Project D800E - seamlessly restore the custom settings

Nikon D800 and D800E gives the user possibility to define up to 4 different setting sets (4 for shooting menu, and 4 for  custom settings menu) containing different settings according to the preferences of the user.
Those sets are called Shooting Menu Banks and Custom Settings Banks in the Nikon manual.
This feature is a nice thing, allowing to group the options that are convenient in particular shooting situation and quickly switch between them. For instance I have two separate settings sets: one for landscape photography and one for street photography.
What is not so nice is the fact that in case of D800 there is no way to 'lock' the sets. Once a shooting menu bank or custom settings bank is selected, all the settings in the selected bank can be freely modified. So if one doesn't pay attention he/she can ruin carefully prepared settings just by changing many parameters and not restoring them back to the values set originally for this bank.

There are basically two solutions to deal with it that I come up with:

1. Reserve one bank for the testing purposes and play freely with this bank, leaving 3 others as 'fixed' i.e. intact after settings them up.
2. Prepare the settings, store them on the memory card, backup on your computer and retrieve when needed.

The drawback of the 1st option is that one needs to remember to switch to the 'Test' banks during experiments. And after some time the settings of the Test bank can become quite messed up making it unusable.

The 2nd option is actually the solution to the problem. 

To store the settings:

1. Insert a memory card in the camera. 
2. Go to the setup menu (the wrench icon), go to the option Save/load settings, enter the option's menu.
3. Select the option Save settings, press Ok

The camera will create a file NCSETUP8.BIN in the root folder of the memory card. Now you can backup those settings somewhere on your laptop or just store the memory card for later.

To restore the settings, perform the opposite:

1. Copy the file NCSETUP8.BIN from your backup location to the root folder of the memory card.
2. Insert a memory card in the camera. 
3. Go to the setup menu (the wrench icon), go to the option Save/load settings, enter the option's menu.
4. Select the option Load settings, press Ok

Note that with this mechanism in place and a proper backup you can create multiple sets of settings and apply them according to your needs. Of course some administration of the NCSETUP8.BIN files would be required in this case, but it can be relatively easily achieved by using some naming conventions on the backup location.

Another option would be to collect some old memory cards which are not usable any more because of limited capacity, store the settings there and label them properly.

Project D800E - couple of handy settings

In the post about basic settings I have described a very few options only. The Nikon D800/D800E offers much more convenient options that can be used to customize the camera to one's personal preferences. The order of the settings is not very structured, I have chosen the ones that are most convenient to me.

Use dial buttons as cursor keys

It is convenient to navigate through the menus (or through the photos in the view mode) by using main and sub dial button instead of the cursor key. In this mode the main dial button is used to scroll up and down, and the secondary dial button to move left and right.

To set it up use the option f9 - Customize command dials in the menu Custom setting menu. Navigate to the Custom setting menu, choose option f9 and then from the submenu the last option: Menus and playback. Select the option On if you want to use the dial button for menu and in the view mode or On (image review excluded) to use it in the menu only.

In the quick-reference notation:

Menu,,f Controls,,->  f9 - Customize command dials ,, ->Menus and playback, , ->On, Ok

Note that this option does not disable the regular function of the cursor keys. It is an additional way of navigation through the menus and photos.

Lock exposure while pressing the shutter button half-way

I find this option convenient especially in the situations where the image composition needs to be changed after locking the focus. And in 90% cases I want to have the exposure locked as well on the light conditions that were measured during focusing.

To lock exposure by pressing the shutter half way use the option c1-Timers/AE lock from the Custom Setting menu

Menu,,c Timers/AE lock,,->c1 Shutter-release button AE-L  ,,->On, Ok

Customize AE-L/AE-F button

If one chooses to use release-shutter button to lock the focus and exposure, the AE-L/AE-F button can be used for different purposes. There are several options available, under the menu f6 - Assign AE-L/AE-F button.

There are two ways (mutually exclusive) of using the customized AE-L/AE-F button: choose the option by pressing the button (AE-L/AF-L button press) or choose the option by pressing the button and dialing the command dial buttons (AE-L/AF-L + command dials). Describing all options is actually something for the manual. I have found one option particularly interesting, namely the option called Bracketing burst. If the shutter-release button is pressed while the AE-F/AE-L button is pressed in single-frame release mode, the camera will shoot the number of photos specified in the bracketing program. Normally one need to press the shutter-release button multiple times to take all bracketed photos. Bracketing burst is convenient in combination with autofocus auto-mode. The focus and exposure settings will not change while taking the images in such activated series.

To customize AE-L/AE-F button for Bracketing burst use the following sequence:

Menu,,f Controls,,->  f6 - Assign AE-L/AE-F button ,, ->AE-L/AE-F button press, , ->Bracketing burst, Ok

Next time I will present the first version of the D800/D800E cheat sheet with the things already described and couple of new.