Lessons

Lesson Info

Camera Settings 1: Pages 4-6

So here on page four is where we can register menu settings. I thought it'd be fun to do a little demo in here. So we're going to register some setting in here. Let's take a look at the camera. And we're gonna get the camera set up in a couple different ways. Let's start with kind of a simplistic mode. Let's go with Aperture Priority. So I put the camera in Aperture Priority on the top. Now I'm gonna go in, and I'm gonna change some function things. This is gonna be good general photography. So I'm gonna go with single shot. Let's go up to single focus aid and let's just change a couple more things in here. Let's change the focus area to wide zone, just kind of everything. And let's do one more setting in here. Let's change it to ISO 200. Opps going the wrong direction. 200 right there, set that set in there. So what I'm gonna do know is I'm gonna hit menu, and I'm gonna come to page four. We're gonna go in here and we're gonna memorize this into position number one. I can chose one, t...

wo, or any one of these other ones here. We can see some of the setting that I made. I put it in Aperture Priority, ISO 200. Let see, what else do we have in here? We have the Focus Aid, AF-S, the wide area, and then it says down at the bottom Enter here. So I'll just hit Enter and that's locked into number one. So now I'm gonna set the camera up differently for number two. In this case I'm gonna turn the dial to manual and now I'm gonna set a specific shutter speed. We'll go 125th of a second. We'll shoot this at F4. We gonna do an ISO of 800. 800 looks pretty good in here. We 're gonna change our drive system to high-speed motor drive. We're gonna change AF-S to AF-C. And let's call it good there. So now I'm gonna go into the menu system. Gonna hit the center button here and we're gonna lock this into number two. And I'm gonna press Enter right in here. Now if I go back to the previous page where I have the recall settings. I think I need to flip this up to number one or number two to get access in there. Let's just put it on number one for right now. And let's see what sort of setting we have in here. Let's change the display so we can a little bit more clearly So now it's in Aperture Priority and ISO 200, AF-S with wide area focus aid. And that's because I'm in number one. If I switch this to number two, Memory Recall number two, press down on the shutter release, get the display showing our screen here, now we're in manual at 125th of a second, F4, ISO 800. Where's the 800? There it is right there. We said continuous and so thing change very, very quickly. You can see over here, I'm in number two. It has a little number two right over there. And in the menu settings, I can come in here and I could also have one stored in two, three, and four. You can see that I don't have any file in there right now. This is where number two is and it says number two there 'cause that's number two on the top. If I change this to one. Let's hit the menu again and it should say number one and then M one, two, three, four, five. And so if you have setting that you normally do, let's say like occasionally you photograph some sort of product photography. Jewelry or wrenches or who knows what. You can sent that as M4, you know something you do on a monthly basis, not very often. And then everything would be set up exactly as you want it set. So if you shoot anything on a regular basis, highly recommend trying to use those and just save yourself some time. And making sure that all your settings are exactly where you want them to be for a particular type of photography. Okay, next up, next page. Page 5, things dealing with Auto Focus focus mode. Third time we've seen this. Single-shot's pretty good from general shooting. Continuous for action, DMF if you like to be able to directly manually focus your lens after it auto-focuses. Priority Set in AF-S. Alright. In AF-S mode, the camera achieves focus and then will allow you to shoot which means that it kinda focuses the most important thing. You can change this to release which means it will try to focus but if can't it will just let you shoot a photograph. On Balanced Emphasis, it tries really hard to focus, but it still allows you to shoot. And you know what, I have not really played around with this too much, so I'm gonna do that right now here in class, just because I think we have a little bit of extra time. So I'm gonna put my camera in Aperture Priority. And let's make this challenging to focus on. So I'm gonna focus on something pretty close to the camera, right in here. With this mode, around page five, Balance Emphasis. With it set to Auto Focus, the camera really wants to be in Auto Focus and I better make sure I have it in the right focusing mode. So let's change this to single, that's important. And let's change it, I'm just gonna go with center, just to keep it really simple. So in here, it has to focus. And if I was to bring this camera too close, the camera will not let me shoot a photo. So let's just see, what's just a little out of range? I think this is just out of range right here. It just won't let me shoot a photo. Which means the Auto Focus has priority. Let me move this back just a smidgen. (camera shutter) Press down and it can shoot. Alright, let's get it out of the Drive Mode. Let's go back and change it into Release Mode here. So here, the camera doesn't care, it allows me to shot a photo, it's out of focus. Now it will try to focus, but if for some reason it can't, let's more it closer to where it can't, it's still gonna shoot a photo. Now let's see what Balance does. Balance Emphasis, it will let me shoot. It tries a little bit harder. That's what I think it's trying to do. It's trying a little bit harder. Let's move this back over here. (camera shutter) And I'm gonna move this to the background. And so if I press down, just jam down, wait a minute. ahh it's focusing on me. Alright, so if I just jam down, it may or may not capture that in focus. And so it tries a little bit harder, so it looks like it did a pretty good job. Balance Emphasis seems to do a pretty good job. So that's what I'm recommending for now. Now we have the same sort of options when it's in the Continuous Mode. If you really wanted to make sure things were in focus, you could put it in AF, that warning that goes with that is that camera may get a little fussy in trying to get focus and you're going to miss a lot of shots. So if you do a lot of sports photography, Balanced Emphasis or possibly even the Release Mode, to where the camera will shoot no matter what in that case. It will try to focus, but it's gonna shoot no matter what. Focus Area is something that we've dealt with before. This is the Wide-Zone center and the Flexible Spot options. Those options will vary a little bit as to whether you have the camera set to the AF-S or the AF-C setting. Alright, the AF Illuminator, if you recall, is the little light on the front of the camera. And this is the type of thing that only helps you out for things that are very close in front of the camera. It's distracting for subjects. It's a light that gets shined onto your other subjects, so if there's other people photographing at the same time, it could get in their way. And so this is the type of thing that just doesn't do a lot of good and I like leaving turned off to be a little bit more discreet. Center Lock-on AF. So this is kind of a feature that has been a hold-over from previous cameras from Sony. I'm gonna do a little demo here. This one's a little bit complicated. And actually, Drew, I may need some help on this one here in just a moment, we'll see here. Let me get this set up on the camera. In order to get this set up, I'm gonna leave it in Aperture Priority The focusing system is very important to have set up right on this. I'm gonna set this into AF-C, continuous mode. For the bracket area that I'm gonna be choosing, let's choose something like a large bracket. Medium, large size spot. With this right now, I don't have it on the Lock-on Focusing so it's not going to track a subject moving back and forth. So I'm gonna program the C3 button here as this special mode which is called Center Lock AF. So remember that name as we come down to button programming which I believe is in the next set of menus, eight or nine. In the shooting mode I'm going to reprogram number three into this Center Lock AF, good it's close by right there, Center Lock AF. Drew if I could have you come up and stand in front of the prop table here. What I'm going to need to do is, so this is focusing, and take a step to your left and then take a step to your right. Let me zoom in a little bit closer. Stay still, okay. Actually let me double check one thing on the camera. I wanna see that we are in AF-C. Here's kinda the key thing folks, is that I do not have this in the Lock-on position right now, so this something a little bit different. When I press the C3 button, I can then press the center button and let's see, did I get this right? C3, now I gotta turn this on. This is a very awkward feature to use. I gotta turn it on, I'm gonna hit Enter, and now it tracks the nearest subject. So I'm gonna press halfway down on the shutter release. Okay, now take a step to your left Drew, and a step to your right, and it's not doing it because it's only looking there, so I think I made a mistake folks. Let me correct for this. And I am gonna go down to Lock-on and I'm gonna choose the same large spot. Alright, so now I gotta press C3 to turn this feature on. Wait a minute, it worked in practice. I'm gonna have to try this again. I think it may not work in there. Let's try the zone, and so now if I hit the C3, I gotta turn this on, hit the Enter button. Okay, now I remember. I gotta press the center button. Now move a step to your left, step to your right, come towards me, do the hokie pokie. Just kinda do a little circle there. You can see how it's tracking, but I have to hold my thumb down here. If I take my thumb off, okay, good now it's tracking, so now move back, and it's tracking him moving around. This is very good for shooting video. So if I at any point I want to come in and shoot a photo, I can shoot a photo and he's in focus. So that is able to track the movement back and forth without pressing down on the shutter release. It's an interesting mode, it doesn't work for everything. For most people, just going into the focusing system. And actually we've got this still turned on, so let's turn this off. Thank you Drew, you can sit down. Round of applause for Drew. Round of applause at home. Tons of people are clapping for you all around the world. Most of the time I would be using the normal walk-on option. It is something different that works for different types of shooting situations. Alright, at least I got it to work. It maybe not have been the first time around. Alright, moving on to the next page, page six. More things dealing with Auto Focus. So the Auto Focus system, if you are using the adapted older lenses for a Minolta or the Sony SLR lenses and you're using one of these adapters and you can choose which of Auto Focus you're using. Either the Phase Detection, which is very fast, or the Contrast Detection, which is slower but more accurate. You can choose to use that. I tend to prefer not to use these lens adapters unless I absolutely have to because you're not getting the full performance out of the camera. Alright, we talked about back button focusing. I mentioned this really early on. If you want to turn off the focusing of the shutter release, you can do it here. And then you can program focusing maybe to see one or see two. So there's two different button presses. Remember when you put your camera in the Manual Focus mode, that center button on the back of the camera, where the Auto Exposure Lock button is, you can press that for focusing as well. But if you just want to take the focusing away from the shutter release button, you can do that here. Alright, Pre-AF. I think I have my camera set on this. And it's something that drives me nuts because what happens, and I'm gonna go in on my camera and change this real quick, its got to be on this mode because that's why it was focusing even though I wasn't pressing down. I think we're on page six right now. Pre-AF is on, yes gotta turn that one off. That will wear down your batteries because it's constantly looking for focus. It might be kinda nice when you're in the video mode where it's always to get everything in sharp as focus as possible. But in this case, I will tell the camera when I want it to focus. A lot of people want to leave that turned off. Eye-Start AF. It is a system that will be used with these lens adapters for using the SLR style lenses. So as soon as you put your eye up to the view-finder they will start focusing. So it's kinda like the Pre-AF, but it's specifically used with these lens adapters. Alright, next area is how much to you want to see in the view finder after the camera focuses. When you choose AF Auto Clear on, it makes the focusing box disappear. So you do not have that box cluttering up your frame lines. If you want to leave the box on so you can see where the camera focused, you would leave this feature turned off. Depends on if you want it to automatically clear away once your camera is is focus. I think its kinda nice to know where your camera's focused and its a pretty light-level marking on there. So I think keeping it turned on would make sense. Display the Continuous AF-Area. So as your focusing, do you want those green boxes to show you where you are focusing? I think for anyone new, to this camera, it's definitely a very good thing to leave turned on so that you be aware of how the camera is focusing and what it's focusing on. Some people may get tired of it and they learn to trust the system and they don't need that turning on and they'll just see it working as the subject's either sharper or blurrier in the view finder. But I think most people wanna leave this turned on, at least for the beginning part of the ownership of this camera.