Guided Display and Menu modes, the camera offers simplified details about the feature you’re currently using.
Guided mode is fine for users who need more of a helping hand than the standard screens provide. But assuming that you bought this book because you want to learn more about your camera and master the ins and outs of photography, you don’t fall into that category. Standard mode is a better choice, for several reasons:
❯❯ Although the Guided screens make understanding some options easier, in many cases, they can be just as baffling as the Standard screens.
❯❯ The Guided screens often focus on one particular aspect of a camera setting without explaining how that setting affects other characteristics of your picture. When you change the shutter speed, for example, the camera has to make adjustments to one or two other critical settings – aperture and/or ISO – in order to properly expose the picture. Those settings, detailed along with shutter speed in Chapter 4, have their own impact on the look of your picture.
❯❯ Standard mode also saves you some steps as you make certain camera adjustments.
❯❯ The Guided screens limit your access to many shooting settings. In addition, when you use Guided mode, you can’t access the My Menu feature, which enables you to create a custom menu that contains the menu options you use most.
❯❯ Most other Canon dSLRs don’t offer Guided mode, so if you’re moving to the 77D from a previous Canon model that used standard displays, using Guided mode requires you to do unnecessary retraining. If you step up to a more advanced Canon model in the future, you also likely won’t have the option to use Guided mode.
For these reasons, figures and instructions from this point forward relate to using the camera in the Standard mode instead of Guided mode.
If you want to experiment, navigate to the Display Level menu and play around with different settings. The Shooting screen and Menu display are set to Standard by default, as shown on the left in Figure 1-10. The Mode and Feature guides are enabled by default, as shown in the figure. To change settings, select the setting you want to change, tap OK or press the Set button, and then highlight a new option, as shown on the right in Figure 1-10. Tap OK or press Set to make the change.
FIGURE 1-10: Choose the Display Mode Settings menu tab to turn the Guided mode features on or off.
We leave it up to you whether to disable these features. After you’re familiar with the various exposure modes and camera settings, they simply slow you down, so we keep them off. But if you find them helpful, by all means leave them set to Enable. Just remember that instructions from here on out won’t mention them.
Ordering from Camera Menus
Although you can adjust some settings by using external controls, you access the majority of options via camera menus. The next section provides the basics you need to know to navigate menus and select menu options. Following that, you can find out how to deal with a special category of menu screens, the Custom Functions.
Again, figures from this point forward show menus as they appear in Standard mode. See the preceding section if you need help switching from Guided to Standard menu display.
Here’s how to display menus and adjust the options on those menus:
❯❯ Opening and closing menus: Press the Menu button to display the menus; press again to exit the menu system and return to shooting. You also can just press the shutter button halfway and release it to exit to shooting mode.
❯❯ Understanding menu screens: Which menus and menu screens appear depends on the exposure mode, which you set by rotating the Mode dial on top of the camera. Things also change when you switch from still photography to Movie mode, which you accomplish by rotating the On/Off switch to the movie-camera symbol. Figure 1-11 shows a menu screen as it appears for normal photography in the advanced exposure modes (P, Tv, Av, and M).
However, the following menu elements are common to all exposure modes:
● Menu icons: Along the top of the screen, you see icons representing individual menus. In the advanced exposure modes, you get the five menus labeled in Figure 1-11: Shooting, Playback, Setup, Display Level Settings, and My Menu. The My Menu feature, which enables you to build a custom menu, isn’t available in other exposure modes.
● Menu page numbers: Some menus are multi-page (sometimes called tabs) affairs. The numbers under the menu icons represent the various pages of the current menu.
The highlighted menu icon marks the active menu; options on that menu appear automatically on the main part of the screen. In Figure 1-11, Shooting Menu 1 is active, for example.
❯❯ Selecting a menu or menu page: You have these options:
● Touch screen: Tap the menu icon to select that menu; tap a page number to display that page.
● Quick Control keys or Main dial: Press the right or left cross keys or rotate the Main dial to scroll through the menu icons. If you use this technique, you have to scroll through all pages of a menu to get to the neighboring menu.
● Q button: Press the Q button to cycle through menu icons.
❯❯ Select and adjust a menu setting: Again, you have a choice of techniques:
● Touch screen: Tap the menu item to display options for that setting. The current setting is highlighted; tap another setting to select it. On some screens, you see a Set icon; if it appears, tap that icon to lock in your selection and exit the settings screen.
● Quick Control dial, Quick Control keys, and Set button: Rotate the Quick Control dial or press the up or down Quick Control keys to highlight the menu setting and then press the Set button to display the available options for that setting. In most cases, you then use the Quick Control dial to highlight the desired option and press Set again. If you prefer, use the cross keys to highlight your preferred setting before pressing the Set button.
FIGURE 1-11:
