Complete Guide of Playback Menu of Nikon Dslr | Nikon D5300 | Part - 2

How to Customise the Playback Menu of Nikon Dslr ? Complete Guide

Hello, I'm Anirban Adhikary. Lived in Haur, Panskura, West Bengal, India. Photography is my hobby. I love to freez the moments. Today, i share How to customise the Playback Menu of Nikon DSLR .

How to get to the PLAYBACK Menu ?

Press MENU, click to the left and then up to select the top "[ > ] " (play) icon. You'll then see PLAYBACK MENU at the top of the color LCD.

What it Does ?

It sets a few playback options.

What I Change ?

I use this menu to activate the RGB histogram.

MENU ITEMS :

Delete

This option is helpful if you want to delete all images, while saving those you locked with the Key / AE-L AF-L button.

I don't use this. I do all my editing and selection in my computer and I do my in-camera deletions one-by-one with the trash can key.

Playback Folder

The camera can record to and play back from different folders.

CURRENT ignores photos in folders other than the one to which you're recording. This means it won't see images recorded on different cameras, and if you're a smarty-pants who makes new folders in your D5300, it will only play from the current folder.

When you select CURRENT, you'll see "D5300" displayed in the menu system.

ALL shows you everything on the card. I leave my D5300 set to ALL. It tends to reset itself to Current, meaning it won't play images made on a different camera if they are on your card.

Playback Display Options

This lets you activate or deactivate various playback information screens.

They are all off by default. To set any of them to display, press:

MENU > PLAYBACK > Playback display mode (go down and check any you want) > Done > OK.

If you forget to go back up to select Done and then to hit OK, the D5300 ignores you! I'm serious; if you think this isn't working on your camera, you forgot both to select DONE and then to select OK.

Once activated, you move through these screens by pressing the up or down buttons while playing an image.

Your choices are :

None (image only)

This option displays your picture only.

It's a clean, unadulterated display.

Highlights

Overly bright parts of the image blink.

I don't use this; I can see which parts are too bright. If you don't use histograms, you might want to consider this option.

RGB Histogram

I always use this. It's the only useful form of a histogram. More at RGB histograms.

Shooting Data

This adds three pages of playback data.

If you want to know minor details like how much sharpening you used, this is how you get it all to display.

I use this, too.

Overview

This is a screen with a small image, a B&W histogram and a whole bunch of other data.

I also use this; it's handy.

Image Review

ON makes the picture appear right after you take it.

OFF makes the screen stay blank unless you press PLAY.

Rotate Tall

This is Japanese for rotating the vertical shots on playback. I keep it OFF, otherwise vertical shots never fill the screen.

It doesn't affect your images or files; it only changes how they are displayed on the D5300.

I leave this OFF and turn the camera.

When set to ON, it shows small vertical pictures on the big horizontal screen with black sides.

Unlike an iPhone or point-and-shoot, the D5300 isn't smart enough to rotate the pictures as you turn the camera during playback.

Slide Show

This lets you amaze your friends with an exciting slide show on the rear screen.

I don't bother with this. I guess it's popular in Japan. Whoo hoo! Let's all watch a show on a 3" screen!

You can plug your D5300 directly into a TV, HDTV or video projector. If you do, use the HDMI output, and it looks pretty awesome.

The analog A/V output looks bad because analog video resolution is poor.

DPOF print order

I never use this. I guess it's popular in Japan.

This lets you mark images for printing if you sorted and then printed directly from your D5300, and had a lab which could read this data.

Rating

I never use this.

This lets you mark images with your ratings. This is swell, but none of the software I use recognizes any of this, so for me it's meaningless. I prefer to do my sorting at back on my Mac Pro where I can see what I'm doing.

Send to Smart Device

This lets you mark which images will be sent to your iPhone or other doo-dad via Wi-Fi.

It's easier to shoot an image on my iPhone than to fiddle with all this if I need to send someone an image, so I never use this.