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Menu Pages 9-11: Exposure & Flash

Lesson 17 from: Sony A7 III Fast Start

John Greengo

Menu Pages 9-11: Exposure & Flash

Lesson 17 from: Sony A7 III Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

17. Menu Pages 9-11: Exposure & Flash

Fine-tune your Sony camera's exposure settings with advanced menu tools like choosing whether or not to leave settings intact when the camera powers off and setting limits for the auto ISO.

Lesson Info

Menu Pages 9-11: Exposure & Flash

Looking with the exposure options here, exposure compensation, we have a dial on the top but if you wanna be able to do it from the menu system you can do it here as well. Reset EV compensation, and so if you are doing it with something other than the dial. You can have the camera reset to zero exposure compensation every time you turn the camera on and off. For most people that's a nice safety protocol, you know, you'll, we're doing some special project, you had it on plus two, turn the camera off, next time out of the bag you don't want your camera at plus two. But there are some photographers that are working on some projects they do wanna turn your camera off and leave everything exactly the same. And so that is only if you have reprogrammed the custom, or the exposure compensation away from the dial on the top of the camera. You can change your ISO in here and we've talked about this a couple of times before and so every time they wanna put a feature in the camera that you can cus...

tomize with any one of the buttons, they tend to put it in the menu system as well which is why we see it here as well as two other places on the camera. This is important for anyone who wants to use the auto ISO. What it is, is that the camera will automatically choose a shutter speed that is usually equivalent to the focal length of the lens. And so with a 28 millimeter lens, a 28th of a second or a 30th of a second, is the minimum shutter speed that it would have before it starts changing to a higher ISO. But in some cases, it's nice that when you put on a different lens, it will recognize that there's a different lens on the camera and it will adjust the appropriate shutter speed for it. Now if you want to go in and tell it to use something even slower or faster than that automatic adjustment, you can do that and so in some cases if I was doing travel photography, I might set this at slow or slower because I'm confident in my ability to hand hold the camera and the camera's built in stabilization system. If I knew I was shooting people in action, I would probably set it to faster faster so that the camera hesitated towards using a faster shutter speed to stop motion. So for those of you using auto ISO, standard's a good place to start with but you may tweak this a little bit according to what type of subjects you're shooting. Metering mode, we talked about this earlier. Different types of metering mode. The multi mode is a good general purpose one. Face priority and multi meter, and so this is where the camera, when it's using a multi segment, metering will recognize faces and adjust the exposure. Now I have not seen much difference in exposure that the camera gives whether you turn this on or off. And so it's probably safest just to leave it on. But if you find that it's not giving you the exposures that you like you may wanna turn this off. So this is a little bit of adjustment that goes along with that metering mode. The spot metering point can either be in the center of the frame, or it can be linked to the focusing point. And a lot of people like being able to link it to the focus point because it becomes an even tighter spot and you can move it around the frame. And so that's a good option for a lot of people. Exposure steps can be changed from 1/3 to 1/2 step, sometimes there are external devices whether they're lights or light meters that work on 1/2 stops and you may wanna change it if you like but most people leave it in the 1/3 stops increments. Auto exposure lock with the shutter. When you press down on the shutter it locks the exposure and one of the options in auto, what it does there is it will lock the exposure if you're in the auto focus single mode but if your in the auto focus continuous where your subject is likely moving around, then it adjusts the exposure. So auto's not a bad option. I tend to like to have that exposure locked on the first image so that if I take multiple images they're all the same exposure. Exposure standard adjustment. Okay, this is one that I hope you never need to change so you probably don't wanna change this. What this does is it changes the way that your light meter reads the light. And this would, is something that you would go in and change if you found that your light meter was off. It was measuring everything a little too hot or a little too dark and you wanted to either make it brighter or darker and when you go in here it gives you a real ominous warning and basically it's not gonna tell you that you've upped the exposure by 1/6th of a stop or a 1/3rd of a stop or whatever the case may be, so hopefully you won't need to use this. And so you can go in and adjust each of the different meters up or down, according to how they might be off. And as I say, most people will never need to use this. Next up in flash, we have the ability to change the flash if you have a flash on the camera of course, it doesn't, so not gonna do much good until you get a flash on there. If you do have flash, flash exposure compensation, great way to tone that flash down so it's not quite as hot. Exposure compensation set, this is where when you set the exposure compensation dial on the camera, do you want it to control the exposure of the camera or the exposure of the camera and the flash? And so if you're very new to photography, it's probably easiest to do both at the same time but most serious photographers want when they're shooting with flash to adjust the exposure of the flash on the flash and the exposure of the camera on the camera. And that's why they might want it separately set just to ambient only. Wireless flash allows you to turn on the option with working with other flashes. That's a whole nother class into itself in case you're wondering. If you do have a flash on the camera, there's a red eye reduction mode that reduces red eye by firing multiple bursts of bright lights. This can be irritating to your subject, it can delay your shutter release by up to two seconds and it's something that can be completely fixed in post production very easy these days and so most people aren't using this as much as they did back in the pre digital days.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Sony A7 III Recommended Settings

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

John GreengO! What a wonderful teacher! As always to the point. You do all the testing for us and we get an amazing tour of the camera. Really thrilled with your class once again. Thanks a lot!

user-7002e3
 

Thanks John. Another great class! I appreciate the thorough explanations. I many never use all of the features on this camera but at least I know what they do. Love all of your classes and would definitely recommend them.

Mary
 

Wonderful class. John is a great instructor. Learned a lot. Only wish he'd include a bit more on using a7iii to shoot video, such as using Clear Image Zoom, and including video in the ending Camera Operation settings section. Loved the course though.

Student Work

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