Nikon Mirrorless: Button And Control Setup

[Music] hey everyone Steve from backcountry gallery here in the last video I asked if anyone wanted to see my button and control setup for my Z cameras and like a lot of you did so as promised here they are however before we begin I think it's important to mention that just because something works well for me and the way I shoot it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work just as well for you you see everyone has different ways of shooting and different priorities when they shoot so make sure you select the settings and options that allow you to capture the images you want with the least amount of hassle after all that's really kind of the point of customizing controls right in short there's not a right or wrong way to do this so don't feel bad if your settings don't match mine by the way if you enjoy these videos make sure you hit that like button down there and maybe even hit that subscribe button and definitely hit the notified bill so you know when there's new videos and of course let me know what you think about the videos in the comments it really helps grow the channel and I really do appreciate your support okay you know enough babble for me let's go ahead and hit the menu okay so the first step is to go to the custom setting menu and you're looking for the controls option here give that a click and then you're looking for custom control assignment if you're shooting a Z 6 or Z 7 if you're shooting a Z 50 though this is gonna say custom controls and then have the word shooting in parentheses that's the one you want it leads to pretty much the same menu or the same type of menu so let me talk about how I have all of these different buttons set okay so let's just go ahead and start at the top here with the FN one button and that one is set for spot metering as you can see here and basically what spot metering is gonna do is it's going to allow me to spot meter wherever my current AF pointer af area is and it's about a four millimeter circle there and it's gonna be centered right in the center of that AF area for you and obviously in some cases it's going to be a little bit larger than that AF area like if you're using single point and in other cases it's going to be smaller like if you're using one of the Y areas so that's the area that the cameras going to take the spot meter reading from and it is associated with that autofocus point so for example if you have a composition and you say hey I'm going to move the autofocus point to the animals eye if you happen to be spot metering it's going to go ahead and spot meter off of that eye and face area like you see here with the lion so that's my first one I have that set to spot metering now a very common question here though is can I assign an autofocus area to those function buttons and if you notice you just can't not on this camera there's only options for like AF on an AF lock but as of right now the Z cameras do not allow you to assign an autofocus area like you can unlike the D 500 the da 50 and the D 5 those are basically the only cameras that allow you to sign AF area modes - function buttons so for right now I have to pick something else since I can't do that that would be my preferred way by the way I would prefer to have an autofocus area on there but since I can't I decided to go a spot metering give that a click next let's talk about the FN - button and mine is assigned to AE lock with a hold option there and I find that this works really well in conjunction with having the FN one button set - spot metering and I'll talk about how I use the two of them together in just a moment here but first let's talk about the AE lock options that we have here with our FN - button if you notice there's three of them here and you might be wondering why I'm selecting the AE lock hold and the easiest way to explain that is to kind of go through what each one of these does very briefly so AE lock only works like a standard AE lock button the way it works is you simply press and hold the button if you're in an auto exposure mode and you just press and hold the assign button FN - in this case and as long as you're pressing that button it's gonna lock in whatever the exposure was when you press the button so that's pretty straightforward when you're done with it just let go of the button and you're good to go metering is normal again next we have kind of an evolution of that with the AE lock reset on release this works a little bit different basically you just tap the button you don't have to hold it and what the camera is going to do is when you tap the button it will go ahead and lock in that current exposure and you can focus you can recompose you can zoom whatever you want and it's going to keep that locked in as long as camera doesn't turn off or go into standby or you don't press that AE lock button again now the way this one works is as soon as you take the photo though that's when it's going to release the lock and go back to metering as normal so basically you get one shot with your AE lock engaged like that so in my case that doesn't work too well I want more than one shot and that's what the AE lock hold option does basically the way this works is once again you just give the assigned button a quick tap in this case again the FN - button I just give that a quick tap and what the camera's gonna do it's gonna lock in that current exposure and it's not going to release that exposure lock until one of three things happens either I shut the camera off the camera goes into standby mode or I go ahead and just press the FN - button one more time otherwise it's going to maintain that lock even if I'm shooting so I can shoot one shot I can shoot a hundred shots it doesn't matter it's gonna hold that lock until one of those three things happen again the camera shuts off goes into standby or you press the FN - button again and that is really advantageous when you kind of mix it with spot metering so let's select that and let me talk about how I kind of use the two of these together the FN one and the FN two button why this is such a nice pairing the reason I like the FN one and FN 2 buttons set up like this is simple it makes working in the field faster most of the time I use manual with auto ISO so I'm shooting what is essentially an auto exposure mode if you want more info on how manual with auto ISO works and why I use it check out the video linked in the card above oh and by the way this topic actually does apply to any auto exposure mode not just manual with auto ISO when you're in an auto exposure mode there are times the camera doesn't get the exposure correct at those times spot metering a middle tone area in the same light as the subject can really be a life saver in fact with much my wildlife photography I find that simply spot metering on like the eye and face area of most of my subjects will give me a pretty good exposure since I like to move my AF point to the eye and since the metering is linked to that AF area this works out really well when I run into a situation where matrix metering just isn't getting the job done however if I have a subject that's not middle tone especially if it's like really dark or really light in tonality the camera is gonna over or under expose that if I just use straight-up spot metering and that's where this AE lock hold option comes in I can meter off a middle tone area that's in the same light as the subject and then lock in that exposure now I can recompose I can focus mic and fire away with the correct exposure locked in the entire time I mean sure I could just jump into full manual mode - but I found that this method is actually far quicker and actually I do plan on doing a full video on spot metering techniques and maybe the near future here by the way I talked about exposure and metering topics like this in far greater detail in my exposure and metering book for nikon if you really want to know how to get the most from your nikon exposure and metering system you should join the thousands who have already purchased it and use the advice every time they're out shooting anyhow let's get back to it so let's go ahead and move on to the next button which is the AF on button I have mine set for AF on at the moment because I am using back button focus however with mirrorless cameras I'm not as sure that back button focus is as important as it once was with DSLRs I have a whole article about that I'll put it on the card above if you want to read some of my thoughts here although I am still using back button focus at this time so this is set to AF on however when I do switch over sometimes to use front button focus depending on the situation I will switch this to AF lock only with a little bit of irony there making my AF on button and AF lock button but most of the time especially since I'm using back button focus I have that set to AF on next we have the sub selector which is just basically the joystick and this is what happens when you wiggle it basically and right now it's set to focus point selection there's some options where you can do some stuff as far as setting at the same as a multi selector and there's some other options there too but for the most part I think focus point selection is probably the smartest thing to do with this so I'm gonna leave that one at the default and leave it alone let's move on to the next one which is actually what happens when we press the joystick when you push it in and right now it says reset and basically what that's gonna do is it's gonna select the center focus point and the reason I have it set like this is because I figure you if I'm manipulating my autofocus points with the joystick which is exactly how I do it I don't use the multi selector for that so if I'm doing that I might as well have this set up so that if I need to get it back to Center in a hurry which can happen sometimes sometimes you are not really paying attention maybe you rub up against the joystick and the AF point gets in the wrong spot if you need to just get it back to center in a hurry it's really nice to have it set like this just one quick press and it's there so that's how I have that one set very handy and I have found that very useful next we have the movie record button and I've actually set my focus mode in AF area mode to that button I find that very handy I love that position by default you can do this at with the fn2 button that's how it's set from the factory however I find me the position of the fn2 button isn't really convenient I don't really like where that is positioned on the camera at least not for me so I like to assign something there that I don't have to like manipulate that much so that's why that AE lock hold is on there but one of the things I do manipulate a lot is my AF area mode so I want to have a really convenient way to do that so by putting that on the record button all I have to do then is press that record button and you know what when I'm shooting my finger is like right next to it so all I have to do is press that record button and turn the front command dial the sub command dial and that will change the AF area mode if I press it and hold that button down as I'm turning the rear command dial the main command I'll it'll actually change my focus modes from like a FS to AF C to manual mode so I find that very handy in fact I highly recommend you at least give this a try it's really really nice to have it on the move your record button I find that it's way easier to manipulate at least for me than it is in other places so I definitely recommend it the only downside is if you do a lot of filming of course if you've flipped to regular movie mode what's going to happen is when you press that move the record button it's gonna start recording movie you won't be able to actually switch your AF modes anymore you'll have to like resort to the AI menu for that but I don't do a lot of filming so for me this works out really really well okay next we have our lens function button and I have mine set to subject tracking now this is not available on the Z 50 but if you have a Z 6 or Z 7 with the current firmware 3.0 it the time of this recording if you have a Z 6 or Z 7 you can actually assign track mode two some of your buttons here the FN 1 FN 2 button and the lens function button I have mine on the lens function button and it's really handy if I'm in the auto AF Aria I can just go ahead and press the lens function button and interestingly this also works on adapted lenses so if I have my 500 PF on there and I'm in the AEL mode on the little memory-recall switch I can actually go ahead and press one of those buttons and it will initiate subject tracking if I'm in the auto AF so I really like that on the lens and most of the lenses I use have function buttons so I decided to put it there I don't use the auto af-s with subject tracking very often so I don't really need that button on the camera and if I am going to use it I'm probably gonna have a longer lens that is gonna feature those lens function buttons so I do have subject tracking there now the lens function button number two I don't currently own any lenses that have a second lens function button on them and I hope to one of these days if the 70 to 200 s ever comes into stock someplace but right now I only have the one lens function button and finally we come to our lens control ring now every Nikon Z series lens every Z mount lens is going to have a lens control ring on it and that lens control ring on a lot of lenses is typically used for focus now some lenses are going to actually have a lens control ring and a separate focus ring my twenty four seven to eight for example has a focus ring on the front and has a lens control ring on the back so in a situation where you have both a lens control ring and a focus ring the lens control ring by default is set for aperture but I changed mine to exposure compensation which is really really handy there is nothing better than using that for exposure compensation I always hated pressing that little tiny button in and then trying to manipulate the dials while I'm trying to shoot it just it seems like it takes too long this is very intuitive it is very very fast you can whip from minus to plus five stops of exposure compensation and like a half a second if you want to so very very handy now if you do have a lens or lenses that only have the lens control ring and no focus ring you could still go in here and set that control ring for exposure compensation now of course you lose the ability to manually focus but you know what if you don't manually focus very often or never maybe this is a pretty good trade so this is something you'll have to decide now of course you can always jump back in here it's not that hard to set this back to focus if the need should arise but anyhow that's how I have mine set for at least by twenty four seventy here because I think that works really well now there's one customization I like to do that is outside of this particular menu so let's go ahead and back out to the controls area and go down to the okay button give that a click and under shooting mode I like to set this for zoom on and off and I like to have it at 100% there's some options for low and high magnification but low magnification doesn't seem to give me enough magnification and high magnification is kind of over sampled so one-to-one seems to work really well I'm just gonna hit the okay button there and the reason I like to do that is because it allows me to press the ok button while I'm shooting and zoom into the image at 100% by the AF point makes it very easy if I want to either verify focus or if I'm manually focusing and this is something I used to do and recommend with DSLRs for the Live View feature most of the time I would have my ok button set so that one press I could zoom in to 100% when I was using live view so it was a natural transition when I moved to the Z cameras to go ahead and turn that on for them as well so as you're shooting just press ok and you'll zoom right in there you'll have to give that a try it's pretty cool now another option here just to make sure you have it set is to go back in here and in playback mode just make sure that zoom is on or off and that's you're at one to 100% again for the same reasons and what this is gonna do is when you hit the play button on the back of your camera you can just press that ok button to zoom into the image at 100% that is a very very handy way to check focus very rapidly in the field and I believe the Z cameras are set up like that by default but just in case you might want to double check it so there you go all of my control settings keep in mind that well these are sort of my default settings I do swap them around and I change them up when I'm in the field if I need to remember just because you assign a function to a button it doesn't mean it has to be permanent ideally you should select settings that you need to change fast and frequently and just maybe just leave the rest to that I menu area and that might be a topic we discussed in another video also if you enjoyed these tips make sure you watch for my upcoming book on the Z series AF system it's now over 460 pages of advice that will help you get every ounce of performance from the Z series AF system and you can look for that sometimes June 2020 and of course check out my other books and video workshops as well hundreds of pages and hours upon hours of videos full of tips tricks and advice finally make sure you sign up for my free email newsletter so you'll know when that book launches plus you'll never miss a video an article or a workshop opportunity thank you so much for watching have a great day you

Channel: Steve Perry

Views: 19,774

Keywords: photography tips, photography help, Backcountry Gallery, Steve Perry, nature photography, Nikon mirrorless buttons, Nikon mirrorless button setup, Nikon z camera button setup, Nikon Z6 button setup, Nikon z7 button setup, Nikon mirrorless control setup, Nikon z camera control setup, Nikon Z6 control setup, Nikon Z7 control setup, Nikon mirrorless button configuration, Nikon mirrorless control configuration, Nikon z setup, Nikon Z6 setup, Nikon z7 setup, Nikon z50 setup

Id: O558jqlJcTw

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020