D300s shooting banks

[Dave Pickett]

Can anyone clarify simply what these control, is it just the picture contrals such as std, vivid etc or do they do more?

 

[alexdea]

Give me chance to read your mind!!!
Give the page number of the owners manual and I will inform you how I understood the topic.

 

[NikkiA]

Can anyone clarify simply what these control, is it just the picture contrals such as std, vivid etc or do they do more?

There are 4 banks, 'A' thru 'D', they contain the settings set in the a-f (at least on a d200, a d300 probably has more than 'f').

Basically, it's just a way of setting up 4 different 'profiles' for the camera and switching between them rapidly. Without a copy/paste function, it's still a mighty chore to setup those banks though.

An example use is that I prefer back button focus, with the shutter focusing turned off completely, so that I can AF and let go to hold focus. But at the same time I'd like my boyfriend to be able to take snapshots, and he isn't photographically minded, so rather than confuse him, I'd keep a separate setup with 'normal' settings in bank 'D' and switch to it before handing him the camera. I might also have some settings that are useful for macro on bank 'A', and landscapes on 'B'.

As with many things in life, once you start thinking of uses, you rapidly run into the problem that the manufacturer didn't give you enough banks, and being able to name them rather than having to remember what each bank represents, would have been nice.

Edit:

Just thought, it's entirely possible that Camera Control Pro will let you backup and copy/paste your banks around...

 

[cameradaft]

Also under camera controls where you have standard vivid etc, you can also download portrait & landscape to the d300.

 

[twice]

Hi, The banks allow you to save different settings for different scenes.
You can "name" each of the Shooting menu and Custom settings banks, mine are :
A - General
B - Lowlight
C - Landscape
D - Sport
For each bank of each menu, you can set the controls as you want it. I used google to get examples of what other people were using and see if it worked for me.

For example in the Shooting menu, for my 'Sports' settings, the image quality is set to jpeg and ISO max at 400. For my 'Lowlight' settings, the image quality is set to raw and ISO max at 1600.

In the Custom settings menu, the 'Landscape' settings, the AF-C setting is set to Focus, but in 'Sports' it is set to Release+Focus.

An example of usage is, I was at the London Thames Festival last weekend. During the day the banks were set to the General settings, when I happened across the Taekwondo demo, I switched the banks to the Sports settings. At the Night Carnival, when it started to get too dark, I switched the banks to the Lowlight settings. It just saves a bit of time, instead of going though the menu and changing settings for different scenes.

To set it all up, I used this as a starting point and just tweaked it to what worked for me, also have a look at this flickr group

Of course, there is a lot more to it!