A few weeks ago, one of my coaching students was struggling a bit with easily changing her camera settings on the back of her camera. If you have ever had a DSLR (let’s face it, a camera or any technology item in general!), the settings are sometimes very tricky to navigate! I feel like the developers try to make things more simple with headings/etc, but when I look at the back of my camera, it is VERY hard for me to realize, just by title (or picture as it may be!), whether the setting I am looking for is under the little camera, or the tool icon, or the playback icon, and which of the 5-7 menus within each of those! It can be very time consuming, especially if you are frequently setting white balance using a gray card or expo disc (which I am playing with vs using Kelvin temperature for the first time now- full report coming soon!), or if you are a photographer who is often swapping out or clearing cards!  One of my favorite camera tricks is using the “my menu”, or creating a custom favorites menu within the larger menu so I can find the 7 settings I use the most super easily! These instructions are for our main camera body, the Canon EOS 5D Mark III– but I am guessing most professional cameras (and maybe some entry level as well!) have this option- I would just google “Custom Menu” or “My Menu” with your camera name to see if yours does!

Now- how do I set it, and what do I use it for!  First, let’s talk about how!  After pressing the menu button on the back of your camera, navigate to the star icon- that is your “my menu”.  Yours will look very different if you don’t have anything registered yet- but it will have the important one- “My Menu Settings”, highlighted on the left. Once you click that, then you click the top option: “Register to My Menu”.

Next, your camera will give you a list of all of the other settings that you can add to your menu. I don’t love the way this list is formatted- it is long and not in alphabetical order so truth be told, I had to do a lot of scrolling when I initially set up my menu to find what I wanted- but I figure it is ONE time scrolling through all the options instead of doing it every time I need any setting. Totally worth it!

Once you find a setting you want to add, you just click set, move to “ok”, and click set again.  After you fill up your menu with all 7 items, you can then sort into an order that works the best for you.  To sort, just click “my menu settings” again, go down to sort, and press set.

Your camera will bring up all the settings in your menu, and use the arrow keys to move them up or down!

You can see in the image right above what I have chosen to put in my menu (and in the first image, my final order!). I most often need “Date/Time/Zone” to sync time with all other cameras at each wedding we shoot (tip for photographers: Add this into your formatting cards routine so you don’t forget!), “format card” for clearing cards (it is safer to do it in camera than on your computer!), and “image quality” to determine if I will be shooting on 1 or 2 cards, and whether I am shooting raw on both or JPG backup on one.  The others are used occasionally- so they are lower down on my list!

I hope this is helpful for you if you have never set a custom menu (drop all the things and do it now! :)) and if you have, share with me what you have in your menu!! I would love to hear!

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