If I knew nothing about Sony Alpha cameras, these would be the 8 things that I wish someone would have told me. And these are compilations of mistakes that you don't want to make, mind-blowing tricks, and the least talked about features that will really improve your user experience. Before we begin, you're going to be seeing two different menu screens.
One is the newer 2.0 menu system, and the other is the older 1.0 menu system for those who haven't transitioned to the newer models yet. The number one issue I see new Sony users run into is using silent shutter. Now silent shutter is both incredibly helpful and incredibly dangerous at the same time.
It's helpful if you're photographing in a quiet environment and you don't want to be that person with the camera. But it's also dangerous because in under certain indoor lighting conditions, you will see these weird banding lines. So my advice is just to avoid using silent shutter at all. It's only amazing when you're using the higher-end Sony cameras like the flagship A1 or the sports camera A9. But if you really want to use silent shutter, use it outdoors and in areas with lots of natural light.
Or just in general, get into the habit of taking a couple of test photos at the beginning first and then enlarge your photo in playback to see if there's anything weird going on. Now, if you were just trying to turn off that annoying focus beeping confirmation, did it. That's actually an audio signal.
Don't worry, everyone gets these two mixed up all the time. And the audio signal setting is located in the yellow briefcase tab under the sound option in the 2.0 menu system, and the second camera tab under custom operations in the 1.0 menu system. Now this next setting here, you want to turn this on because for whatever reason, on some cameras, it's off by default out of the box. And that setting is Subject Frame Display or on older cameras, Face Eye Frame Display.
And you're going to find this in the AF MF Purple tab under Subject Recognition. It's going to be spelled kind of wonky. For my 1.0 menu users, it's going to be in the first camera tab under the AF section.
Find Face Eye Frame Display. So there are two reasons why having this enabled will be super helpful. One, it will show you which face or eye your camera is focusing on right away. So when you're doing portraits, your camera might be focusing on the eye closest to the subject's hair, which then you might accidentally get a photo of their hair in focus rather than their eye in focus.
So to correct that, you can actually change the focus priority between the left eye or the right eye. And the second reason is you can immediately tell when you have human or animal eye autofocus on so you can quickly toggle it off when you want to photograph things that aren't living creatures. And I'll show you why that is in the next section.
Tip number three. Now, a lot of people really like the setting when I showed it to them, and that's displaying the focus spot in your playback photos. And you'll find this in the blue playback tab under the playback option. Sorry, 1.0 users, this might be a bit exclusive to the 2.0 folks.
Now, the main benefit of this is that it helps you troubleshoot your photos, and you can actually see where your camera's focus was when you were taking the picture. This will help you improve your focus accuracy in the long run, whether it's choosing a better or smaller focus point next time, or be more intentional where you set your focus. For example, here I was trying to take a photo of this mini shrine being carried by the local townspeople. And wouldn't you know it, I accidentally left eye autofocus on when there's so many eyeballs in this scene. Good job, Jason.
Good job. So upon reviewing it, I can see where I went wrong. Turn off eye autofocus and use the medium focus point and place it on the mini shrine. And boom, rock solid focus. Focus Guide Announcement And I'll take the time now to announce that I'll be working on a more comprehensive focus guide to help you become a Sony Alpha Focus Guide.
So subscribe now and hit the bell to be notified when that'll be ready. Tip Number 4 Another setting that blew a lot of my friends'minds is the monitor brightness setting, and this will make your LCD screen brighter and more helpful in broad daylight. On both menu systems, go to the yellow briefcase tab and find monitor brightness, and change it from manual to sunny weather. And I just love this feature so much on cameras with the newer menu system because the colors and clarity just looks amazing.
But for cameras with the older menu system, you'll notice that it'll make your screen more contrasty and ugly. But don't worry, it doesn't affect the image quality. I would just use this for framing purposes, and then I would use the viewfinder here to double check on the exposure and color.
I'm so sorry, CDE 10 users. Tip number five. Now here's another setting in your camera that's both helpful and dangerous at the same time.
If you have a full-frame camera, you have the flexibility of also using lenses that are designed for smaller APS-C sensor cameras. And this is especially helpful if you're transitioning to the full-frame system, but don't necessarily... They have the funds to buy a whole new set of full-frame lenses yet. You can still use your older Sony APS-C lenses.
Go to the first camera tab in either menu system. Under image quality, locate APS-C Super 35 shooting. When you turn it on, it'll make the vignetting, the black areas in the corners here, disappear.
Okay, okay, okay. The real science behind it is that the camera is just cropping into the sensor. Now, using the same setting with full-frame lenses, you actually get an extra one and a half times reach.
For example, if you're using a 50mm full-frame lens with APS-C mode, this lens effectively becomes a 75mm field of view. But be careful because there are drawbacks to this. When you're activating APS-C mode, again, it's cropping into the sensor, so you're actually losing megapixels.
If you have a high-resolution camera like the A7R series, it won't be too bad. For example, the 60-megapixel A7CR, in APS-C mode, you're still getting 26 megapixels. But if you have a standard-resolution full-frame camera that's just 24 megapixels, you'll only be getting 10 megapixels in APS-C mode.
Now, megapixels only matter if you intend to crop a lot or heavily edit your photos. But if you're not planning to do any of that, this loss of megapixels won't be a big deal at all. But my advice to you is actually turn off APS-C mode and program a shortcut to it in the quick function menu.
And this will help you toggle it on and off easily. And whenever you see the started rectangle symbol on your screen, that means you're in APS-C mode. So definitely watch out. You don't want to be missing any mega pickles.
Tip number six. Now you might not have to worry about this setting too much, but just in case grandma, grandpa, nieces or nephews or even your pets got a hold of your camera and just messed everything up. Double check your lens compensation setting and make sure everything is on. A lot of lenses nowadays are designed with the intention of using in-camera software to correct things like distortion, vignetting, and chromatic aberration, which isn't a bad thing.
It helps make the lenses lighter and smaller. So the last thing you want is to have your photos come out uncorrected. It's easily correctable if you shoot raw. But JPEGs? Just...
Just slightly annoying. And you'll find this in the first tab, typically as the last option on both menu systems. Tip number seven. If you're lazy like me and don't clear your memory cards often, you might want to stick around for this. So my photography toxic trait is that I let my photos pile on my cards until it gets close to full.
Even if I already have them back up, I just put the card right back into my camera and keep shooting. Now the problem with that is when it comes time to transfer the new batch of photos, I would have to find and hide the ones I haven't transferred yet. So instead of using the standard form folder where it's just one folder that holds all the photos, we want to use date form.
That way all your photos are automatically organized by the date the moment you take them. Just make sure to have your date and time set properly to begin with because I know some of you out there might go that just take the camera out of the box and completely skip setting up the date and time. So the year that's showing up in your metadata for your photos shows 1995 when it's 2024. When it comes time to back up your photos, all you have to do is just drag the photos into your computer and then add some additional info next to the date to help you identify what the photos are and when they were taken.
And to give you a bonus tip, you can also add prefixes to your file names. So instead of DSC00001, you can make it your initials. JV00001.
Or if you have multiple cameras, you can make the prefix the model number instead. And you'll find this in the first red tab under File in the 2.0 menu system, and the yellow briefcase tab under Setup in the 1.0 menu system. So speaking of better organization, let's talk about ratings. prayer.
I shoot first, ask questions later, and I take no prisoners. So undoubtedly, I end up with thousands of photos by the end of the day, which is a nightmare to go through. And so I've actually gotten to the habit of rating the photos I like on the spot with one star.
I programmed this setting to one of my buttons, and it's an easy press when I see a photo that is sharp, well composed, and or I know I want to edit. So when I go home, I'll copy all the star rated photos into a separate folder using the Sony Viewer Desktop app. Now to set this up, go to the yellow briefcase tab, operation customize, and custom key settings. For my 1.0 users, it will be the second camera tab in custom operations. And then go ahead and program all your buttons to rating.
Now I only enable one star because it's all I need to help me identify the photos that I like very quickly. And I'll typically add more stars to the photo later on a computer when I go through another round of calling and if I edit them. And so, by the time the photos reach four or five stars, it will usually just be a handful from the thousands of images that we took earlier, and I'll share those few on the internet. For more helpful photography tips, check out my playlist right here.
Thank you so much for watching, and stick around to listen to what my sponsor, Squarespace, has to say. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform to create beautiful websites. No coding knowledge needed.
Just simply choose from their many templates and designs. Perfect for photographers and online shop owners. Use my link down below for a 14-day free trial, and when you're ready to launch, you can use my code JASONVONG to save 10% off your first purchase of your website or domain.
And we'll see you guys in the next video. Peace!