Lessons
Camera Overview
14:02 2Photo Basics
03:53 3Camera Controls: Dials, Auto and Movie Mode
10:47 4Cameral Controls: P Mode, A Mode, S Mode, M Mode
17:43 5Top Deck: Exposure Comp, Custom Key Settings, White Balance
10:20 6Top Deck: Focus Area & Flash
19:50 7Drive Dial
07:17 8Back Side: Focus Mode & Shutter
17:45Back Side: Electronic ViewFinder
09:06 10Function Button: Top Row
11:47 11Function Button: Bottom Row
15:05 12Back Side: Playback
07:44 13Left & Right Side
07:19 14Bottom, Front & Sony Lenses
16:41 15Menu: Camera Setting 1 Page 1-3
28:09 16Menu: Camera Setting 1 Page 4-6
17:58 17Menu: Camera Setting 1 Page 7-9
08:17 18Menu: Camera Setting 1 Page 10-13
18:38 19Menu: Camera Setting 2 Page 1-2
05:48 20Menu: Camera Setting 2 Page 3-4
06:21 21Menu: Camera Setting 2 Page 5-6
07:35 22Menu: Camera Setting 2 Page 7-9
11:40 23Menu: Network
13:03 24Menu: Playback
04:08 25Menu: Setup
20:19 26Menu: My Menu
04:09 27Camera Operation
07:50Lesson Info
Menu: Camera Setting 2 Page 5-6
Next up in here is things dealing with Zoom and to be honest with you, Sony's got a little thing with digital zoom and this is what it's all about. It's about digitally zooming in on your subject and getting a smaller portion of it enlarging it, granted it's gonna be at the cost of losing lots of megapixels, but you can do that here and so it's just something generally you don't want to do because you'll be losing image quality when you do that. The Zoom Setting in here. This will have some effect on different lenses if they have automatic zooming capabilities. And there's different levels that you can zoom in digitally and they have different words. They are all digital, Optical is where you wanna be at. So that you're only using the optical lenses to zoom the image in any way. Smart is pretty good digital manipulation. Clear image is a little bit further and Digital is very far and so I say turn them all off. Leave them on Optical zoom. There is a small chance that shooting in the vi...
deo function you could find some use of this if you are looking to reach a little bit further into a subject and you don't have as long a lens. But for the most part you're gonna wanna leave this just turned on to the Optical Zoom Only. There are a few special lenses from Sony that you can adjust the direction of the zoom. So if you would prefer it to zoom telephoto one direction over the other, you can adjust that here. Normally it's not a big deal. Alright the Display Button on the back of the camera. Gonna lead us into a little bit of a sub-menu here. And so here's where you can go into the Monitor and you can adjust which display options will come up when you hit the Display Button. And so if there's something here you don't use you can uncheck the box. To start with I like to leave them all checked off and then just figure out which ones I don't use and come back and turn those off a few weeks down the road. Same thing can be said for the Viewfinder. Which things do you want to see in the Viewfinder? If you don't use one of them, turn it off so you don't have to cycle through it and see it all the time. The Finder/Monitor option is a good possible option for assigning to one of the shortcut keys on the outside of the camera. And this controls how the camera switches back and forth between the EVF and the Monitor. If you find that the Eye Sensor is not doing a good job reading when you want one or the other, you can assign it as a manual function and go back and forth between the Viewfinder and the Monitor mode. This camera has an improved Eye Sensor and I don't think you'll need to adjust it so you can probably leave it in the Auto mode. I mentioned this earlier, in the Finder we have two different frame rates that we can choose, Standard or High. I believe Standard is at 60 frames a second and High is at 120 frames a second. If you're shooting a lot of action, if you're moving the camera around a lot, you're gonna get a little bit better view by setting this on the High setting. However when you, you will get a little bit lower battery life with it and when you do go into the continuous shooting mode I believe it automatically goes down to the Standard mode 'cause the resources are being used elsewhere in the camera. But in the composing of your image between shots is when you would get it in the High mode. Alright, Zebra's. Gotta love zebra's. And so Zebra's are something that you can turn on and off that will show you over exposed areas. And so I think a great way to do this is just a quick little live demo. Here set up and let's go ahead and put this into manual exposure. And we need to go in Let's just try to get a normal exposure in here to start with. Right here. Let's go into the menu system. We're on, looks like page six of nine. In here. And so go ahead and turn Zebra's on. And we can select how much we want them on. Do we want them to turn on when something is 70 percent of total brightness? Or do we want it just at the very last edge the top very brightness. And so if you were concerned about just what is the highest bit, let's just say the 95 percent. And so we're not even gonna look at that white screen in the background and so as we zoom in let's give a little auto-focus. Make sure that we're in sharp enough focus. And next up let's change our shutter speeds. As we go and make this really dark and as we start brightening things up if something's pretty bright like that little stand that those delicious cupcakes are on you can see that we're getting a little bit of warning there that we're getting some hot pixels and if we wanted to make sure that that information was collected when we shot the photograph we might wanna back off just a little bit and shoot the photograph right there. If we weren't concerned about it and we knew that was pure white we could continue going to a higher setting on our shutter speeds. Now as we go back into the menu system and going into the Zebra's we can go in and we can go into the custom settings and we can go over here, go to the right and now we can set the Range. So let's say we wanna see everything from plus or minus ten. See if we can get this set here. And so now it's gonna look for things that are in that very high range that might be overexposed. And this is just giving us information to let us know you might be overexposed or this is gonna fall within this particular range when you're shooting. This is something that video shooters have been using for a long time. They've become addicted to and they have to have it in all their cameras. It's something that still photographers are still kind of learning to use and can still be quite helpful. And so this is a potentially a very good option for people who are struggling with correct exposure and you wanna check this. It'd be something you might wanna set to one of those custom key functions into one of the buttons on the camera that you could quickly turn on and off. 'Cause it is a little distracting having this turned on all the time. And so I'm just gonna go back quickly right now and turn mine off. 'Cause I don't need it on right now. Okay so that's what Zebra's are. A good tool for judging the right exposure. Next up is Grid Lines. And so if you wanna see those grid lines you can turn them on here. Choose whichever one you like to see. Another good short cut potential option here. Exposure Set Guidelines. Alright, if you know me, you know I like visuals and I like graphics. And in this case it shows you nice big graphics of your shutter speeds and apertures which I like. But I very much dislike the fact that it's doing it on top of your actual composition in your frame. And it's actually giving you the exact same information if you can only look down about a quarter of an inch. You'll see that is same information there and so it seems completely unnecessary in my book. And so I would probably recommend turning this off for most people unless you really need to see that in a much much larger font.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
~user-e143a3
I've taken lots of John's classes as my photography journey has unfolded. Like all good teachers, John has a fantastic ability to take concepts which are complex and could be overwhelming, and making them accessible and much simpler. I'm lucky enough to own this amazing camera, I'm sure I'll get even more enjoyment from using it after taking this class - John has done so much of the hard work of learning away, now I feel like I can just start enjoying it!
Jeferz
Great information as always, John's approach is amazing, well paced and very informative. I own so many of his amazing tutorials, I feel like he's part of my family - but a lot more knowledgeable 😏
Alexander Zlatev
Thank you Great Work
Student Work
Related Classes
Camera Guides