User presets C1 and C2 on the 50d

Previously I wrote about how setting your camera to f4, 1/60s and ISO 800 was a good place to start with indoor flash photography when you don't have time to set the camera up properly.  Well, you can program all of these settings in to one of two modes on the dial which you use to select M, Tv and Av modes normally.

I set the camera up the way I wanted and then hit the menu button.  In there I found the Camera User Presets option.  I selected the Register option and then chose which dial mode I wanted to assign my settings to (c1 or c2).

You can set up a lot of things in addition to the ISO, shutter speed and aperture values.

The idea of doing this is so that when I am in a hurry I can quickly dial in C1 for flash photography and have my camera be set to Manual mode, f/4 aperture, 1/60s shutter speed and ISO 800 along with all of my other usual settings.

I have set up C2 for HDR photography.  C2 puts my camera in to motor drive mode, enables automatic exposure bracketing (+1 and -1), and puts the camera in to Av mode.

The attached video from YouTube explain this better.