Pressing the MENU button in CSM mode displays the record menu which
displays overlaid on the live scene preview. The menu system is
essentially the same as the 995, except that the SETUP menu now
has a separate position on the mode dial.
The menu is split over two "pages" which can be accessed
by pressing MENU, cursor off the page (press left) and cursor down,
or simply scrolling down to the bottom of one page and onto the
next. * Cursor refers to the 4-way direction pad.
For clarity the menus below were captured with a black background, normally
the live scene preview would be visible behind the menu. Much of what
you'll see below is identical to the 995.
Record Menu: Page One
White Balance
The 885's White Balance menu allows you to select from Auto white balance,
one of the five pre-programmed white balance settings as well as custom
white balance preset. Rolling the command wheel with a pre-programmed
white balance highlighted allows you to fine tune the white balance by
7 levels (+/-3) for fluorescent white balance you can choose from one
of three tube types.
Select white balance
Fine tuning Fine (daylight)
white balance
Kudos to Nikon for not skimping on white balance, one of the most important
factors in quality digital photography and often overlooked by many manufacturers.
The ability to fine-tune the pre-programmed white balance settings, this
is especially useful for mapping to the lights most commonly used in your
environment.
Metering
Select metering mode:
•
Matrix (256-segment matrix metering)
•
Spot (meters only a small central portion
of the image as indicated on the LCD preview)
•
Center-Weighted (meters the entire frame
but weights 80% to the central quarter)
•
Spot AF Area (spot meters only in the selected
AF Area - works for manually or automatically selected AF areas).
Again, an excellent range of metering options, Nikon's 256-segment matrix
metering produces consistent accurate and well "measured" (slightly
underexposing where appropriate) exposures. It's so good you can't even
fool it with strong backlight. Spot AF area metering is especially useful
if you wish to take a spot meter from the same area of the frame as focusing.
Continuous
Select one of four
continuous shooting modes:
•
Single
•
Continuous (shoots as many full size shots
as possible - about 1.5fps, max 5 frames)
•
Multi-shot 16 (sixteen 512 x 384 images
onto a full frame image)
•
VGA Sequence (640 x 480 at about 2fps,
max 44 frames - NORMAL quality)
•
Ultra HS (320 x 240 at very high speed
30fps - each batch saved into its own folder)
Best Shot Selection
Enables or disables Best-Shot Selection mode. In this mode the
camera shoots continuously as long as the shutter release button
is held down (for a maximum of 10 images) then selects the sharpest
image and saves this to the CF card.
The flash cannot be used in conjunction with BSS
Image Adjustment
Enables in-camera
post-processing filters which adjust the brightness and contrast of
the image after it's taken but before it's written to the CF card.
•
Auto - Camera automatically chooses an
image adjustment
•
More / Less Contrast - adjust contrast
•
Lighten / Darken Image - adjust brightness
Image Sharpening
This option gives
you control over the cameras sharpening algorithm which is applied
before the image is saved.
•
Auto - camera automatically selects sharpening
setting based on scene content and other settings.
•
High - sets sharpening to High
•
Normal - sets sharpening to Normal
•
Low - sets sharpening to Low
•
Off- disables in-camera sharpening
Lens
Switches the camera into special modes depending on the optional
lens attachment used. Each of these modes is intended to work with
Nikon Coolpix lenses. Additionally there's now support for Nikon's
own Slide Copy adapter.
Details of these optional lenses can be found in
the Nikon Accessories section of this review.
