Too often, I leave the set­tings on my cam­era to what­ev­er the last shoot or pic­ture required and then find that a day or 2 lat­er, those set­tings are not appro­pri­ate for the next shoot. Many of my pic­tures are spon­ta­neous action shots and do not allow much time to check the set­tings, let alone frame and focus. Even when I have the time, it is easy to for­get (my mind is like a seive) one or more impor­tant con­trols that could be set to take a bet­ter pic­ture. So bor­row­ing from many oth­er pho­tog­ra­pher’s sug­ges­tions, this is a list of 10 default cam­era set­tings for my Nikon D80 that I review before I leave the house.

ISO = 100
Auto Focus = On
Aut­o­fo­cus = Con­tin­u­ous
VR = On and Nor­mal
Cam­era Mode = Auto
Pic­ture Qual­i­ty = RAW
White bal­ance = Auto
Meter­ing = Matrix
Bat­tery = Charged
Card = For­mat­ted

ISO = 100 - This is a killer. Using the lens­es I own, I often must crank the ISO to get decent expo­sure. Pho­tograph­ing musi­cians in avail­able light is tough as are action shots of surfers with my 70 ‑300 f/4.5–5.6 lens. If I for­get to reset the ISO back to 100, I lat­er find the nice land­scape pic­tures I took to be very noisy at ISO 3200.

Auto Focus = on - As my eyes get worse, I depend more and more on aut­o­fo­cus. I some­times shut this off after get­ting the prop­er mid-air point of focus when antic­i­pat­ing a crit­ter to walk or fly into that space. For­get this and you will waste a few pre­cious shots lat­er when you are try­ing to shoot any­thing else. It is also a good idea to occa­sion­al­ly check that the diopter set­ting in the view find­er is adjust­ed to your vision.

Aut­o­fo­cus = Con­tin­u­ous Ser­vo — Often, for me, quick grab shots are of mov­ing tar­gets so my default is Con­tin­u­ous Ser­vo (AF‑C). Hit­ting the AF but­ton twice will eas­i­ly take me to Sin­gle Ser­vo (AF‑S) if I want to lock focus.

VR = On and nor­mal - For lens­es equip­ment­ed with VR, the major­i­ty of my shots are hand­held, but when tak­ing long expo­sures on a tri­pod, Nikon rec­om­mends shut­ting VR off. The penal­ty for for­get­ting to turn this back on is blur­ry long dis­tance shots when you are back to shoot­ing hand­held. I rarely touch the normal/active switch, but it can be moved and nor­mal is my default. You might use Active when shoot­ing from a mov­ing car, but I am usu­al­ly dri­ving and not tak­ing pic­tures. It is right next to the VR on/off switch, so check it while you are there.

Cam­era Mode = Auto - I usu­al­ly shoot in Aper­ture or Shut­ter pri­or­i­ty modes and some­times in Man­u­al and one or the oth­er may not be right for an instant grab shot. So, my defa­lut set­ting is Auto. I may take a quick shot in auto, review the meter set­tings and then move to a pri­or­i­ty mode from there.

Pic­ture Qual­i­ty = RAW - It is more work, but I need all the help (and res­o­lu­tion) I can get, so I shoot in RAW. There are times when I want to dis­play the pic­tures quick­ly to a client. I will then shoot RAW + JPEG. For­get to reset this and it great­ly reduces stor­age space. I may also shoot in JPEG only when using burst mode for action shots and need more buffer space. 5 or 6 RAW shots will fill the buffer and may cause me to miss the best shot in a series. For­get to go back to RAW and you lose res­o­lu­tion and many oth­er con­trols (like the abil­i­ty to change white bal­ance) when you need it.

White Bal­ance = Auto - Anoth­er killer set­ting if wrong. It is not dif­fi­cult to hit the WB but­ton and turn the dial think­ing you are chang­ing the ISO and end up shoot­ing day­light pic­tures with a Tung­sten White Bal­ance and nev­er notice this until you are back home review­ing pic­tures. At least I think that is what hap­pened. This is where shoot­ing in RAW mode helped recov­er some shots.

Meter­ing = Matrix - Unless I specif­i­cal­ly want spot meter­ing for a shot, I default to Matrix Meter­ing. I am still study­ing when best to change this set­ting.

Bat­tery = charged - This seems sil­ly but espe­cial­ly when tak­ing long expo­sure pic­tures, you can nev­er have too many ful­ly charged bat­ter­ies. You will not be hap­py dri­ving to that spot and car­ry­ing all your gear down the goat path to the beach in the dark and run­ning out of pow­er after 5 shots. Bru­tal. Anoth­er thing to con­sid­er, Rick Sam­mon says that low bat­ter­ies oper­ate at high­er tem­per­a­tures which may affect the col­or bal­ance in the image sen­sor.

Card = for­mat­ted - I try to start a shoot with an emp­ty card. there is noth­ing like run­ning out of mem­o­ry and hav­ing to delete select­ed shots from a pre­vi­ous shoot and won­der­ing if you had already down­loaded them. When you get home, down­load the pic­tures, then back them up to a sec­ond dri­ve and then (and only then) for­mat the card. For­mat­ting not only deletes the pic­tures but cleans all the bad bits out and pro­vides max­i­mum stor­age avail­abil­i­ty.

So, who says that dig­i­tal cam­eras make tak­ing pic­tures eas­i­er then ever. In the old days, after load­ing the film, you only thought of aper­ture, shut­ter speed and focus. Now there are dozens of but­tons, menus and sub menus that can make your day or cause you grief. The set­tings I cov­er here are easy to get at and change (or mess up). I am not even talk­ing about cus­tom set­tings, deep with­in the menu dun­geon. See your Thom Hogan guide for those set­tings.

I have suf­fered from every one of these set­ting fail­ures, some­times more then one at a time. So, I have writ­ten them down on a piece of paper and put them in the clear win­dow on my cam­era bag in an attempt to min­i­mize the dam­age and just maybe get some bet­ter pic­tures. These may not be your default set­tings, but they are all good things to think about before leav­ing for that shoot and look­ing unpre­pared. The best time to check your set­tings just might be when you get home, while the pic­tures are down­load­ing to your PC.