Playback Menu- Every Setting On Your DSLR Explained (Part Two)
Understanding all your camera’s capabilities is a huge advantage when trying to create great photos. DSLRs have a huge variety of settings and features, most of which people either don’t understand, or just simply ignore. This is a comprehensive guide to every single one of your cameras settings, where they are, and what they do. I will go through what every button does, and what all the menu settings do, and I will be using a Nikon D600 for this tutorial. Every camera is different, so therefore your camera may differ slightly, but the majority of the settings are universal across most camera brands, you just may find that some buttons or settings may be in different places. There’s a huge amount of information, therefore I will be splitting this post into multiple parts. Here in part two, we shall go through the in-camera ‘Playback’ menu.
Playback Menu
The Playback menu allows you to alter settings when viewing your images that you’ve taken. You can adjust how your images are displayed on camera, protect them from deletion and more. Here are the various settings you can adjust below. Remember to bare in mind your own camera may differ slightly, but generally speaking most DSLRs have very similar menus.
Delete
This menu simply allows you to select multiple images for deletion instead of having to go through and delete each image one at a time. You can select random images for deletion and there is also an option to delete all images taken on a certain date too.
Playback Folder
This menu allows you to select which folder on the SD card you are viewing when you press the playback button. Photos in all folders created by your camera will be visible during playback unless you select a particular folder instead of selecting ‘All’. Folders can also be renamed using the Storage Folder option in the photo shooting menu.
Hide Image
Use this menu to ‘hide’ or ‘reveal’ pictures. Hidden pictures are visible only in this menu (and not during playback) and can only be deleted by formatting the memory card. This is a good way to protect a photo you don’t want to risk accidentally deleting.
Playback Display Options
This menu allows you to alter what information is shown alongside a photo during playback, such as the focus point used, a tonal histogram, highlights, and relevant data such as aperture, shutter speed, ISO, etc.
Copy Image(s)
This menu is used to simply copy and paste an image to an alternate folder on your SD card.
Image Review
Turning image review ‘on’ will cause the photo to automatically pop up for a few seconds after capture. By turning image review ‘off’ you will only be able to see the image by pressing the playback button.
After Delete
This allows you to adjust the order in which you see photos after deletion, for example, when you delete a photo, you can choose whether the camera shows you the next photo or the previous photo.
Rotate Tall
Turning this on will cause any portrait image to automatically rotate 90 degrees to fit the whole screen. If you want to see all your images in the correct orientation then you can turn ‘rotate tall’ off.
Slideshow
This will create a slideshow of all the images currently in your playback folder. You can choose to create a slideshow out of all your media or select only still photos or only movie clips. You can also adjust the speed of the slideshow by altering the ‘frame interval’.
Hopefully this was helpful for you and allowed you to understand your camera a bit better. If you want to learn more about in-camera menus, make sure to keep your eye out for Part Three of ‘Every Setting On Your DSLR Explained’, where I will go through the photo shooting menu and what each option does. You can also read more about the Playback menu here in the online Nikon manual.
All images in this post are copyright (c) of Aby-Joanne Photography.
