Lessons

Lesson Info

1:30 pm - Main Settings

All right, so continuing scrolling down in the setup men you were going to go through what's called the main settings, and these are general camera set ups, and I didn't mention this before, but most of the settings throughout this camera can be kind of grouped into three different categories. One things that you will never using you don't care about, and, frankly, there's a lot of those in all cameras number two settings that you're going to set once and be done with and that's what we're going to see a lot of in this grouping of maine settings, and the third type are settings that you're going to come back to on a regular basis and those of the ones that you need to pay the closest attention to so under main settings, these air things, they're going to set once and be done with first off, when you press the menu button, where does the menu start off? And a good place to be I like is where I was last at, so the previous setting is good, you go to the top, which is the very top of any ...

particular category that you were in, but I think previous is a good way to jump back to where you were just playing with the last setting function menu settings, this is where you get to go in and program your six favorite settings into the functions one, two, three, four, five and six category and so they from this from the start let me just go to my camera will quickly and take a look at the ones that they have programmed in I'll turn this on, so you want to get shot on it. So when I pressed the function button on this camera, we have the auto focus manual focus select I got a couple of them great out right now I can't get in to change the auto focus mode because I have something turned on dealing with auto focus like I may have the cameron manual focus white balance, mita ring and the picture effect I never would use the picture effect, so I would likely go in and re program that to something I thought felt was more useful. So a great way to go in and customize the camera for what you use on a regular basis, so you're six favorite setting next up is the movie button. There are some people who buy this camera that never want to shoot movies and they don't want to bump the button and shoot a movie so they could turn it off and you can turn it off if you want custom key settings here is where you get to go in and re program the a l button or the soft b but now there is a limit to the number of things that you can have these buttons do but when you go in here you will see a list of options on what you can put in there you could have it do auto exposure lock where it holds it or it toggles it you could have shooting tips come up you could select auto focus or manual focus you could choose different auto focus moz that would be pretty valuable you could go into object tracking where you could do face detection so those are some of the options that you'll see when you get in there so it's just mohr customizing of the camera next up is the beep I highly recommend you turn this off so you don't disturb your neighbors and alert your subjects something you might keep on just the very beginning just to see how the camera's working you're going to choose the language for the menu system next scrolling down and you know jim whenever I have the date in the camera I always try to predict what time will I get to this point in the class so here and you know today's a special day right jim I'm sure you're aware that today is eleven twelve thirteen eleven twelve thirteen correct I was estimating that I would be here at one forty five p m and it is actually one thirty eight pm close I'm seven minutes off so pretty close next up area setting this is just simply your time zone help guide display now we mentioned this when we first got into the menu setting because what happens when this has turned on as you get this big old screen that comes up in front that tells you a little bit of information, but what I found is not enough information about exactly what it does, but once you get used to it you're like, ok, I don't want to see this anymore turn it off and so once you get used to your menu system, you'll turn it off, but if you're a brand new to this camera and you're still trying to learn all the menu features you can leave it turned on for a little while. How quickly do you want the camera to power down and save power? Standard is fine on this is just a different level of saving power saving start time. How long does the camera go before it kicks into its power saving mode? One minute is standard you could make it shorter, you could make it longer lcd brightness how bright is the lcd on the back of the camera? I highly recommend leaving this in manual and just leaving it in the middle of the scale of options because you're I recommend leading this on the setting where the lcd mimics the actual exposure of the image and in that case you need that to be accurate you don't need it to be too bright or too dark and so that would be leaving it in the middle if you are trying to play images back and see how good they are under very bright conditions, you may need to try the sunny weather or you need to make up the brightness of the screen to help combat the brightness of the sun. We can also do the same type of exposure changes with the viewfinder brightness I have the recommend leaving this in manual and in the middle setting possible keeps growing down and we'll get to the display color. This just simply gives you a different option for the color of the menu system that you were working with wide image now I mentioned this before that when you shoot video the camera has a sixteen by nine aspect ratio and when you shoot still pictures you get the green frame on this image and then when you shoot videos you're getting of a yellow frame. If you would like to shoot video and use the entire area, what you want is you want to set wide image ged toe wide or full screen so it uses the entire sixteen by nine area playback display we have two options we have auto rotate in manual rotate the problem with auto rotate is that it turns your vertical images into smaller images with eye with manual rotate you do have to turn the camera, but you can see your image in a larger size on the lcd display, and I prefer seeing image as big as possible to judge sharpest, so I prefer manual rotate. If you're going to put your camera up to a hd tv, just leaving it in auto is going to work out fine, so that it automatically figures out the correct resolution for showing on the screen. If you want to use your tvs remote for going backwards and forwards through the slide show, you can turn the control for hd my on, if you never hook your camera to a tv, these last two really don't matter. If you're going to put your camera up to a computer, I would probably leave this in auto. It'll automatically figure out how to communicate with the computer so that you can download your images. It is a small chance that, depending on the computer system, you may need to go in there and change the usb connection to work. Next up is the cleaning mode and the way that you would normally have this is just cleaning it all the time during start up and shut down whenever the camera turns on or whenever the camera turns off. If you do want to go in and clean the sensor because of dust that just will not come off there's a couple of steps the first step is to use the air blower which he will use it you don't want to use the canned air this is similar but this is clean air that doesn't have any propellant in it which would damage your sensors. So this is the safe one to use and hopefully just blowing some condensed stars blowing some air in there is going to clean off the sensor if that doesn't work, not everyone is comfortable some people are comfortable going to going to step two, which is where you will use a special any clean swab with a couple drops of alcohol and you will wipe it across the sensor to clean off the dust because I say not everyone is comfortable doing this, but if you have something stuck on the sensor a little globular of something that is kind of the final step in cleaning it up all right getting towards the end folks hang in there the version this is the firmware version of the camera and right now my camera is version one point oh too if you are watching this in the future it might be one point three or one point oh for they sony occasionally will make upgrades to the firmware of cameras like all manufacturers d'oh and if you want to get the latest firmware for free, what you do is you go to sony dot com, you go to their support section in their electronics drivers and software. Go look for the model number of your camera, and you will see specifics about what firmware version is available. If there is a new version available for your camera, I recommend downloading it to your computer, transferring it to a memory card, putting the memory card in the camera and coming here into version where you can upload your new firm. Where there's more information at the sony website on the exact specifics, but that's the general idea, and so occasionally they're making updates to the software in the camera. There's little bug so patiently that happens with software, and this is how they can fix it and you can get it free of charge by just going to their web site. The demo mode is not something that's going to use my most people it's, kind of for people in trade shows. Initialize what happens here is the camera will, if you want, reset back to the factory defaults. And so if you want to reset everything that we have been doing over the last hour and a half, you could completely reset the camera. Which is what I did to make sure my camera was kind of clean and normal before starting this class. But once you get it set up, this is something that you do not want to d'oh and then we enter into an area dealing with the memory card and so working with the memory card section the memory card tool first option is format format is deleting all the pictures, all the file directory, all the ghost holders and re initializing a communication between the camera and the card. This is something that you should do on a regular basis. After downloading and backing up your images, the camera automatically assigns a file number to each and every photograph you shoot and it's in a siri's of numbers. You can reset the siri's if you want, but for most people I would just leave it in the siri's mode. The folder name the name of the folder that the pictures are going in, uh is done in there's a standard form. You can also put it in a date form. The standard form is fine. Most people never really deal with this, but you can go in and change it if necessary, you can select a different folder to shoot. If you want, you can create folders which is actually the next item down. You could create a folder for your business photos and a folder for your personal photos and then you could select which folder you want to record two and playback from aa lot of times I'll recommend just separate memory cards that way items are truly on separate places, but you can do it with one memory card if you want. I haven't had to do this on my camera, but occasionally if it gets confused and it gets lost, you can recover the image database if there's a technical problem with communication, possibly from not formatting the card frequently, if there's some ghost files on there that have confused it in some way, you could go into the recover image database and it would try to reconstruct and fix any problems that are in the camera. I hope you do not have to use this feature. Display cards face is pretty nice it'll just show you how many images and how each time you have left, given your current recording modes the final section we're going kind of speed by it's a lot of network settings for wifi w ps push stands for wifi protected system there's a lot of wifi systems that will have a push button so you can have automatic access very quickly you can go into control your access point sending c would manually register access points for cameras in wifi systems you can control the name of the device m a c is a media access control this is something that's going to be on I believe some tv so that you could wirelessly send from your camera to your tv if you're having problems and you want to reset the view on the smartphone you can reset it here as well as resetting the whole network settings what this is going to do is going to reset to the default settings so it kind of resets everything back to normal and everybody take a deep breath way finished the menu while there's a long list of stuff in there was a lot of items yeah s o my two bob's did ask about where you turn the wifi on and off and so the wifi turning it on was I had to download the play memories ap ok and then I had to go into that and so I'll do it on camera for you let me get my camera that would be helpful and I will hit the menu button and you got to go into the applications and you have to have this downloaded so that's kind of ah whole another step going to that will turn that on and now it's basically looking for my phone and if I go ahead and grab that back let's hold this up here it's got my number I'm going to go into my phone going to my settings on the phone where's my wife aya ppe here let's take a look and you'll see how it says direct a bunch of gobbledy glue in the x six here it is direct right here I got the check mark up here it's connected because I've already gone through the connection process I'm going to exit out of this and open my play memories app, which I have stored in here here's my play memories app, which I downloaded to my phone prior to this and it's connecting it's oh so speedy please wait they should have little music while we wait maybe and so it's working this is how you do it it's not working right now, but in theory it should be popping up does pop up well that right next to the wifi over here? Well, maybe while we're waiting, you could answer another question sharon checkable people were asking if you were to send out your sense or to be cleaned where would you suggest a local camera shop that has a repair facility or since equipment out for a repair? Great a lot of places do not do it in house and they'll have to send it out, which means it'll be gone for a couple of weeks right it's a simple process it only takes five minutes once you have to set up and everything there to clean it up and so I would highly I highly recommend investing in one of those rocket blowers so that you could do at least stage one yourself, right? Ok, perfect you know, I don't know that it's going to do it right now that's okay? Well, as you know, we're live on air let's rock with the operation let's go to the final section of this, which is operation so what are some things to think about? We've talked about all the things kind of in isolation, but now we're going to think about the big picture using this camera when you head out, get your battery charged make sure it's charged with that big long five hour charge you want a format your memory cards before you go out on an important shoot, make sure that you have the quality setting where you want it. Raw images fine quality j peg images if you've been playing around in the menu system, make sure you go in there and check that you have the right settings in there, and if you're going to go on a trip or someplace where you going to be away from camera stores in any place from cleaning your sensor, make sure you have a clean sensor and all you need to do is just shoot a white piece of paper f sixteen or f twenty two and zoom in check around to see if you have any dust on that sensor now, let's, take a look at what I consider to be the ten most operational, most important operational controls on the camera. Most of these deal with exposure, some of them deal with focusing and there's a few others thrown in there as well and here's how I recommend setting the camera up in what I call a super simple mode in this case, we're gonna have a rare setting of program. We're gonna let the camera choose shutter speeds and apertures because it does a pretty good job with us so you can put it in auto and the camera is picking all three parameters for you. You don't have a lot of say and you should get a pretty good general basic photos. I would leave the exposure compensation at zero and adjusted as necessary for subjects that are light or dark. The media ring system with multi works very, very good, and so I'm going to recommend that for just about everything with white balance auto white balance also works quite well, so you don't have to worry about it camel figure out the color of the light, a f s stands for single, which means the camera will focus on a subject and stop focusing once focus has been achieved, focus area multi looks over the entire frame and will focus on whatever is closest to you that often works with a lot of basic subjects won't work with more complex subjects, but it's a good, very, very simple program to have and then as far as the drive mode, just keeping the camera and single so that when you press down on the shutter release, it simply takes one picture at a time. This would be the simplest way I don't recommend somebody who's watched this entire class to leave the camera here, but if you're going toe hand your camera off to a friend to take pictures of this might be a very simple way to set it up. Let's say you're an old school film photographer, and you want to kind of set your camera the way you used to use a traditional manual camera. You might put your camera in manual, and your shutter speed and aperture is going to totally depend on the light value you might choose one hundred twenty fifth of a second, because that would do a pretty good job at stopping most people moving around. You might choose an aperture like f eight for the f eight and be their famous saying from the national geographic and your eyes, so maybe you're going to use a faster I also like s o four hundred with good old try x film. We don't use exposure compensation because we're in manual the meeting system of older cameras was center waited metering where it measured a predominant amount of its light in the middle or towards the middle of the frame white balance we're just gonna leave it in auto for this one focusing maybe we're going to go into manual focus and manually focus our lenses and as far as the drive mode maybe we'll put our camera on the continuous mode where we could shoot three frames per second for action that happens during the shot all right let's do something really and practical here a landscape photography so the idea here is that hopefully you're on a tripod or at least you're holding the camera very, very steady and we want to have a lot of things in focus, which is what a lot of landscape but not all of landscape photography is like but for this type of photo, how what I set the shot up, I definitely like to be in manual exposure because I'm going to shoot a number of pictures under similar lighting and I'm going toe not want those shutter speeds and apertures to change unless I dictate the change. The first and most important of those settings would be to keep a very low eso setting one hundred in the case of this camera, you're going to want a lot of depth of field at eleven of sixteen f twenty two it depends on the lens and depends on the subject, but f sixteen is a pretty good place to be shutter speed will not matter if you're on a tripod if your hand holding, you'll have to make sure that you are holding the camera steady enough for the given shutter speed that you have for me uttering I'm going to go back to multimedia ring, which looks over across the entire scene for light and averages. Everything does a great job with it. We'll leave white balance at auto and for focusing we're not shooting something that's continuously moving, so we'll leave the camera in a f s and for focus area. I like that flexible spot because we can have the camera locked down on a tripod and we can move that focusing point almost anywhere in the frame to choose exactly where we want to focus. The drive mode is either single and using, maybe a wireless release or using the ten second self timer that way we're not touching and moving the camera while we shoot pictures, so hopefully that makes sense to you. Next up, let's. Do some portrait photography what's important in portrait photography is number one having a fast enough shutter speed to stop the movement. Of our subject and many times we like to have very shallow depth of field, so that what's in the background is blurred and not as much a part of the picture as what are sharp subject is in this case, I like to shoot several pictures, and I want my shutter speeds and apertures to stay the same, so I'm going to choose manual exposure, and here the first most important thing for me is the's shallow depth of field. If you have a fast lens, lends it opens up and lets in a lot of light, like a one point four, you might want to shoot it at one point for two or two eight you're gonna want to shutter speed around one hundred twenty fifth of a second or faster so that you can stop the motion of your subject that is there in front of you and ideally, you would be at iast so one hundred you may need to bump it up higher in case you are in under low light conditions. I'm just fine with multimedia rings very good all around me during system I'm fine with auto white balance as long as my subject is not moving towards me or away from me f s single will be just fine so that you can focus and recompose. The flexible spot might also be good for choosing a different area that way you don't have to do the focus lock and recompose, you can simply move the focusing area off to the side and for the drive mode rather than single, I would go with continuous because expressions and gestures change very quickly and you're you're able to grab a bunch of pictures when the moment is just right next up will do action photography so two things they're important here one is a fast shutter speed for stopping the action, and the second is tracking the subject, the focusing of the subject as it moves towards or away from us in the frame. In these situations, I very much want to choose manual, so I have specific control over shutter speeds and apertures what's important here is a fast shutter speed one five hundredth of a second or faster is going to be necessary for a lot of action photography, sports photographers love lenses that open up and let in a lot of light. Two point eight is a very good lens to have for a lot of action photography, and while we know I saw one hundred is the best, you are undoubtedly going to need a higher eyes, so because you have chosen a higher shutter speed, so typically you'll be at I s o four hundred and under lower like conditions, you could be will up there into the thousands and tens of thousands of high I sell sixteen, thirty two, sixty, four hundred. If you start shooting indoor sports, for instance, we're going to leave the meeting at multi. We'll leave the white balance at auto, and the critical change here is on focus going to the continuous autofocus system. And so this is going to be able to track the movement and remember that the phase detection area of focusing is in the center of the frame that's, where your camera will be able to track that type of movement much better. And in the focusing area, flexible spot might be nice, but it might also be a little bit small, and so the multi area is going to look over a larger area and track that subject. As it moves around. You will need to fill the frame pretty much with your subjects. You'll have to be pretty close or have a pretty long lens on your subject to do it right, and the two options here are continuous and speed continuous priority remember that the continuous one will be able to track your subjects a little bit better and adjust exposure. At three frames per second, the speed priority will shoot at ten frames per second but is not able to make his many changes in between those shots, so it depends on the type of movement which one would be the best? All right, one more or actually a couple more for you here, maximum sharpness this is very similar to the landscape set up where you're working from a tripod, your carefully focusing and you're wanting to get the sharpest picture possible. I would want to be in manual exposure. I would definitely be in one hundred s o the aperture is it necessary to have a lot of depth of field? But you want to have the sitting somewhere in the middle to get the maximum sharpness of your lands? If you're on a tripod, the shutter speed won't matter if you are handheld, just be conscious of where your shutter speed is to make sure you're not getting any blur, we're going to keep the meter in at multi will keep the white balance at auto focusing single focus would work out quite well, although I will give a strong second nod to manually focusing in these situations, especially with that magnify feature I de mode earlier for focusing area I would go with the flexible spots you could choose exactly what you want to focus on and then as far as the drive mode you could do single shot if you have the wireless remote or you could do the ten second self timer so that you are not touching the camera in either of those cases which is very important so that your cameras not moving all right, the final recommendation, then this is a good way to end the class, which is just basic photography where you're not one hundred percent certain what your next photograph is going to be. All right, let's, use a little bit of automation here. So aperture priority, I think it's a great way to have your camera set up as it's sitting in the bag. Unbeknownst to what its next subject is going to be, have your aperture set to a reasonably wide open aperture for five six something in there would be a good call. I like to leave my camera at I s o one hundred so that I consciously have to think about raising it up to a higher I. So and that way I will remember to hopefully turn it back down to a lower I sell. Make sure your exposure compensation is at zero unless you are specifically wanting to make the picture brighter or darker than necessary. I think multimedia ring works great for these situations, as does auto white balance. Since most people are not normally photographing action, f s for single focus would be recommended and I do like that flexible spot for the more discerning careful photographer. They can really choose what they want to focus on, and I would probably leave it in the middle to start with and then for the drive mode, I would just leave it in the single shot mode so that you could take one careful shot at a time. So, folks with that I can say congratulations. I think that you are now a sony in e x six expert. Congratulations, s oh, let me throw in one question before we go. If I ask you about your final messages the n e x seven, yeah. Can you do any how closer they as far as a comparison? If somebody is watching this, it hasn't any x seven. A lot of it applies. The n e x seven has two dials on the top, plus the dial in the back. So it has three dials. This one has two, which just allows you more customization. It has twenty four megapixels compared to sixteen, which has no difference in the operation and handling of the camera. Okay, but it's, just more resolution, you get out of it. They've moved a few of the buttons around there's a few things that are it added or subtracted to the menus, but other than that it's pretty close