Nikon D600 For Dummies

Exploring External Camera Controls

Scattered across your camera's exterior are buttons, dials, and switches that you use to change picture-taking settings, review and edit your photos, and perform various other operations. In later chapters, I discuss all your camera's functions in detail and provide the exact steps to follow to access them. This section provides just a basic road map to the external controls plus a quick introduction to each.

One note before you move on: Many of the buttons perform multiple functions and so have multiple “official” names. I think that's a little confusing, so I always refer to each button by the first moniker you see in the lists here. And to avoid any confusion over which button I'm referencing, a tiny picture of the button appears in the margin.

Topside controls

Your virtual tour begins with the bird's-eye view shown in Figure 1-21:

Figure 1-21: Press and hold the Mode dial unlock button before rotating the dial.

• Control panel: You can view many picture-taking settings on this LCD panel. See the earlier section “Decoding the Displays” for more info.
• On/Off switch and shutter button: Okay, I'm pretty sure you already figured out this combo button. Just remember that you can illuminate the Control panel by rotating the On/Off switch past the On ...