If we go straight into this at the very top of the Nikon D3400 setup menu, you have got the RESET THE SETUP OPTIONS which will reset all the options in this setup menu. It is an option if you need to change everything in it. The one further down below that is FORMAT MEMORY CARD. You should format the memory card when you first put it into the camera. It is also worth reformatting it occasionally, particularly after you have downloaded a lot of pictures. It essentially resets the card and formats the card so that it is appropriate for this camera. The thing to remember is that when you format the card you delete everything, so please make sure that you have taken off and removed everything that you want and put it onto a different hard disk or a computer somewhere.
The one below that on the D3400 setup menu is reolink camera date stamp which allows you to put a little date stamp at the bottom of each of your pictures. It is an option which I do not take advantage of, but should you wish to that is what it is for. Then you have got TIME ZONE AND DATE, which you should have put in when you switched on the camera initially or when you set it up. This gives you the option to change the time zone and date and if you change time zone also you get the option to change that when you are in SNAPBRIDGE. When you connect to a mobile device or a tablet you get the option to synchronize the two so that is another way of setting the time and date. Below that is LANGUAGE. Again you will have dealt with this when you switch the camera on for the first time but you can change the language here should you wish to.
MONITOR BRIGHTNESS can be very useful if you know that you are going somewhere that is very dark and you do not want the brightness of the screen to either distract you or others, say for example you might be going to the theater and then you can turn the monitor brightness down. Likewise if you are going somewhere that you know will be very bright and you think that the screen needs to be brighter, so that you can see what is on it then you can turn it up. It is a useful option for those circumstances but in most cases the brightness left at zero is perfectly satisfactory.
The INFO DISPLAY FORMAT in the D3400 setup menu is about how the information, in terms of the shutter speed and the aperture etc, is displayed on the back of the camera. Basically there are six options. You can either have what is called a classic display, where the shutter speed and the aperture or shown in terms of numbers, or you can have it as a graphic display where they are shown as the dials turning around. It is entirely up to you and makes no difference – the same information is available to you in both circumstances so there is no issue really in far as that is concerned. Below that is the AUTO INFO DISPLAY and if it is switched on it means that when you press the shutter halfway down, the information will display on the back screen.
Below the auto info display option in the D3400 setup menu is the AUTO-OFF TIMER. The camera will automatically switch itself off in order to save battery power. That can be quite frustrating sometimes and this option gives you the choice of how long the camera will wait in certain settings before it switches itself off. There are four options here: short, normal, long and custom. I would recommend that you take a look at custom and the reason for that is that it allows you to set the times that are preferential to you for some of the specific options here. For the playback menus I have it on five minutes, the image review which is the image showing up on the back of the screen once you have taken it, is four seconds. Liveview I have for five minutes and the stand by timer – when the camera isn’t doing anything in particular but is just switched on, is down to one minute because I do not want it draining any more battery than that if I have accidentally left it doing nothing. Those are the options that I use.