How do you use presets in the D300?

[Caseycrussell]

I just bought a Nikon D300, but I'm not sure how presets are used. It seems that if you are setting presets for exposure, light, etc are only good for that particular time/place when the exposure is made. Can someone share with me how they use presets?

[jdepould]

The presets aren't really for exposure, they're for menu settings, autofocus preferences, motor drive speeds, auto-ISO settings, stuff like that. I have two custom menu presets: normal and sports, and three shooting presets: normal, sports and 14-bit studio.

The default for normal is 14-bit lossless NEF, active D-lighting low, auto-ISO on with shutter minimum at 1/60 and max ISO at 6400 (1600 on the D300). The sports mode has a few motor drive and autofocus tweaks, and defaults to 12-bit lossless NEF with auto-ISO and active D-light off. The studio mode is similar to normal mode, but with auto-ISO and active D-light off, and tripod mode for live view. Before I started using 4GB UDMA cards, normal was 12-bit capture.