Canon 30D - Manual (Page 33)

Page 33 of 35 © Ken Rockwell 2006
WRENCH MENU
You get to the Wrench menu by pressing MENU and spinning the big dial, or
pressing MENU and then JUMP. The 30D needs to be awake to respond to
the MENU button. Tap the shutter button if the 30D has fallen asleep, which it
does after a minute idle.
Auto Power Off sets how long the 30D stays awake before going to sleep. I
find the default of 1 minute is fine. The OFF setting is a double-negative, if
you choose OFF for Auto Power Off, the 30D stays on until you turn it off or
the battery dies.
Auto Rotate adds flags to vertical images so they look vertical on most
playback software. it doesn't actually rotate the images, and not all software
will see the flags. I prefer to leave this off and rotate the images later in iView
(Action > JPEG Rotate), unless I'm shooting a zillion images at a party. If you
leave this on and the camera gets a few wrong, you can fix it in the playback
menu's Rotate option.
LCD Brightness changes the brightness of the LCD backlight. See more at
LCD Comparisons. I usually leave this cranked all the way up, not at it's much
dimmer default.
Date/Time sets both.
File Numbering lets new files made on a fresh card start off where the last
file numbers left off. Leave this at its default of Continuous. Auto Reset is bad.
If you use Auto Reset then each card or reformat will probably start at file
IMG_0001.JPG again, which means over time you'll have a hundred files all
called IMG_0001.JPG. This wreaks havoc later if you want to put them in the
same folder or use them on the same web page. Beware, just leave this alone
at Continuous. If you do, it will keep counting up until you get to file
IMG_9999.JPG before it resets to IMG_0001.JPG.
Language lets you set the 30D to Swedish. For fun, try setting it to Korean
and see if you can get it back to English!
Video System controls the TV output. Leave it at NTSC for the USA and
Japan, and PAL in Europe. I never use the TV output. TV is much lower
resolution and looks bad.
Communication: I leave this at Print/PC.
Unfortunately, no setting will make the 30D appear as an external hard drive,
which most other brands like Casio and Nikon do. Because of this, you have
to load software to get your images out of the camera, making it a pain if you
travel and want to borrow a computer. Nikon and Casio cameras pop right up
as external USB drives, making it trivial to transfer files to and from these
cameras.