Lessons
Class Introduction
15:31 2Photo Basics
06:08 3Camera Controls - Top Deck: Mode Dial Part 1
15:46 4Camera Controls- Top Deck: Mode Dial Part 2
13:00 5Top Deck: Custom Settings and Focus Mode
13:17 6Backside: Electronic Viewfinder
07:52 7Backside: AF/MF
05:24 8Backside: Function Button: Top Row
20:58Backside: Function Button: Bottom Row
08:08 10Backside: Control Wheel
10:12 11Left, Right, Bottom & Front Sides
09:58 12Sony Lenses
10:11 13Menu Overview
03:47 14Camera Settings 1: Pages 1-3
14:00 15Camera Settings 1: Pages 4-6
17:29 16Camera Settings 1: Pages 7-9
07:22 17Camera Settings 1: Pages 10-14
21:50 18Camera Settings 2: Pages 1-4
16:02 19Camera Settings 2: Pages 5-9
14:50 20Wireless Settings
06:24 21Application Menu
18:46 22Playback Menu
03:35 23Setup Menu
22:27 24Camera Operation
10:53Lesson Info
Sony Lenses
Let's talk about some of the different lenses you can put on this camera. Now, it's a little bit complicated because Sony has four different lens mounts for the different types of lenses and cameras that they have been making over the years. Now, if you remember back to the kinda the basics about this camera, it inherited the Minolta SLR system and so the full frame, the film that Minolta cameras used to use is the lens mount called an A mount. And so Sony made a number of SLRs and now they're making SLT cameras that use the A mount system. And there's a fairly large legacy collection of A mount lenses available on the market. When digital came along, they decided to come out with a camera that had a smaller size sensor that was more affordable in price and then they brought out a few special lenses called DT lenses, that were designed for the smaller APS 1.5 crop frame. Next up, came the NEX series of cameras and they developed a mirror-less camera that uses what's known as an E mount...
that has E lenses. And so right now, I have an A6500 here, which is an E mount camera. I have the 16 to 70 lens, which is an E mount lens, so it's kind of perfectly matched for what this camera is. Then the next iteration was a full frame camera which uses the same E mount, but it uses FE lenses, these are a full frame lens, they have a larger image circle designed for the full frame sensor. Now you can take an FE lens, and you can put it on this camera. And there is no problem when it comes to the image quality. There isn't any real problem with using it at all on the camera, other than the fact that you've kind of purchased a lens that has a bigger image circle than it needs to. And so in some cases, there isn't a lot of lenses available for a particular type of photography, so for instance, when it comes to fast telephoto lenses, there just isn't a lot of options when it comes to the A6500. But if you look at the FE lens line-up, Sony makes a lot of lenses that you could use on this camera perfectly fine, there's no problem. Now, if you have the older SLR system, the A mount system, those lenses can be used with an adapter, on this camera or the larger A7 series, A9 series of cameras but you do need an adapter, and there's a whole bunch of compatibility issues that I'm not gonna get totally into. That's when you might want to dive into the instruction manual. So let's look at some of the lens options for this camera. Now it does share the same lens mount as the A7 and the A9 series, but they have different lenses that are kind of specifically designed for that system, so let's look at what the differences between these. So the FE is designed for the Full Frame. The E is designed for the smaller sensor, and so the image circle size is different. And so the FE has a image circle that is large enough to cover the entire Full Frame sensor. The E-Mount lenses have a smaller image circle, but it's big enough to fit the entire sensor area so it works perfectly on any PS-C camera. Where things get interesting is where you start switching lenses. If you put an E-Mount on a Full Frame camera, like an A7R2, it doesn't have enough image area to cover the whole area, so you're gonna get a lot of vignetting. If you take an FE-Mount lens designed for their Full Frame camera, put it onto this camera, it produces a very large image circle, you will be getting a cropped version of that image and you'll get a perfect image quality out of it, there's no problem exposure, focus wise or anything else, it's just that you're going to be getting a cropped image that looks different than it would if you had it on a Full Frame camera. So with some of the Sony lenses on this camera, the 16 to 55, is a really common lens, and this is a very very small lens. This is one of the worst lenses that you can get for this camera. It is optically highly distorted, but Sony does something pretty interesting with it. Is that they optically correct for all the problems that this lens has. So if you put this lens on what something that you'll notice if you turn the camera on, things look really distorted and they look heavily vignetted for a fraction of a second, then the software kicks in, realizes what lens is on it, and then it kinda fixes all those problems. Optically speaking from a snob perspective, it's their lowest quality lens. But, I still own one of these lenses because it's incredibly small, and if you want a really really compact package, you can still get good quality images with this lens. All right, some of the other options available for you, are a telephoto lens. The 55 to 210 is gonna be kinda one of the first lenses that somebody's gonna look at for wanting a little bit more range. It's a good basic telephoto lens. If you want a higher quality normal lens, the 16 to 70, which is what I have on my camera right now, is much larger than the 16 to 50, it's got a little bit more range cause it zooms up to 50. It's also got an F4 maximum aperture on it. So as I zoom back and forth, the maximum aperture does not change which is a feature that I really like cause I like shooting in manual exposure. And also on the side of it, you'll see this little Zeiss emblem which means it is a Sony Zeiss lens and there are three different styles of lenses, there are Sony lenses, there are Zeiss lenses, which will work on the Sony camera, and then there are Sony lenses that kinda have some Zeiss influence. They basically meet some of the Zeiss standards. And so the difference between them is, when Zeiss makes their own lens, they decide what focal length they want, they decide what aperture they want, they have the lens meet all of their standards of how sharp and how fast it focuses and everything else that it has. When Sony makes a lens, they make their own lens according to their own desires and needs. And when they wanna make one with the Zeiss label on it, it has to go through the Zeiss quality standards, and so it meets the Zeiss minimum standards when it comes to optical quality. And so they do tend to be higher in lenses, so you might want to look for those if you are wanting a higher quality lens. There's not a lot of them to choose from. And as you can see, I've thrown up on the screen all of the different letters, or at least most of the different letters in what they mean. A lot of these lenses like OSS is their Optical Steady Shot, not as important in this camera because we do have the stabilized sensor in here, but it is important for some of the older cameras like the 6000 and the 6300 that don't have the stabilizer built in. Some other lenses you might want to know about are some prime lenses, so these are fixed focal length, non-zoom lenses, so if you wanted a very compact camera, good for general photography, street photography, you want to take the camera out to dinner and you don't want to make a big fuss about it, the 16 and 20 are some really nice pancake lenses. Another one of the Zeiss lenses if you want something high quality in a slightly wide-angle lens, would be the 24 1. You'll see the looks and build to that is a little bit better quality. For a normal lens, if you just want your traditional, normal lens, the 30 millimeter 1.8 is a good fixed-lens that allows in quite a bit more light than any of the zoom lenses. And if you want a nice portrait lens, they recently came out with a 51.8 portrait lens there. If you want to get something longer telephoto that's fast, you're gonna have to look at the full frame lenses from Sony the FE lens is in there, coming out with more and more of them very rapidly over the last couple of years. All right folks, that brings the camera control section to an end, so I think we've covered all the buttons and all the dials on the external side of the camera. I'm gonna check in with Drew, see if we have any questions to address. We have one question, I think it's from R.C. about the bottom indicator strip on the monitor, can you turn that off? I think he's referring to the info. Yeah, so let's go on to the back of the camera, let's turn the camera on, and so, it depends a little bit on what mode you're in but the display button by going up will cycle through the different options, so we have tons of stuff just cluttering the screen up here and as I go up, it pulls off some of that information and so we have just our exposure information down here and now we have our histogram, and now we have our level, so it'll go back and forth there and then I hit the display again, we get to this screen here, and if you remember if you hit the function button, you can get in and go over here and control your 12 different functions settings over there. And if we hit the display button again, we get lots of information. Let's go down to kinda minimum information, and that bottom line of information, can I turn that off completely? No. I cannot turn that off, but my bet, let's see if I go to this screen here, I'm gonna have to look through the viewfinder myself, If I look through the viewfinder myself, it does not obstruct the viewfinder. It's hard to show exactly what I'm seeing in here, but what I'm seeing is I'm seeing the entire image area, and then I have a line of information on the top and a line of information below where the image area is. So, I can't get it off the back of the screen on the camera. But I can get it off the viewfinder in here.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
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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