Digital Camera Custom User Settings

You may have noticed markings on your mode dial such as C-1, or U-1. These are used to create customized camera menu settings that you can automatically recall and use for specific lighting or scene conditions. These can be as simple or as complex as you might want, and can combine a number of different setting combinations. The dials are best used for scenes and lighting conditions that you often shoot, but they are so easily set up that you can change them from day to day.

For example, you can program a set that would include a specific white balance, metering pattern, exposure compensation and exposure priority. That set might be Cloudy white balance, spot metering, minus 2/3 EV compensation and aperture-priority exposure mode: this might be apt for fall foliage shots.

Or, you could make a set of commands that include autoexposure bracketing with a plus/minus 1 EV spread; this could be used for making exposures for HDR shooting. And you might want to create a set for sports photography in an arena lit by tungsten light, which would include a specific white balance, continuous advance mode and shutter-priority exposure mode.

Each camera has a slightly different route to make these sets. Generally you create the set and then simply turn the dial to, for example, C1. You then confirm this group of settings as a user group on your camera menu using the OK button or similar. This stays in the camera memory and whenever you turn the mode dial to C1 those settings are automatically applied. Some advanced cameras allow you to "name" the group as well.

 Among the mode dial options on this Panasonic DMC-G5 are various exposure modes, Scene modes and Art filters, along with two Custom User setting modes, here indicated as C1 and C2. Once you program these mode settings the camera will automatically set whatever combination of Menu and control options you have assigned to it for the shot.

By programming a combination of settings and assigning them to a Custom User dial you can quickly get all the options you might ordinarily have to set individually for a specific subject or scene. For example, you might want to create a “landscape” User Custom setting that might include aperture-priority exposure mode, Daylight white balance, Center-weighted Averaging metering pattern and Adobe RGB color space. 

Settings: With a 28mm lens, at ISO 100, CWA metering pattern. Daylight white balance, aperture-priority mode at f/11 at 1/125 second.