn't have an instant readout in electronic shutter so you will get you can get banning and artificial lights but you will also get rolling shutter if you have a moving subject in the image when i'm doing time lapses i will usually enable silent photography because it will use the electric shutter and it won't have any wear on the shutter mechanism and usually i'm shooting outdoors and non-moving subject when i'm shooting time lapses or none fast moving subjects at least so now we are completely done with our photo shooting menu so this is a good time to take a little break grab some coffee on here and you can check out my new website that i just built with 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code learning cameras when you build something awesome and you can go live with that site today so we're going to go ahead and skip the movie shooting mode right now again let me know in the description if you want me to go over that and we'll get into the custom settings here this is where things get a little bit more complicated so our afc priority this is going to be that the camera will prioritize being in focus or just hitting the shutter if you're somebody who wants to maximize frame rates if you want to shoot 12 frames per second no matter if the subject's in focus or not definitely shoot release i tend to prioritize focus but if i had a subject that's very important that i just take the images with the actually prioritizing focus will delay the shutter pretty significantly so in that case you might want to shoot release afs priority is the same thing but when single point is used this i would always shoot focus because i can't think of any reason you would want to prioritize a release so definitely make this one focus now focus tracking with locked on again something that probably isn't going to be too much of a difference on here but if you have a subject that's running across the frame blocks it you might want to stick with the camera focusing on the original subject or you want the camera to quickly adjust and shoot the next person so if you just want if you're shooting like runners running towards you and you just want whoever's in the front or whoever is kind of the main feature to be in the frame you would want to set this to quick if you have a single subject that you're trying to focus on in the group of people then something like a delayed will be a little bit more i'm typically shooting things that delayed works a little bit better for me focus points used this camera has i think 273 autofocus points so if you don't want to be able to select from all of them you can select half and that's a way around that but i just leave it at all store autofocus points by orientation that means that every time you turn the camera around from horizontal to vertical if you have a single point selected that point will now be reflected in the vertical orientation but i leave this off it's not a big deal for me af activation how you want to activate the autofocus system i use shutter if you use back button focus this is where you would want to select it to the af on button on here and you can enable that right there but again i don't recommend shooting back button focus with pretty much every camera in the last two or three years there's a reason behind that with older cameras it made sense but with new cameras right now i don't think back button focus makes sense in most cases there are very few that you should actually use back button focus for now limit area af mode this is something i really wouldn't use but it allows you to unselect any of these so that you can't pick it from the menu so if i know i never need autofocus of animals for example then i can just deselect it here and then it will never show up in my menu so i'll hit ok on that one focus point wrap around this just allows you if you're moving your focus point and you reach all the way at the end it will then turn back around and go to the right side again i don't set that so i would just leave it the way that it is focus point options is another thing i probably wouldn't select because it really doesn't make that big of a difference unless you're shooting manual focus for this one or i will leave the dynamic area af assist on basically this just allows you to see your focus points in certain areas so not a whole lot of reason to mess with it right now now lolai af and the built-in af illuminator so first of all i actually would leave this off as a video shooter it is really annoying to me when photographers have their af assist light on if for some reason the camera isn't focusing at all you can enable both of these and also help you focus in low light however like this one for example only works in single point autofocus so if you're using like a dynamic area it will not work but if you're selecting a single point and want to focus on an object in low light this could be beneficial but unless you're absolutely needing those i would leave them off manual ring focus again we'll skip on that one but allows you to manually focus in af actually i'll probably go ahead and turn that off so now we're into this metering exposure mode area so let's go ahead and get into that one uh definitely leave your exposure modes in a third stop so i think it's by that in default that just allows you to change them each a third stop at a time easy exposure compensation i don't use exposure compensation because i'm shooting manual and i probably would leave this off anyway but this just helps you for doing auto exposure and having the camera adjust for you center weighted auto exposure again i'm not using it but i just select average on here and you can fine tune your exposure so if you're someone who is shooting and you want it always brighter or always darker you can actually set that into some of these areas right here so the next couple things we probably won't be changing too much either shutter release button as the ael button that's something i probably wouldn't change on that one self timers again i don't really use those for most things power off delays you can have the camera shut off on you whenever you want that's kind of stuff that will just depend on how you like shooting now this kind of matters a little bit so the cl mode shooting speed so this is if you're shooting cameras i think four different speeds of shooting you have high plus high cl and then single cl is basically a lower speed continuous and so this is going to determine how fast it's actually going to shoot on that one five frames per second is pretty good for me three frames per second is a little bit slow but you can actually tune how fast the camera will shoot in that mode right there max continuous release how many photos when you hold down this shutter button will take in a row i just leave it maxed out at 200 personally now i believe this next one is actually if you're using camera sync cables so that will not matter for us exposure delay mode won't matter for us either shutter type this is actually fairly interesting so if you're used to a dslr a dslr has the shutter close as its starting point because you're looking through the viewfinder and a mirror when you take the photo it opens the shutter exposes closes the shutter in a mirrorless camera things are a little bit different because the shutter is always open because you're actually seeing the image through the sensor real time so if you wanted to take a photo it actually has to close the shutter open it back up expose and then close the shutter again or you can do something called electric front curtain where it will actually start exposing the photo and then it will close the shutter and then open it back up so it basically is going to shoot a little bit faster when you have electronic front curtain shutter and there's pretty much no downside to this i have heard of like very particular cases where people have noticed banding and like concert lighting in those cases you might want to shoot full mechanical shutter where the camera will basically expose everything with a mechanical shutter that will eliminate any chances a banding or rolling shutter but in most cases electronic front curtain is going to be absolutely fine now extended shutter speeds this is basically for shooting really slow shutter speeds your camera can record up to 900 seconds in a single exposure so again not something we're gonna mess with uh limiting your selectable areas i've actually turned off one by one and 16 by nine because i would never select those but fx and dx which is your crop modes those are things that i absolutely use so i leave it that way file number sequence you're going to want to leave this to on but this is just every time you record an image the file number is going to increase once but you can reset it if you want to go back to zero zero zero zero now apply settings to live view especially if you're used to a dslr this is going to be an important setting so one of the advantages to mirrorless cameras is as you adjust your shutter speeds or your isos your image is going to get lighter or darker so that is really cool about a mirrorless camera because you can see what's actually happening as you do it however there are a couple times that that maybe is a negative for you one would be if you're shooting flash you might not want to see your actual settings because you're going to be exposing with the flash so your settings might make the image too dark so if you're doing that especially if you're shooting flash you might want to come into this mode and go to your apply settings for live view turn them off and this will always expose your image properly on the screen and then when you take your image you'll see the actual image with your settings on it so this will work more like a dslr when you leave it off but in almost every case especially if you're not shooting flash you would leave this to on now the last few we are actually not going to use so like grids and peaking and that kind of stuff plus all of your flash modes are going to be very dependent on what you're shooting so i'm going to skip those for here now the camera does have quite a bit of customization on here the eye menu is probably the one that i use the most so you can actually go in here and select all the different things you want to program so that basically every time you hit that i button those are going to pop up on here so i have it set up to the ones that are the most important for me so i'll kind of let you see what those are you can screenshot this if you want to and go ahead and see what all of my settings are if you want them but you can select any one of these if you don't want the monitor brightness to be controlled you can pick from anything in a bunch of different menu options on here that you can select to be in that spot instead but i'm going to leave mine as monitor brightness now the other customization is going to be your custom controls um i have my front top dial here set to white balance change again this is what's allowing me that when it's in kelvin mode to be able to very quickly adjust that color temperature there af on i have that set in case i wanted to do back button focus again this is going to be dependent on what you guys want to do i have my focus mode set up on the other button on the front of this one as well and to be able to change them with the joystick on here now you can also change something about the ok button on here i leave mine to shooting mode reset so basically any changes that were made i hit the ok button and goes back now you can also customize your command dials which actually i do i change my main and my subdials because i actually like my shutter speed on the front my aperture on the back your release button to use dial again this is something that you wouldn't really set your reverse indicators this is going to be if you're shooting like hdr type photos or something like that you can reverse your rings for focusing this also allows you to change your settings for movie independently of photo and this is really awesome on this one i really love this about the camera now the setup menu you're probably not going to go into too often it's going to be for things like formatting your memory cards and things like that so really at this point the camera is set up exactly how i would do it for shooting photos so hopefully this was helpful for you guys please hit like subscribe if you haven't already guys hope you guys are doing amazing i'll see you soon in a new video

Channel: Dan Watson

Views: 27,641

Rating: 4.9416766 out of 5

Keywords: Nikon Z6II Help Guide, Nikon Z6II Setup, How to, How to setup your Nikon Z6II, Nikon Z7II, How to guide, best settings, Nikon Z6Ii best settings, Nikon Z6II, Dan Watson, Learningcameras, Hands On, Mirrorless camera, Nikon mirrorless, nikon camera, nikon z6II video, hybrid camera, nikon z, Nikon Z6, Nikon, nikon z7, nikon z6 ii autofocus, nikon z6 ii video test

Id: 03pTg27CKxw

Length: 25min 37sec (1537 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 24 2021