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Camera Menu: 7

Lesson 22 from: Sony A7 Mark II Series Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

22. Camera Menu: 7

Next Lesson: Camera Menu: 8

Lesson Info

Camera Menu: 7

All right next page center lock on a f this is one of the more confusing modes on the camera and there's a real question as to why it needs to be on the camera this is more of a legacy feature that was on earlier sony cameras and they've included it here for anybody who grew accustomed to it and wanted to find it fact of matter is is that this is exactly duplicated in those other focusing mouths and so let me see if I can give you an example let's go to my camera here and so normally the best way to do this type of focusing is actually did I I changed into manual focusing so I gotta change it back in the auto focusing so by changing the focusing you remember that we had these lock on options actually let me go to continuous focusing because now I'll have access to changing from wide down tto spot and then we have the lock on options this is the new version of lock on options where we can choose a subject in our camera will try to track that subject and you can actually see in there the...

box I'm gonna have to pick up the camera and move it just forward and you can see that it's going to track that subject around I guess I can leave it here and just rotate the camera you can see that box trying to track that subject, and so it starts there in the middle and is tracking that subject around, and this is the way to work the system the other way is to go into the menu system and go to this centre, lock on and select it to work with there, but it's a long route in order to do the same thing, and so I don't think there's really any reason to use it unless you've grown accustomed to it because it's, much more directly accessed through the other functions of the camera so let's, leave that one turned off smile and face detection. We saw the video earlier on this one. It does work very well, I think for normal picture taking, you're probably going to leave this one turned off, but you can have fun playing with it when and where it's appropriate to use. All right, let's, talk about facial recognition on this one, so I'm gonna go ahead and turn this on in the camera and we'll just go with normal face detection for right now. And this is where I have the camera said I haven't currently the cameras set up in a wide focusing mode so it's looking over the entire frame and you can see that white box around caitlin's face no matter where we zoo it's locking in and I can shoot photos at any time. And it's gonna lock in on focus on her, which is pretty amazing at how well it does. This does a really good job. Okay, so what happens if we have more than one person in the frame? So let's, go ahead and add our second model here, and if they're standing side by side it's actually picking up on both of them, you can see that we're getting green boxes on both because they're both at about the same distance from the frame now late see lacey's she moves back a little bit, her face is smaller in the frame and it's choosing the one that is closest. Lacey, why don't you guys switch positions now? And we can see that it's choosing whoever is the largest in the frame. Oh, wait, no, it chose caitlin on this one. Why? I don't know, uh, but now it's on lacey and so it's, a very good system for picking up on faces, but occasionally there may be a problem with it, and so that's. One of the times you may want to use one of the other techniques, either choosing a particular focusing point or using something called facial registration. All right, let's talk about how to register a face for facial registration, I'm going to go ahead and jump into the menu. And face registration and we're going to do a new registration so we could take a picture of a new face and shoot with fitting into the face frame so what we're gonna do is get caitlin's face right in here filling the frame pretty much and then we'll go ahead and take a photo and is this the face that we want to enter? It certainly is so we're gonna hit enter and it is now registered okay, so I'm gonna jump back in the menu real quick come on one of the things that we can do and we're not gonna bother doing it here but you can see there are eight different spots here where you can register different people say for instance, in your family if you got four kids you can register mall is one, two, three, four good luck picking which one is number one and number two and so far but this is the way that the camera is going to look in order for those faces in a group of people's faces. So now what we're going to do is we're going to see if we can focus on caitlyn's face it's of course, picking this out so let's add another person to the elements so let's get lacey in here and we had him side by side before and it's picking caitlin out and putting her in green now let's have lacey step a little bit forward and caitlin back a little bit and even though caitlin's in back it well they jumped over the lazy there and so now it's not really picking the rigid stirred face and that's because I made a dumb mistake and I did not actually turn the feature on which we can do by going into face registration which his smile and face detection and face detection on but we're going to go up here to registered faces and so now that'll solve my little problem. I believe so now caitlin comes in focus caitlin still in focus and even though we have won faced much larger in the frame, caitlyn is still the one that's always being focused on and so this is a system that would be great for picking out someone that you're trying to photograph in a crowd of people because it's gonna look exclusively for their face and only focus on them great feature all right, there's another kind of special unique feature that we're going to take a look at so we're going to jump into the menu in smile and face detection and we're going to jump down to smile shutter now this camera will actually shoot pictures on its own if the person smiles and we can choose a slight smile, a normal smile or a big smile, we're going to go with a normal smile and I'm going to set this mode in here. Okay, caitlin so she's very serious and there's actually a smile indicator on the left now give us a little bit of a smile. Caitlin maur mohr and more and there it took a picture on its own it's taking photos on its own so caitlin go from serious to smile and let's just take a quick look at that last photo and so smile, smile, smile somewhere look better than others let's go ahead and change this to big smile so I'm gonna go right to big smile now and we'll look at the smile indicator over on the left and caitlin go from serious to big smile and so every time she goes up to a big smile, it automatically takes a photo another one. All right, let's, take a quick look at these photos. So big smile, big smile, big smile, big smile so this is a pretty good way. Ah, for taking a self portrait or a group shot where you want to make sure that people are smiling and so fun little feature give it a try. Okay, so some good little videos there showing you how you can use that out in the field and so smile and face detection I think I'm going to be used on a very, very particular basis, but it's just one of those extra little technological features that they were able to throw in there that could be really fun to use. All right, next up soft skin effect I'll be honest with you folks in all my shooting of the camera, I haven't done a lot of testing on this one and it's supposedly in portrait's going to give you a little bit lower contrast levels for a little bit smoother tone's this is going to have no effect on anybody shooting raw images, so if you're really suited serious and you're shooting raws thiss cannot cannot have any in fact impact on you, but if your are shooting j pegs and you showed a lot of portrait, you might want to play around with this mode to see if you like the looks of it. Some people prefer to do this in the computer where they have more control over the specifics of where this is being applied and the exact levels, but this is a quick little way of getting potentially slightly smoother looking portrait from j pegs in the camera out in the field okay, this is the worst feature in this camera and in any camera I have ever seen in my entire life of photography let me try to explain what this mode does this mode will take your photo, which can only be shot in j peg, and it will crop your image and reduce it in size, and it will do this on a random basis, and it will do so in order to let me get the words right to give you a mohr impressive composition so you can say that they have the utmost confidence that you're going to be able to point the camera in the right direction. What what it's trying to do is it's looking for faces it's looking for action, that's moving it's looking for macro subjects and its assuming that you're making one of the first mistakes and photography and that you're not close enough to your subject and it's going to crop in on what it thinks is the subject and it's going to blow it up? But when I put the camera in this mode, I can't always get it to do it because it's thinking on its own as to whether it wants to do it or not, and sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it doesn't do it. If I had to give the camera tow a blind person to shoot portrait ce, this might work out that's about the on ly scenario I can think of, I really can't imagine. Having a camera recomposed my photographs that's one of the reason why I pick up a camera is I want to do it I don't want anyone else to do it on so you can guess my recommendation here is to leave this off and just okay I'm going to throw it out there if you want to drive me nuts just meet me out in the field and sometimes yeah, I got the sony camera I leave in an auto object framing it's the most awesome thing in the world and I will have completely forgotten that I told to tell people and I'll just be like, what? Who is this person? And so it would be a great joke to play on me please I hope it doesn't happen okay back into the serious stuff the auto mode back in the beginning, the class we talked about the auto mode on the dial we can choose how it shoots the intelligent audio is thie standard one that's where itjust analyzes the scene tries to judge you know what you're shooting in there the superior one is where might shoot multiple exposures in order to reduce noise or solve some sort of other problem you can play around with them if you're going to use him a lot I think if you have made it to this point in the class, you are well beyond the auto mode on your camera so you have graduated at this point from that seen selection allows you to go in and select the different scenes on the camera. If you are in the scene mode, this is something that's very easily done, just with the front dial of the camera. But if you wanted to go in here and specifically look for it, you could do it in here is well.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Sony® A7II Info and Menu List
Sony® A7RII info and Menu List
Sony® A7SII Info and Menu List

Ratings and Reviews

Diane Schulman
 

INCREDIBLE Class! I couldn't find anything on the internet that truly explained this camera, explained what it can and can't do and what accessories would work with it. I have had my Sony A7II for awhile now, but was so overwhelmed by it, I rarely even took it out of its case. It was just easier to use my Canon 5D III. After this class, I am so excited to finally practice with and use my Sony. John is an incredible teacher. He is thorough, professional, fun and knowledgeable! Buying this class was the best investment!!! I feel like I just got the gift of a new camera because I can finally use my Sony!!! Thanks John and Thanks Creative Live!!!

Enrique Vega es
 

I stored my Sony A7II for more than a year since I've been Canon's user for 7 years and I felt unsure of taking this new camera which implied a different menu system, different functions, a little bit intimidating. Finally, I took a bit of valor, put my camera next to the computer monitor for then start watching this guide and I spent a great time actually. I'm amazed at how helpful and clear is the sequence of the chapters. It was enough to get to chapter ten to know all the basic controls and start taking pictures with an equivalent confidence of my good old Canon, or even better since in the chapter 8th I learned how accurate and easy to use is the focusing system, either, manual or auto (For stills I've always used manual focusing). Very informative, enjoyable and now I became a new fan of the mirrorless cameras, at the point that I'm considering to buy another two :D

VeraInAlbania
 

John is an excellent teacher! In fact his Fundamentals of Digital Photography 2014 was the first ever class I watched on CreativeLive, and since then I'm in love with his teaching style as well as with CreativeLive! I bought my Sony A7II in March 2015 and when I found out that John is giving a class on it I was very excited! As I expected I learnt many secrets about my camera which I had been using for 9 months already. For example about the option of focusing on the eyes, setting the buttons, making panoramas etc. The camera is still smarter than me I must admit. I am enjoying my Sony even more now since after the class I feel much more confident. Thank you John and CreativeLive for such an opportunity! I would recommend to everyone who has a Sony a7II camera and the other cameras in this line to watch this class. It's a concentrate of useful information, very detailed and to the point. I spent two days just watching the class and practicing new knowledge with my camera straight away. I had to postpone all the other life chores. And I would be ready to watch the class again after some time as it's a professional camera which needs a lot of practice!

Student Work

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