Nikon D850 settings for wildlife photography

hello everyone my name is danielle and in this video i will be showing you how i like to set up my nikon d850 for wildlife photography i'll be going over the outside of the camera quickly a few checks to do and then we'll be covering the menu items so stay tuned [Music] the d850 has been around for quite some time now and today i'm here in the city at outdoor photo in pretoria south africa where the guys on the floor who are in sales have assured me that they are still selling like hot cakes it is an excellent camera and it you cannot go wrong with the d850 it's one of the best dslrs on the market still i love it and i know a lot of pros still use it as their number one camera body so i'm going to be covering quickly the outside of the camera and just like you would check your car before you drive um for a long time i'm just going to go outside over the outside of the camera tell you what i like to just double check before i go out and shoot and then we'll go to the menu so on the outside of the camera make sure that your camera is always on autofocus on your lens and on the body as well then i'm in ch away so i'm on continuous high to make sure that i get the fastest frame advance rate possible and then make sure that your multi selector is not set to l it's not set to lock it this is happens often i've seen with with a lot of people including myself in the beginning um so make sure that your multi selector is not locked then you can then you can use your multi selector while you're shooting then also make sure that you are set to stills to camera mode and not to video mode then also make sure that you have memory cards in your camera your battery is charged on the front of my camera i check these every now and again in case i changed one of them for some reason but my shortcuts are set up my pv shortcut on the front here activates a third autofocus error mode together with autofocus for me and then the fn1 button for me is set up as my photo shooting menu banks so that's where i activate and access my photo shooting menu banks my function 2 button on the bottom left of the camera is set up as exposure delay mode so the other day i was shooting on a tripod in really low light and i didn't have a remote release with me so i quickly just set exposure delay to three seconds to avoid a lot of camera shake happening and that's pretty much the exterior of the camera a few checks to do here and there make sure you you're ready to shoot so let's have a look at the menu i must just say i'm not going to be covering every single menu item i've left most of it on default and then change the ones that are important to me but if there is something that i skip over that you would like more explanation on then you're welcome to leave it in the comments i'll be highlighting what i think is really important for wilder photographers to be setting up starting in the playback menu the first important one for me is playback display options i choose to display my focus point my highlights and my overview therefore if you look at one of my photographs then you'll see if you press up on the multi selector you get the focus point displayed if you press up again you get your overview and then you get your highlights alert i'll show you on an overexposed photo that there you go so highlights this is a horribly overexposed photograph your highlight alerts will flash where your highlights have clipped which is a bad thing because you cannot recover the detail in those highlights if you press up again you get to the focus point the overview the highlights that's what i like to to set my playback display options as then going down i have image review as on reason being often i shoot with my hand under a big lens and i have both hands occupied and i cannot access the playback button therefore after i've shot the series for example i just have to look at the back of the camera and it's immediately going to show me a review of what i've just shot there you'll see after burst it shows me my first image first and then it'll show the rest that's all of what's important to me in the playback menu going down to the photo shooting menu first one photo shooting menu bank i do make use of my photo shooting menu banks i've explained this extensively in another video of mine under nikon custom settings i think it's really useful to use photo shooting menu bags but have a look at the video and you'll you'll know exactly how to set it up and what to use it for then my extended photo mini bags therefore have to be on my file naming if you happen to have two camera bodies then it's really important to name your files differently on each camera body otherwise when you import and you start sorting it's going to be quite confusing if you have the same file names for for two different camera bodies and so i like to name my my one body one file name and my other body a different file name my primary slot selection is my xqd it's much faster than the sd card so i've set it to xqd as my primary my secondary slot function is set to overflow this is important because if my xqd card fills up then i really need an extra card to take up the space to take up the photographs i really need it to overflow without me having to change cards obviously it's ideal to shoot on another xqd card but sometimes you're in the middle of the action and it flows over to your second second card slot which is really handy and it can be a life saver image area i always shoot on fx then image quality i am a raw shooter because i do a lot of post processing on my images so my image size for raw is also the largest my iso sensitivity settings this is really important and it's it's often a menu item that people look for if you are shooting on auto iso like i am then your auto iso sensitivity control would be found here i have set my maximum sensitivity to 3200 yes it is a little bit conservative i guess you can push it up to 4000 or 6400 but i prefer to leave it at 3200 it depends where i shoot if i know i'm going to be shooting in very dark conditions for the whole day then i'll then i'll maybe change the the cap this is the cap so if you're an auto iso it is the absolute maximum that your camera will set the iso too it won't go further than that it'll start doing other things in the camera to let you know that you've reached your cap white balance i'm set to sunny or daylight it doesn't really matter because white balance does not affect raw files but it does affect the preview on the back of the camera and it just makes it easier in post-production to have all of the images set to one white balance to change them all together picture control does not affect your raw image so it only affects jpegs i'm set to neutral then color space is rgb once again doesn't affect your raw file active d lighting you'll see all of these settings of mine are set to off active d lighting does not affect your raw file directly but it does affect it indirectly and what that means it affects the camera's way of metering and therefore it will affect the image so it doesn't affect the raw file directly mine is set to off because otherwise it is going to to change the metering of the camera then long exposure noise reduction that does affect a raw file that to me is set to off because that saves battery so when i do astro and that that i might consider using it high iso noise reduction doesn't affect the raw file i've switched it to off vignette control so it doesn't affect a raw file it's off then going down flicker reduction is mainly for when you're shooting with artificial light i don't really make use of auto bracketing right so that's mainly that in the photo shooting menu i'm not going to be doing movie because i'm mainly talking about stills getting to the custom settings menu first up is autofocus i have done an extensive video about the autofocus system in nikon cameras so check out the link for more info on that first up a autofocus menu afc priority selection i have set to release i want the camera to just shoot as fast as possible immediately then af-s priority i'm hardly ever on afs but i like to set it up to focus because it's usually when i have something that's stationary and i have time and i want the camera to release only when focus has been achieved there's no action or movement happening in the shot focus tracking with lock on i have this set to the middle settings for the majority of the time i was however shooting birds only for a day recently and then i set my subject motion to erratic so generally i leave it to the middle setting on both block shot af response and subject motion going down number of focus points this doesn't mean that you are only using 15 points if you select 15 it means that you can only visualize 15. so in your viewfinder you'll only see 15 points but i choose to see all the 55 points that i'm able to to have highlighted store by orientation i like to store my my focus point by orientation only my focus point i have done a video about this the time savers tip for nikon time saving tips for nikon video talks about this more extensively but i have my store points by orientation set to on so that when i change my orientation of my camera my focus point immediately moves to the last point i had it set to in that orientation then my af activation i make use of back button focus so i'm a back button focus shooter and therefore with a8 af activation it is set to af on only that means that i can't activate autofocus with my shutter release button only with my back button going down to a9 limit af area mode selection i do limit my af area modes that i can choose from if i make use of the autofocus button on the side it just saves time if you hold it in and you have to scroll through all the different autofocus area modes it saves you a lot of time just to be able to scroll through the ones that you use most so for that one i have dynamic 9 single point 3d and group that i have available to scroll through auto focus mode restrictions i talk about this in my time saving tips for nikon i have it set to afc which means i can't change to af-s accidentally focus point wrap around also in my time saving tips video i like to set it to on i like to be able to have the focus point jump from the right of my screen to the left if i just keep pressing right you know it bounces you just have to keep pressing to the one side and it appears quickly on the other side i find it saves saves me a lot of time instead of toggling through all the way to the other side of the screen then going down my iso this is all still set up as my default settings the increments nothing much there that is too important to me that is all still set to default monitor of delay it saves a lot of battery to switch your your monitor off quicker so i have it set to 10 minutes for the sake of the video so it doesn't die on me in the middle of the video but generally i would have it probably set to 10 seconds on the menus and the playback etc my continuous low mode shooting speed is set to 6 frames a second the reason for that is if you accidentally vice for some reason switch from ch to cl if you're trying to change something else or you back from timer mode or something and you set it to cl then at least it'll still shoot at six frames a second going down if you have a look at d3 it says iso display now i have it set to show frame count this is only applicable to the top lcd screen on the camera so if you have it set to show iso sensitivity then you cannot see how many frames you have left on the top of the camera and i've often wanted to just switch on my camera and have a look at how many frames i have left without having to look through the viewfinder so that's why my iso display shows it says it's on frame count and that means that here on the lcd i can immediately see how many frames i have left this does not affect your frame count and your iso in the viewfinder so you'll still be able to see both of those through your viewfinder regardless of the setting it only applies to your lcd screen at the top going down on the shooting display menu not much that i've changed here getting to custom control assignment i am going to go through all the i've mentioned some of them on the outside but i'm going to go through this menu because it is very important firstly the pv button as i mentioned my pv button is set to dynamic 9 plus activating autofocus so that's the front button over there please note that you cannot set both of these pv settings you have to set one of the two the one to the right means it it is when you hold your pv button in and you turn your command dial you can set a custom assignment for that however if you set your pv button to do something while you're just holding it in you cannot set the other one so it's either all then going down if in one button my holding my fn one button doesn't have an assignment holding my f in one button plus turning the command dial is set to change between my photo shooting menu banks so i can quickly shoot on one group of settings and switch to a different group of settings straight away then my function 2 button as i explained earlier on the left bottom corner here i have it set to exposure delay mode but the f you'll see when you go into the function two button it gives you a shorter choice it gives you fewer choices of what you can assign it to so mine is assigned to access the top item in my menu which i have set to be exposure delay mode i'll show you when we get to my menu later on going down my af on button activates autofocus so it is af on only then my sub selector pressing it to the sides is set up as focus point selection and my sub selector if i press it in the middle means that i am activating my second autofocus area mode together with autofocus so this is my af on button is going to be my first autofocus error mode and main focusing button i have activated with single point then my sub selector af activated with group autofocus area autofocus air mode then my pv button is going to be autofocused together with dynamic nine so i have three autofocus area modes activated with my three shortcuts and then once again if you have the sub selector set up then you cannot set the sub selected plus command dial up remember to go down on this menu because there are three more hidden um underneath so keep going down and then you'll see the bracketing option i don't use this much there's a bracketing shortcut on the top here i don't use it much but it is selected um it is set to multiple exposure if i if i need that but the others i don't set then going down to f2 multi-select to center button when i'm in shooting mode it means that i've got select center focus point selected that means i'm shooting my focus point is way off to the right of my viewfinder i want it in the middle quickly because i want to say track or pan the subject all i have to do is press the inside the middle of my multi selector and it quickly sets the focus point to the middle then in playback mode i have it set to view histograms so if i have an image that i want to play back i just have to press the middle button on the multi selector and it gives me my histogram straight away going down to f4 customize command dials here to me you can reverse the rotation you know going down on your aperture going right and up left or you can reverse right and left and what it does but i've left that the only thing i've changed here that's important to me is menus and playback so there i have selected it to on and that means that i can now scroll through my images using my command dial and i can scroll through my menu using my command dial i just find it saves my thumb to have to keep coming down and pressing the multi selector i can just take it off my back button and use the command l much more convenient all right then let's go down to the okay none of f5 f6 f7 f8 i haven't changed any of that then to the setup menu there's not a lot that i change in here but i do want to note time zone and date very important to change this make sure you're on the correct date and the correct time on your camera it's going to save you a lot of frustration afterwards in sorting and looking for photographs etc also if you're shooting with more than one card or more than one camera make sure that the time zone and date on both are exactly the same monitor brightness shouldn't be on xero but for the sake of the video i do it that way i usually put it mid-range round about around about three i'd say all right then monitor no that doesn't matter to me the other one that mattered here oh copyright information if you want to copyright add copyright to your images important to do it there in the setup my beep is off and i have touch control set to on i do use the the touch screen the rest of it is all wi-fi and bluetooth if you are shooting with the battery grip the extra battery then you would be setting your battery order under the setup menu as well and then that's where you change your firmware to the latest firmware make sure you are on the latest firmware update retouch menu i hardly ever use in camera and then going down to my menu now remember what i said is i set up my function2 button to access the top item in my menu and that i have set to exposure delay mode so therefore if i go to my function 2 button it accesses exposure delay mode immediately well that's it folks that is how i like to set up my nikon d850 for wildlife photography please remember if you like our videos subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon to get notifications about when our next videos are available to watch i hope you enjoyed it if you have any other comments that you would like to add any different ways that you do it on your d850 then you're welcome to leave it in the comments below and we can chat about it until next time keep well keep safe and bye bye

Channel: Pangolin Wildlife Photography

Views: 26,444

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Id: gQjjRPnbqiU

Length: 20min 4sec (1204 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021