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Custom Settings: Pages 1-4

And we have finally made our way through the first tab. There we go. So now we are onto custom settings. And as I told you, I don't really know the difference between custom settings and camera settings. They all seem to be about the same thing to me. But we are into a different grouping now. Alright, so the first one is zebras here, and this is gonna show you areas of blown out highlights. So I'd like to give you a little demo with our camera here, so let's go ahead and get this turned on. I'm gonna put this into a manual exposure mode. And first off, I'm gonna dial in a reasonable exposure for what it looks like for our scene here in the studio. And then what I'm gonna do, is I'm gonna dive in, and I'm gonna go to page one, and zebras, and we can choose different levels of zebra, so how bright the brightest levels are. And I think, let's get a little bit wider angle, and you can see it changing in here as to how bright of levels that we're looking at. So I'm gonna leave it right abou...

t here at 90 for this, and watch what happens as I change the shutter speeds on the camera. Well let's see, come on. Okay, so why is that ... There we go, that's ... Maybe we have a limit as to how far we can go. Let's get our apertures involved here. And so you can see different areas that are blown out highlights. And so this is showing us a parameter of where these different areas are. So, the way I would use this in real life is, I would look at the zebras, and I would start going to a faster and faster shutter speed, until those zebras disappeared. And so if I want some detail in there, I'm gonna have to choose 250th of a second to make sure I'm not losing any of that highlight information. Now if I wanna go back into menu, and zebras, we can change that and go up to 100 now. And now let's see what sort of shutter speed. Now that shutter speed will turn off at 200th of a second. So it kind of depends on where you want that top end warning to be, because there are many people who will shoot, and they'll say, "Okay, it's okay to have a few blown out highlights," were it at a certain level. Maybe they're not blown out, but they're at 90% or 95%. And so this is typically used by people shooting video, but it can be used for shooting stills as well. And so that is zebras. Next up is manual focus assist, and so this is something that I have kind of turned on and off in the background here as we've been doing the class. And let me check to make sure my camera is on right now. And so let's just do another little demo on camera, we've got the time. So I'm gonna put my camera into a manual focus mode. And so let's go in and change it to manual focus. And so now, oh, I can still those zebras on. I wanna turn those zebras off here, pardon me for just a moment. Okay, zebras are off now. And so now I do have focusing magnification turned on. Yep, I just wanted to double check it's on. So if I'm trying to focus on something there in the distance, it automatically zooms in so that I can see if I'm focusing, let me get this pointed at our cameras here properly, so I can see if I'm focusing properly or not. Now I can hit the center button here, and that'll take me in even closer, to see if I'm focusing. And so I'll press the shutter release to back it off. With this particular lens, I've got the little power zoom on the side so I can zoom in. Now I'm gonna focus, and it automatically jumps in, so that I can focus. If I wanna redirect, I just use the up-down, and we can choose different things to focus on. And I'm just focusing by wire turning the lens. Now some people don't like that. Let me go ahead and turn it off and show you the difference. Turning it off. And so now when I manually focus, it doesn't zoom in. And it's a little bit harder to see the detail of focusing, but there are other reasons why we might wanna do this, one of which lies just ahead. So stay tuned for more information on this one. So that's just, do you want the camera to automatically zoom in when you are manually focusing? Focus magnification time deals with how long that camera is gonna be zoomed in. Either two seconds, five seconds, or it stays on as long as you want, and you can turn it off by pressing the shutter release halfway down. And I prefer no limit. That way it gives me as much time to focus, because sometimes it takes you a while to get the right focus. Autofocus in focus magnification. And so this allows you to autofocus while you are magnifying the image. And so if you do turn the magnification, which is something we turned on earlier, does it allow the camera to autofocus, which in most cases it seems to be a good idea to allow it to do that. Grid lines will simply give you some framing guidelines, either for alignment purposes, or for architectural photography, or keeping the horizon level, or figuring out exactly where the center point is. These can be helpful in composition. In general, I prefer to have the cleanest, most uncluttered view of my subject, and so it's something I by default leave turned off, but I will turn on when I need from time to time. So, marker display has two parts that we're gonna be talking about. This first part is just simply whether you want this turned on or off. And normally, you're gonna leave it turned off. This is for shooting video, as you can see by the video icon. But hold onto things, because we gotta go to the next page to figure out the second half of this stuff. And so the first one was turning it on and off, and this marker settings on page two, is which marker settings do you want to see? You have a center point, and then you have a variety of crops, depending on what your final crop is gonna be. We have safety zones, as well as general guidelines. And once again, this is all only going to be visible when you are shooting movies, or have the camera in the movie mode. And so very good for people who are trying to achieve a very certain crop with their final film production in shooting with this camera. Audio level display. Do you wanna be able to see this in the viewfinder, both through the viewfinder and the back LCD? And so if you're monitoring sounds, and you wanna make checks on it while you are shooting, this is something you would probably wanna have activated. If you're shooting casual video, it's probably not as important. Auto review deals with still images, and when you take a photo, do you want to see that photo right away? And for a lot of people, they take a photo and they wanna see how it came out. And so they're gonna have it up there for two seconds. I have found, coming from the world of SLR's into the world of mirrorless, that you don't need to have a review of your images in a mirrorless camera. Because when you shoot the camera, you're getting a preview. You're getting a digital preview of what your image is going to be. So if you wanna judge exposure or white balance, you're gonna see exactly what's going on. And so if you wanna save a little bit of time, and speed up the shot to shot process, you can turn off the auto review, and you can just simply press playback on those few times that you do really wanna go back and see that image. But if you're shooting a lot of pictures very quickly, I would just turn this off, because it's gonna speed up that process of viewing for the next image. The display button. So when you press the display button, as you recall, we were able to go through and see several different screens of information. If you find one or more of these screens not helpful, and you just don't even wanna bother to cycle through it, you can uncheck the box right here. I have kind of found use for most all of them, so I kind of keep them all checked to start with, but if you find that you just really don't need to look at one of them, I would definitely go in and uncheck it, so you don't have to bother looking about it. And so you'll be able to make these changes, both for the monitor, and for the finder. You can adjust exactly which ones you see in each of those different places. Next up is the peaking level, and this is gonna help for anybody who wants to do manual focusing. And so, we're gonna have the option of turning this on at different levels, and then we're gonna also, let's go the next item on the list, we can change the color of it as well. And where's our colors? There's our colors. Red, yellow, white. And so we're gonna do a little demo here in class. Let me grab a prop over here, so that we have something in the foreground, and something in the background. And we're gonna get our camera set on wide angle. Well first off, let's go ahead and turn this on. And so let me get my camera back here. So, we need to get into the menu system. And where are we? We are on peaking. So we're gonna turn it on. Oops. Ah, I'm used to a different camera's menu system here. Press the center button. Let's go in, let's set this at mid level. So we know we could go lower, or we could go higher. We could change the color. White is where a lot of people keep it, but we'll make it really visible so it's at red. And, actually let's see if we're gonna do this out in front. So now let's take a look at our scene. And so, you can see we've got my recommended settings right here. And, oh, I'm gonna do one more thing. I'm gonna get myself into manual focus, which I already am, which is good. And let's do a little manual focusing. And so, let me actually change this into ... I'm not sure if this is totally gonna make a difference, but let's get this set here. So, let's zoom in just a little bit. And you can see in red, with outlines, where the camera is focusing. And let's focus down on that paper. This is really clear down here. And so you can see, as I focus, without the magnifications, so we have the magnification turned off, and you could have it turned on, but I can see that highlight shimmering in red, which is where the camera is focusing. And so this is a great way for manual focusing without going in to magnify, so you can see the entire scene. Now it seems a bit strong here, so let's just power this down a little bit to low level, just to see how much difference that makes. And so the red's not that much difference. And so it's a little less intense here. Most people would choose white, so let's go ahead and change it down to white. And this shimmers everything in focus in white. And so let's get the background involved here a little bit and see if we can focus from foreground, all the way into the background, and you can see that little shimmer around the cameras in the background there? That means it's in focus. And so, great way for doing a confirmation that you have manually focused in the right area. I'm gonna leave it turned off. It's very effective, but I find it a little annoying when you're not wanting to use it. And so it's something that you'll turn on and off according to your needs. And a word of warning from some people who have used it, is that it is pretty accurate, but sometimes not super, super accurate. And so if you want greater accuracy, I'd probably recommend the focus magnification, where it zooms in roughly six or 12 times, for the greatest sharpness, in checking those types of shots. Okay, moving on. Page three custom menus. Exposure set guide. And so if you recall earlier, when we were doing our manual settings, there was this extra guide that showed us shutter speeds and apertures. And this took up space in the viewfinder. And it is all clearly labeled one line below it. And so I really don't like cluttering up the image area with information that is already someplace else in the frame, so my recommendation is turning that off, because we just don't need it. Live view display. This is something I talked a little bit about earlier. Do you want the image that you see when you look through the viewfinder, or on the back of the camera, to mimic what your final photo is going to look like? For most of us, I think it's a good thing, because you can judge if your photo is gonna be overexposed, underexposed, whether you've chosen the right white balance. The main group of people that would wanna turn this off, is anybody that is using this with flash photography. If you're in the studio. If you have a flash attached to the camera, you're probably gonna wanna turn this off, so that it gives you the best image possible through the viewfinder, no matter what your final exposure is going to be. AF auto area clear. When you leave this mode off, it shows you a green box of where the camera has focused. If you wanna clear the area, it'll focus on your subject, and then the green box will disappear, and will no longer be on your subject. As much as I do like a clean and uncluttered viewfinder, I do like to know where my camera has focus, and what it has locked onto, because sometimes the viewfinders are just not sharp enough for me to see it with my own eyes. And so I think this is handy to leave this turned on. It's the normal state that it would be when you get the camera. Display continuous autofocus area. And so when you do the continuous autofocus, we had Kenna doing the tracking movement back and forth, and so what this does is it has little green boxes that shows you where the camera is currently focusing. And if those boxes disturb you, you don't like them, you can turn them off here, but I think it's very helpful to confirm that the camera is focusing properly. Pre-autofocus is where the camera will focus, even before you press down on the shutter release. And this might help you get focus a little bit quicker, but it's also a little bit annoying that the camera is trying to focus when you could just be having the camera around your shoulder, held off to the side. It's turned on, but you're not actively using it. And so this is something for battery consumption reasons, I would recommend leaving turned off. Zoom setting on this camera. This is only going to work with certain types of lenses on this. Or actually no, I'm sorry about this. This is a Sony system, and Sony is very fond of digitally manipulating images, if they can ever get in there and do it. And they have a couple of options for digital zooming, and I know we talked about one before, but they have a couple of more in here. And what it does is it makes, it blows the image up, and you have to be shooting, like on a large JPEG, and it makes a medium JPEG with more telephoto. And it is all things that you can totally do yourself, by simply cropping an image and enlarging it. And so this is not gonna have really an effect on anyone shooting raw. It's only gonna be on JPEG. It gives you a smaller file, but it's a closer up look. And so it's something that I would completely avoid. And so only use the optical zoom, so that you get the best quality image possible. Alright, we have an eye-start system, but you need to be using one of these special mount adapters, which are designed for people using the older A mount lenses with this camera. And so when you hold your camera up to the eye of the viewfinder, the camera would start to do a pre-focus for you. And so, very few people are gonna be using that, because just not that many people have these adapters. I would probably leave this turned off, and just use the shutter release for activating focus so that you're not wasting too much battery power. The finder and monitor switch. Determining which one of the view systems you wanna use. The monitor on the back, or the EVF. Normally, people like auto, where you will hold the camera up to your eye, and it will automatically switch to the EVF. If you wanna be able to manually make a change, you can do so by selecting either the viewfinder or the monitor here. You can select this and have this used on one of the custom buttons. So for instance, on the C1 button on the top of the camera, that could be the button that switches back and forth between the EVF, and the monitor in the back of the camera if you don't like the auto system. The complaint that I have, and some other people have about the auto system, is that anytime something comes close to the back of the camera, the camera switches over to the EVF in the camera, because it assumes you're holding it up to your eye. And so anytime you wave your hand by the camera, the image on the back of the camera disappears. And so there could be some very good reasons why you would wanna use this in a more manual mode. There, let's see, next up, finder frame rate. And so in the viewfinder, how fast is the refresh of the viewfinder? And you would think 120 frames per second would be better, because it's a faster frame rate, and that is true. And if you are shooting really fast action, it might be good for 120 frames a second. But, there is a downside to 120 frames per second, and that the viewfinder actually has lower resolution. And so it's not as sharp. And so for people who are photographing static subjects, subjects that are not moving too quickly, you will actually get greater resolution with the slower frame rate. And since that's the majority of most peoples' photography, that's where I think it should be set at. But if you are shooting sports and action, you might wanna try the 120 frames per second, to see if it's easier to see your subject. If you were to have this camera without a lens, perhaps you have one of the aftermarket adapters that does not have the electronics on it, and you were still wanting to fire the camera, you could enable it. And so this is designed for people who might be hooking this camera up to a telescope, or as I say, some sort of aftermarket adapter that doesn't have the electronic connection. Normally what happens is, when you take the lens off, the camera will not allow you to fire a photo. And that's basically for safety reasons. If something gets in and nearby the sensor, that's where the shutter blades are moving back and forth. You put your finger in, touch the sensor, press the shutter release, and you'll ruin your shutter. And so this is just a safety protocol so that you don't damage the camera. Same thing goes without a card. If you have forgotten to put a card in the camera, do you want to be able to shoot photos? Most people are gonna wanna have this disabled, so the camera will not fire. The reason that you can enable this, is if you were in a camera store, and you wanted to demonstrate what the shutter sounds like, and what it feels like to shoot with the camera, even though there is no memory card in the camera. Alright, fantastic. Well we do have a couple of questions that have come in online John, from again, from this past segment. One goes back to, Ron Croft had asked, does the wireless remote commander work only from the lens side of the camera? Yes, because right in front of the camera is where that sensor is, you have to be very careful. Now, if you were on the backside of it, I suppose you could put a mirror, and bounce that light around. If there was a wall very nearby, it might bounce off of that wall, but the wireless commander is an infrared remote, kind of like the TV remote a lot of people have, so it's limited in its distance, limited in its brightness, under bright conditions, and it is very directional. You do have to be pointing it at the camera. Yeah John, I'm just going to ask the distance away from the camera you can be, but I think you answered it. It's probably around 20 feet. Alright thanks. Great. This question is from Sayid who says, can spot metering mode can be moved on the side, or stay in the center? Can we move both flexible spot focus, and spot metering mode? Well, that one I'm not totally sure on, so let's do an experiment. Okay. So, we know that in our studio here, we have, let's ... Do I have this on manual focus? I need to get this back on autofocus, first off. And I'm gonna zoom in a little bit. And so we know that we have a white wall and a black wall over there, and let me let my camera focus here a little bit. And so I'm gonna go into my function. I'm gonna look for my metering, which is down here on the left. And I'm gonna select it into the spot metering. And so I have things centered up in the middle pretty much. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna leave it in aperture priority, and as in our little test, what we wanna look at is the shutter speed. And does the shutter speed change? So if I go over to the right, it's at an 80th of a second. And if I go over here in the black, it's still, actually you know what? I am gonna fix one little thing here, and that is, I actually do want this in manual focus, so that we aren't dealing with focusing in any way. And so let me double check. I do have it in the metering of spot. Okay, so so far, so I point it ... Sorry about the reflection there. And you know what? Having auto ISO enabled is not helping us folks. Okay. So we're at a 30th of a second. And we go over here, where it's pretty dark, and we're down at .6. So it's clearly measuring that light in that middle circle right there. So we're gonna put that middle circle right over the middle there. Now I am gonna go in, and I'm gonna put it back into autofocus. Right there. And we'll just go with single. And then we're gonna have to go back, and I wanna choose a small focusing point, right there. Okay, so the question is, is what is our shutter speed? And does our shutter speed change when I come over to focus over here? And it doesn't look like it's changing. And so, spot metering is not linked to focusing. And so spot is only going to be in the middle. And so, a lot of people prefer to have it match where they're focusing. This camera does not do that.