AUTO ISO
Setting AUTO ISO on the D700 is easy! Go to Shooting Menu and select ISO Sensitivity Settings. Turn ISO Sensitivity Auto Control ON and set your Maximum ISO value and Minimum Shutter Speed value and it is done! I have set my Shooting Bank B to Auto ISO and have Shooting Menu Bank in MY MENU.
My settings are NORMALLY 1600 ISO Maximum ISO and 1/250 as Minimum Shutter Speed. In Aperture Priority my D700 will try to achieve 1/250 at the set Aperture until the lighting conditions dictate that this is not possible. If the lighting is good enough the shutter speed will be set to a value above 1/250 and when the lighting fades the shutter speed will drop incrementally to 1/250. If the lighting conditions deteriorate the ISO will be raised incrementally to a Maximum of 1600 ISO at which point the Shutter Speed will begin to drop.
AUTO ISO is also possible in MANUAL EXPOSURE Mode. The Aperture and Shutter Speed are set to fixed values and the correct exposure is then determined automatically by varying the ISO. A procedure I have developed with Manual Exposure and AUTO ISO is to set the base ISO at 560. By setting a Shutter Speed/Aperture Combination to suit this ISO a variation in lighting conditions of up to (Approximately) plus or minus two EV steps is catered for. If the lighting drops by up to two EV steps the ISO is boosted incrementally to the 1600 ISO Max. If the lighting improves by up to two EV steps the ISO will drop to 200 Minimum ISO. Whilst working within this range the viewfinder exposure meter will always show zero indicating a correct exposure. An indication of under or over exposure means that the Aperture / Shutter Speed combination has to be changed to accommodate the lighting conditions.
AUTO ISO can also be used with Flash when working at the limits of a Speed-light’s Guide Number. If the distance between the flash and subject means that the set Aperture is too small (higher number) then the ISO will automatically adjust to maintain the correct FLASH Exposure.
White Balance
The D700 offers several options for setting White Balance (WB) in-camera:
Auto WB – whilst it delivers a (usually) good result it is not “fool proof” and I avoid it for the simple reason that if it is used it is difficult (but not impossible) to tell what actual (degrees K) reading has been used when the image is opened in NX2. It is also not possible to BATCH an AUTO WB reading from one image to other images. (Page 140 in Manual).
Camera Preset WB’s – Daylight, Tungsten, Fluorescent etc offer excellent starting points and each preset can be further tweaked to (for instance) provide a WARMER look (A1-A6) or a COOLER look (B1-B6). The difficulty I find with this approach is in REMEMBERING to reset the WB for each different scene and its unique lighting conditions. (Page 143 in Manual).
Preset Manual – This is a very useful tool which provides two different methods of setting a measured WB. The first method involves the use of a WHITE or MID-GRAY card from which to take a reading. (Page 148 in Manual). A reading is taken by filling the frame with the white or grey card and taking an exposure in the SAME LIGHTING as the main subject. The second (more cumbersome) method involves quite a bit of MENU navigation to set quality as JPEG, bracketing to WB and then choosing the number of bracketed images (up to nine) and the INTERVAL (1/3; 2/3 or 1) between each image. A single image is taken which produces 9 JPEGs of varying WB values from which you can assess the correct WB (in camera or in software) and apply to all subsequent images taken with the SAME LIGHTING conditions. Having taken the 9 JPEGs and assessed the WB you now have to return all settings to where they were before by even more MENU navigation! You also have to assign the WB setting from your chosen “correctly White Balanced” JPEG to a Preset slot in order to continue shooting at that WB.
Choose Colour Temperature – This is my chosen method. Based on the fact that in the “good old days” of film our chosen film had a fixed WB and we were stuck with it for 36 exposures, the only method of tuning it being via various Colour Correction filters, we didn’t do too badly. The colour temperature of Daylight film being around 5200K my chosen temperature is around 5560K – Day or night, winter or summer, cloudy or clear blue sky. Correcting from a known colour temperature to a cooler or warmer temperature (in NX2) is fairly easy after the (short) learning curve. Another advantage of this setting is that it can be used with “Live View” and rotating the Sub-Command Dial while holding the WB Button in Live View allows for changes in colour temperature to take place and be assessed in REAL TIME. (Page 147 in Manual).
