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Camera Settings 2: Pages 5-9

Lesson 19 from: Sony A6500 Fast Start

John Greengo

Camera Settings 2: Pages 5-9

Lesson 19 from: Sony A6500 Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

19. Camera Settings 2: Pages 5-9

Next Lesson: Wireless Settings

Lesson Info

Camera Settings 2: Pages 5-9

The camera has a digital zoom, and anytime you hear the word digital zoom put up your guard. Warning. We're loosing pixels in this case and so the camera will take a small portion of the censor. It'll magnify it to what you see in the viewfinder and what you're recording. You are not gonna get 24 megapixels with this. It's gonna be a reduced version. It's gonna crop the image by a factor of 1. in this case. Zoom setting. You can set this to optical zoom only. And I would recommend that. Digital zoom only is digital zoom only is available in JPEG only and this is just something I would recommend leaving turned on optical zoom, so that you don't get in the way of using a digital zoom. Zoom ring rotate. There's a couple of lenses that are kind of usual that you can adjust the zooming of the lens. If you want to turn it one direction for telephoto and the other direction for wide angle. Most lenses are kind of fixed but there are some lenses that have soft controls on there that you can co...

me in and adjust if necessary. Think that's the 18 to that you can do. Designed for the full frame cameras. Next page. The display button. We talked about this before when we were talking about the LCD display as well as the viewfinder display on this. If there are different display screens that you do not use you can uncheck them here. If you are new to the camera, I would say check 'em all off and play around with them. See if you like 'em. Long term, if you don't like 'em you can come back here, uncheck them so that you don't have to cycle through and see those options when you press the display button on the back of the camera. So this does the same thing but for the viewfinder, so where you look up close with your eye, not as many options, little different set of options here. Check 'em all off to start with and then uncheck 'em as you don't need 'em. Alright, so Finder/Monitor this allows you to manually switch between the viewfinder and the LCD on the back of the camera with a button press. I own a Sony camera other than this one and I don't like the way that it switches back and forth between the viewfinder and the LCD so I've reprogrammed one of the buttons on the top of the camera so that it doesn't switch back automatically. It switches back manually so you can reprogram one of the buttons to do that or in this case you could tell the camera, I only want it in viewfinder or I only want it in the LCD. This one seems to have a sensor that is correctly calibrated and so it seems to work pretty good so auto should work fine for most people here. Finder Frame Rate. I mentioned before that you can have the viewfinder set to or 120 frames per second. For battery life you want to choose 60 frames per second. That'll get you a little bit more battery life. If you shoot a lot of action, if you're moving the camera around a lot and you want a little bit sharper view then you can set it to 120 frames per second. Zebras are a way of telling if we have overexposed or underexposed an image and so you can go in here and you can select at what level the zebra rates come on. So let's do a little demo here, 'cause everyone likes zebras. They want to see zerbas. So let me turn the camera on. We are on page six of nine here and I'm gonna turn this into the manual exposure mode and let's make sure we're not too far off so page six of nine. Do do do do do. Zebras. Let's turn on the zebras, so you can start, so you can see the zebras immediately turning on in here right now. And so we can choose at what level they come on. According to where we want to be warned about our exposures so, just where it's the top 95 percent. And so as I adjust my shutter speeds. Actually, let's lock it in at 95. Now let's get back here to our shutter speeds and so if we set shutter speeds really high nothing is being overexposed here and you can see on the histogram I'm not close to overexposure but as I go to slower and slower shutter speeds. Let's look at that histogram coming up here in a moment. There we go. So let's go a couple more steps. Okay, so right here you're seeing there's just a little bit of white background in there that's starting to get some zebras. So it's starting to get to an area that might be too bright for the recording. Now as I look at the histogram I can see, no that doesn't really look like it's a problem yet. There's still detail in it. And so, it's just a way of judging exposure visually, with the highlights and then you get to go in there and determine it. Now that's a very handy feature, I do not like to leave it turned on. That would be a good button shortcut that you could program to any one of the custom buttons. So I'm gonna leave mine turned at off for right now. Alright. We also have grid lines that we can turn on and off and if this seems familiar, you've got a little dejà vu. We were talking about it in accordance with the movie features. This is with the still photos. And so here is where we can turn this on and off and choose any one of these three different options. Exposure set guidelines. So if you remember, in the back of the camera there was this extra large shutter speeds and apertures that it was showing to you. And as I mentioned before it's taking up the screen space and so that's one of the reasons why I'm not a big fan of this. And so, I would recommend turning this off. The information is about an eighth of an inch below it in slightly smaller font but you should be able to see that quite easily and so, turn that off if you want to have the clearest view of your subject or leave it on if you'd like to see that information. Next page deals with display and reviewing images. Live view display. So when you are looking through the viewfinder, when you're looking at the back of the LCD camera, do you want the picture that you're looking at to be essentially the same that you're gonna get in the final image? Most of us would say yes, I'd like to be able to see the exposure and the white balance if it's correct or not. Leave this turned on. You would want to turn this off if you are working with potentially flash or in a studio environment. If you're in a relatively dark studio and then the flash fires for the actual photograph you're gonna have it set to a reasonably fast shutter speed in a very dark environment and everything's going to be really black in the viewfinder. So for strobe photography, for studio photography, probably want to turn this off for everyone else probably leave it turned on. When you shoot a photo, do you want the camera to automatically show you the image on the back of the camera? Now traditionally on SLR's this was very, very common to leave this turned on so that you can see what sort of shot you got. But now with a mirrorless camera the preview is essentially the same image if you have that feature turned on and so a lot of the more advanced users these days are turning this off because they don't need to waste time reviewing images that they already know are properly exposed and focused and look the way that they want to and so for some people still getting used to the camera it's nice to see that image right afterwards but look at turning that off to help speed up the process of going from image to image. Page eight of nine. Custom key shootings. We have dove in here a few times and this is where you can go in and customize the buttons on the camera C1, two, three, the center button, the left, the right, the downward button the buttons on the lens can be reprogrammed and so we don't have time to go in and reprogram this in every imaginable way 'cause there's probably a million different ways that you could organize and customize the controls on this camera, but figure out which features you use and put 'em on the buttons that you have easy access to. We have a further distinction. This is kind of new on these cameras. Was not on the previous version, is that we can now have custom keys when you are shooting in the playback mode 'cause when you're in the playback mode you have kind of different things going on. And so, here's what you'll see actually in the custom key for the shooting modes, you'll be able to see all these different buttons. You can dive in to any one of these and select what you want that button to do. PB does not stand for peanut butter. It is for playback. And so, when you're in the playback mode what do you want C1 and two and the function button to be able to do when you are playing back? If you want to customize the function menu you will do so in here. And so, this is where you can go in and you can replace, you can take out, if you don't need a dozen items in there if you want to only have two or three, you can do that. But this is where you can organize these. I have found that I don't really like the organization of theirs so I'll maybe put the auto focus ones together and the exposure ones together, maybe some drive ones together and then other ones together and so, organize it as you see fit in here. Then there'll be a page one for the upper half and a page two for the lower section of that. Dial and wheel setups. So we have the dial on the top of the camera, the wheel on the back of the camera. One of 'em controls the shutter speed the other one controls the aperture and if you said, hey I don't like it I want to swap it. Well, this is where you can swap 'em back and forth. You know, some people are moving from different cameras and they're used to things being in different places. Different ways to customize it. And so, dial wheel Ev compensation, and so normally when the camera is in aperture priority, shutter priority or program the exposure compensation can only be gotten into by pressing the exposure compensation button or diving into the menu system. In this case you could use the unused dial or wheel to control exposure compensation. If you're the type of person that likes to use aperture priority but you're often wanting it a little lighter, a little darker you could put this in and that way you could very quickly change your apertures and then change your exposure compensation very easily. Most people don't have this turned on 'cause it's just a little too easy to bump and start getting the wrong exposure, so it's a bit of a balance of control and safety there. The movie button. Kind of has its own thing for customizing here. Normally when you press the movie button it's gonna start recording the movie. Some people bump it while it's in the still photography mode and they don't like that, and so they want to turn the movie button so that it only turns on when you are in the movie mode and so if you accidentally bump it you might want to put it in the movie mode only. Okay, final page in here. Dial wheel lock. And so if you press the function button down for four seconds, little secret thing here it will lock the back wheel and the top dial. And so, if you do want to lock that so that you can't change exposure compensation or your shutter speeds or apertures you could have that automatically lock on there if you set this to the lock. So anyone who wants to lock this up, turn it in lock and then you gotta hold the function button down for four seconds for that to work. The audio signals. So this is the beeping in the camera. Which confirms that the camera is in focus or the self timer is activated and this is kind of irritating to everybody else around your camera and so I recommend turning this off. I recommended being discrete and not annoying your neighbors. I think that's being very neighborly to do that. John asked does the scene mode work in RAW? Does the scene mode work in RAW? Well, I don't know the answer so let's do a little experimentation folks. Okay. We're gonna turn the camera into the scene mode. I would ask them what mode they want to be in but we're in a slight delay here so let's just set it to sports photography. Okay. And those bananas are really moving over there so, let's make sure that we are in RAW first and see if we actually get a RAW image out of this. So, quality. We want to be in RAW. RAW only. And we're gonna shoot this one image right there. (camera clicks) We shot a couple of images it sounds like. Let's play this image back. Let's go into the display. Let's look at some more information and I'm seeing the RAW right up there at the top. So yes, you do get RAW. I knew that all along. I just wanted to show you how. Photoman asked, since this is a range finder camera do you get the same image you'd get with the DSLR or do you tend to get an image that's a little more left then where you're actually pointing the camera? Yeah, okay. So, if we could turn the camera on in the back of the camera, so we can see, close up of the back the viewfinder is offset to the left hand side but that is viewing a small t.v. screen which is getting the information coming straight to the lens. We are actually looking through this at all right here, and so you are seeing what's through the lens and if we want to go to the other camera and so the idea when holding this camera. I'm gonna leave my tripod attached here. And I am left eyed, many people are right eyed in their dominance and so this is best designed for people who are right eye dominant because you can just rest it right against your nose here and then you can leave your left eye open if you're really good to kind of scan around to see everything else that's going on. And so, this camera can be tough for me to use if I've got to use my left eye because my nose is going right into the screen and so I'm becoming ambidextrous with my eyes and so I am learning to use my right eye and so that I can work with either one because with this range finder style, its not a range finder camera, to be exact, its a range finder style in that it is off center to the left and so it does work very comfortably here and it is a very steady place to have a viewfinder and so it does make sense. Some people like it. Some people don't. Typically, people like myself who are left eyed do not like it but I can see the advantage and I can make it work.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

SonyA6500 Keynote Slides
SonyA6500 Recommended Settings

Ratings and Reviews

Nichola Johnson
 

GREAT CLASS. I HAVE JUST ENTERED THE 'MANUAL' CAMERA MODE AND ACQUIRED THE SONY A6500...THIS CLASS TOTALLY HELPED WITH THE CAMERA BASICS. I WILL DEFINITELY TAKE MORE. JOHN GREENGO IS FABULOUS. CLEAR AND EASY TO FOLLOW.

a Creativelive Student
 

I've owned the A6000 since it came out and still learned a TON from John's A6500 class. I will definitely be getting his original A6000 class. I'm SO glad he's doing Sony cameras now. Thanks John G. - You are a truly great teacher!

Lee Kneisz
 

I bought the a6000 course a while back and when I upgraded to the a6500 this was a no-brainer. I love how comprehensive the coverage is and it was a great refresher on previous features. If you're a newbie to the Sony a6500 this is a must!

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