Compositional controls

Where to find the settings that can help you set up your camera to make in-camera composition easy

VIEWFINDER GRID DISPLAY

Depending on your camera, this can be found in the Setup Menu or Custom Settings Menu under ‘d Shooting/display’. It is a simple On/off setting. You can see this both on the rear LCD screen when using Live View and in the viewfinder.

VIRTUAL HORIZON

On most modern DSLRS you repeatedly press the Info button to cycle through various screens until you see the virtual horizon overlay display. On Z-series cameras, repeatedly press the Disp button to achieve the same effect.

ASPECT RATIO

In the Photo Shooting Menu, ‘Choose Image Area’ enables you to quickly select the in-camera aspect ratio for the image. The exact options available depend on your camera, but typically include square (1:1) and widescreen (16:9) ratios.

SPLIT SCREEN VIEW

For the DSLRS that have this feature, switch to Live View and then press the ‘i’ button to bring up the submenu on the right of the screen; Split Screen View can be accessed here. On a Z-series camera, you need to have programmed this into the ‘i’ menu before you can select it.

RETOUCH MENU – DISTORTION CONTROL

This is mainly for Z-series cameras using native Z-series lenses and allows you to automatically control lens distortion. There is a manual override option if you want to adjust this yourself.

RETOUCH MENU – PERSPECTIVE CONTROL

This is used to straighten lines that may be offset due to parallax distortion and is particularly useful with architectural shots. You can correct both vertical and horizontal perspective distortion.

RETOUCH MENU – STRAIGHTEN

A manual control that can be used to correct uneven horizons. Use the grid lines as a guide and the left and right buttons on the multi-selector to change the angle – but be aware that the greater the degree of correction the more pixels you will lose.

RETOUCH MENU – TRIM

Gives you the ability to crop your images while changing the aspect ratio. It’s useful for preparing images in-camera prior to posting to social media, and creates a JPEG copy of your image, thereby giving you the opportunity to experiment with different composition options.