NEW Sony a7R V - 70 Tips & Tricks & Settings

welcome back to my channel for another Sony episode and this episode will be a bit longer because I will provide a full tutorial with lots of tips and tricks on the new Sony a7r Mark V and just recently I posted a video where I compared the Sony a7r5 with the Sony Alpha one and a lot of people said they would be interested to learn how to operationalize the camera including how the menu is working customizing the control Wheels the function buttons and everything and I should say the menu of the Sony A7 cameras is a bit more complex than what you have for instance on a Leica SL2 and so I decided to make this tutorial and to go through the most important settings and provide a lot of tips and tricks how you can better operationalize this camera for your shooting let's get started [Music] the new Sony a7r Mark 5 is a highly capable camera in my opinion it might be the best Universal camera in the Sony lineup currently and I was just shooting this camera in Singapore and I was not shooting it with the 24 millimeter G Master lens which is mounted here but the 24 to 70 F 2.8 G Master Mark II and I want to quickly provide a few sample images so you get appetite for this session and see what this camera is capable of in particular night photography [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] all right let's kick off the tutorial so first of all in order to make this an authentic experience I'm going to reset the camera to factory settings so we can start from scratch to set it up to have the most important settings tweaked in the menu to customize control wheels and control buttons so you see live how this is all working since I want to reset the camera now to give you from scratch the experience of setting up the camera we need access to the menu and there's a menu button here if I push it I get into the menu unfortunately on Sony A7 cameras the menu is not super intuitive and that's why I think the first thing we need to do is understanding how to navigate through these different layers in the menu and we have here different sections we have a main section and this is coming here with icons and we have sub sections they are coming with numbers and we have pages and the pages contain menu entries and if you want to navigate quickly through the main sections you can use the front wheel and uh control it in that way so I have my pointing finger now on the front wheel and if I rotate the wheel it jumps in the main sections always to the next section and if I'm here and continue in the same direction it starts from the top again so I can very quickly navigate through the main sections here and this works very well once I decided on the main section so let's say we stay here I can use either this control wheel or this control wheel to scroll through the subsections so let's see here see if I'm scrolling down now here it goes through the subsections in a very convenient way and if there are several Pages like for instance here on autofocus manual focus and subsection number one then it switches to the next page so it doesn't jump immediately from one to two let's just try this here is the second page of subsection one under AF and MF and that's the way to jump to it and if there is no more page then it goes to the next sub section and here we also have several Pages here's page number one page number two and then it jumps to sub section number three number four number five and so on if you wanna now have access to the menu entries on these Pages you can use either this control wheel here which is very convenient you can also use the joystick and for the joystick you can also go back into the subsection and the main section and then with the joystick also have a quick access to all the main sections sub sections and menu entries and that's the way this layout menu is working since I want to reset the camera I use now the front wheel to go down to the very bottom here to the last main section and then we scroll the sub sections so we jump here from one to two and then we have setting reset so I push now the control button here and then I can say initialize and this will factory reset the camera and we can start to set up from scratch let's now do this initialize it asks for confirmations restore settings to the defaults and deletes registered data so if you have set up the camera before don't do it you will lose all the settings if you have not stored them somewhere so go to enter and then it asks again just to be on the safe side so you cannot accidentally reset or initialize your camera and I go into enter and now it's resetting the camera and it's like factory reset as if you would have taken it out of the box so you have to start from scratch with your setup so this one here is now factory reset and I always go for English language and then we have here privacy notice you need to confirm that you understand that and then we can set the area the date and the time so I go into enter and my time zone is Berlin Paris that's fine so we confirm you get here always some guidance what you need to push for cancel or okay and I want to have date month year that's the way we write it here in Europe and then we can set up the date and the time the date is today the 18th of December it's the last Sunday before Christmas so we go down here to 18. and then we go to December so 12 and it is still 2022 so this is set up on the current time you can decide whether you want to be in the 12 hour system or in the 24 hour system this is currently set up to 24 hours if I touch here it's now in the 12 hour system and I can switch back to 24 hour system by touching again and then we can go here to so this is 10 20. 20 it's 2024 so we go here to 24 . if you press and hold it it changes the numbers very quickly so it's really not a lot of time effort here 2024 in the meanwhile it's 2025 we can go here and now we can confirm by pressing the center button here on this control element and then you get here an interesting option to choose and if you shoot the camera on a tripod and don't have it hand hold in shooting then it will very likely not get as warm as if you have your hands wrapped around the camera and since these cameras here in the Sony lineup the Sony Alpha One and the Sony a7r Mark 5 can actually record 8K the camera might become warm and here you can say if it is on a tripod would you like to extend the auto power of temperature too high to allow for a bit more temperature before the camera is switching off I never had this issue that it automatically switches off but you can be here on a bit on the aggressive side so let's say set now the temperature of the device may rise to prioritize recording time would you like to change the setting yes I do Alright and then we can here connect the camera to Imaging Edge mobile which helps you to remotely shoot the camera I say I do register this later and then we are good to go let's now see how to set up the display brightness and the brightness of the electronic viewfinder so we go into the menu and in the menu we scroll down in the main sections all the way to the very last icon here and then we go through the pages until we find display settings so here we have monitor brightness and this is currently on manual and here we have several options first of all if I just push the control button here I can decide between manual which is enabling me to actually choose a different value here or I can say I'm in bright sunlight so let's go up to this menu entry here again and then I can say this is sunny weather and then the display will brighten up have a look much better in particular good for this tutorial now if you do that it will consume more power of course because a brighter display means more power consumption we can do the same on the viewfinder of course but in order to do that I need to look through the viewfinder which I cannot do currently so when I push that here it says look at the viewfinder while setting the brightness which makes a lot of sense of course and I cannot do this in the tutorial but the setting is kind of exactly the same now here in the sub section there are a bunch of other functions how you can tweak the evf and the LCD display and first of all you can select find a monitor here you can go to auto that means if your eye is approaching the evf then it decides to display the content in the evf if you get your eye off the evf it will show everything in the LCD you can also go for electronic viewfinder only or monitor only which is then a manual setting I recommend to leave this at Auto at all times because it's just convenient then we have here also a color temperature adjustment that's only for the VF here for the electronic viewfinder and you can make the image as you preview it a bit colder or a bit warmer and you can try this out by looking through the viewfinder and adjusting it then we have a viewfinder magnification and if you find the magnification basically means that if you go here and go to zoom out then your viewing angle the way you look through the viewfinder will become narrower and that's maybe easier if you wear glasses I keep this at standard here then we can choose on the display quality between standard and high I leave this at standard because this evf is really good enough and the display is also good enough and on the finder frame rate you can go here for a high frame rate or you can keep it at standard and if you go too high and in the same way here on the display quality to high it will consume more power so I recommend to leave this both at standard which is better what you should know is there is kind of a dependence between the two if you decide for find a frame rate to be hi let's do this quickly then display quality is grayed out and you can no longer choose whether you want a high or stun that it's just overwritten and that is something you need to know because otherwise it will confuse you that all of a sudden something is great out here so if you have that at standard you can go for high quality no problem but the moment in time you go here for high it flips back to standard and is grayed out on display quality nothing you can do about that what are the things I set up first when I get a camera like the Sony A7 R5 out of the box so what we need to do now is we need to go to the camera main section here and we can do this via the front wheel I showed this before we can either just go from the top here or we can also go in the other direction from here and then we have here basic settings on image quality so first of all I always stay here in the jpeg format although the heif is more efficient but I want to have this in jpeg then we have image quality settings here we have a first menu entry which is currently on jpeg only and that's something you want to avoid right if you go out and shoot with that camera now and you forget to set this setting to Raw then you have only jpeg images and you will have a lack of quality later in post so let's push the button here and then we go to Ron jpeg if you want to have that if you want to save storage on the capacity of your memory cards here go to Raw only and then do the trick in post-processing I typically want to have here raw and jpeg for a quick preview of my image and that's what I should choose here then we have the raw file type and here we have different options uncompressed that's a huge file size then three stages of lossless compression large medium small and compressed in my opinion uncompressed is always superior but you will not notice any difference if you go to lossless compression large here which is what we can choose if we want and I think in my experience this is good enough but you know since I'm a very pedantic person I will go to uncompressed here but if you want to save some storage capacity on your cards here go to lossless compression large it's good enough for short then we have here the jpeg quality I go here to extra fine to get as many details as possible in my jpeg image but again this influences to some extent your file size and then we can also go for the resolution here and clearly since I do all cropping in post I go for 60 megapixel here and then we go to OK and then image quality settings are completed let's quickly go through some other basic settings here first of all we have aspect ratio and aspect ratio can be set to 3 to 2 4 to 3 16 to 9 and the square and it will only impact the jpeg not the raw file so if you go here for instance for 16 to 9 your jpeg since I'm shooting in raw and jpeg will be cropped into a 16 to 9 aspect ratio but the raw file will still show the full sensor readout which is nice I typically leave that here because as I said all cropping happens in post doesn't make sense to crop a JPEG here up front then we have video formats on file format so this is currently set to an HD definition and I can set this here for instance even to 8K or to 4K that's the highest quality on 4K and then we have also on the movie settings here the frame rate and the record setting and on the record setting I couldn't go to whatever I want I typically go for 100m here 4 to 210 bit because that's my choice that's what I'm used to to work with and then you realize the recording frame rate here is grayed out it's always at 50p don't get confused by that if you go back here and go to a less demanding standard let's say 4K only here then you will be able to tweak the frame rate so let's go here and now you can choose between 50p and 25p in the way you might want to do it but I keep it here at the highest standard for 4K and then frame rate here is just grayed out the next menu entry in the camera menu on the sub section number one below movie settings is aps-c and super 35 millimeter shoot and this is currently on auto which means that if you mount here for instance in still images an aps-c lens then the camera will automatically crop for an aps-c size area on this full-frame sensor which is what's only used and I actually recommend to set this to off because I never want to accidentally end up in a situation where I shoot in a full frame setup all of a sudden with using only part of the sensor cropped to an aps-c format or in video to a super 35 millimeter and if you mount a lens which has been calculated for an aps-c for instance in still images format you should consciously switch this on but I would not leave it on auto because that might create once in a while a very bad surprise on the outcome of your images or videos next menu entry is a noise reduction and it's about long exposure noise reduction and that is typically set to on in the standard setting now if you shoot let's say a time lapse at night you might want to switch this off because then you don't have a dark frame subtraction which needs the same exposure time as the actual shot on the frame before and let's say you shoot with 20 seconds at night then you take the exposure 20 seconds then the dark frame subtraction kicks in if you have noise reduction here on on and that cost you another 20 seconds before you can take the next reframe so it's very useful that you can switch it off here but on the standard situation it should be on and you have also of course a high ISO noise reduction here which you can set to normal low or off and I typically have this on normal the next setting here is hlg still image and that sounds a bit cryptic but hlg stands for hybrid lock gamma and is actually the standard for HDR images now currently it's grayed out and the reason is that this setting only is activated if you shoot in hdif and we have set this here to JPEG and not to heif and we also need to change here and move away from raw so let's go here to JPEG and then let's activate here let's say h eif-422 and then if we go back here to this menu entry we can now choose whether hlg so hybrid lock gamma is off or whether it is on but I don't use that feature because I clearly want to shoot in raw and I also want to have JPEG and not heif so let's set this off let's go back quickly correct it so that I don't mess up my newly set up camera here and then everything is in good order and shape that's it and now since I'm back in my normal shooting mode here in terms of image quality settings this menu entry here hlg is again grayed out because no heif format is what I'm shooting color space is straightforward you can choose between srgb or adobe RGB that depends on your preferences for what you have also in post-processing later when you then work on the images you shut and then we have a last basic setting which is lens compensation and here I recommend to have everything on auto because then the camera software will do a lot of tricks which you otherwise have have to apply in post-processing the next basic feature I want to discuss are power saving options and for this we go into the menu and then on the main section using the front control wheel we go to the very bottom to the settings main section and then we can use the rear control wheel to actually go down to page number eight and on page number eight we first of all have Auto monitor off and I have set this to does not turn it automatically off but you can choose that if you don't use the camera after two seconds the monitor goes off after 5-10 seconds and one minute and that saves power consumption of course going back from here we come to the next entry which is power save start time and that is a bit of an unfortunate formulation like sometimes in the Sony camera menus because what it actually addresses has nothing to do with the start time it's the interval the camera Waits until it switches to a low power consumption mode and you can switch this to off then the camera will always be ready to 30 minutes so after 30 minutes of inactivity the camera will go into low power mode or 5 minutes 2 minutes 1 minute and 10 seconds let's try this out let's go to 10 seconds here and as long as I'm staying in the camera menu nothing will happen but if I go back into shooting mode here let's wait for 10 seconds so we just need to count down 10 seconds then the camera should switch automatically into low power mode so let's see and wait alright now the camera is in low power mode and that of course saves battery life if you want to reactivate it you just push any button here for instance the shutter release button and then it should wake up instantly again the problem is if you want to wake it up immediately after it went to sleep then you will have to wait for some time so let's wait another 10 seconds now it switches to low power mode and if I now want to activate it you see it takes some time and there is a transition time between the full power mode and the low power mode so I would not recommend to set this to 10 seconds because it will annoy you a lot the camera will go to sleep all the time and if you instantly want to wake it up it will take a few seconds until this happens so I typically would recommend to send this to 5 minutes for instance or if you want to be a bit more aggressive on power consumption to 30 minutes and then you know if you have a really long time of inactivity the camera will do its thing and put itself into low power mode next entry here is an interesting feature which not many people will be aware of and I also zoomed out a little bit on my filming camera to make this better transparent to you what happens here so power save by monitor both linked means that whenever I close the monitor in a way that it is protected from scratches here so here this surface here is protecting it and the LCD is actually facing the inside of the camera body it will go instantly into power save mode Let's have a look now the camera switched into power save mode and if I want to wake it up again I just have to open the monitor your seats dark for a moment and now it's waking up in a couple of seconds here we go so it woke up and that's what means if you have in the menu entry here both linked you can also choose in the options here that it returns if you open that it goes into power save if you close but then you don't have it linked in both directions so closing and opening and you can also say that it does not Link at all which we can just quickly try out so now if I take the monitor here I rotate it I get it back in it will stay awake it will not go into sleep or low power consumption mode if I open it up it's immediately there and that's the way this feature works here I think actually both linked is the right setting here I like that feature a lot because you can steer via the monitor whether your camera goes into low power mode or just stays awake and then the last menu entry here is auto power off temperature and that's something we saw when we initially set up the camera because we were asked by the camera if you want to have this on high or on standard and what it means is on high it waits longer allows for a higher temperature and video shooting before it automatically switches off the camera to protect everything that's inside the camera and I have this on high so a bit more on the aggressive side and if you have not decided for high at the standard setting at the very initialization of the camera you can do so here in that menu entry you get the warning but then you're good to go to have auto power of temperature on high let's talk now about touch functionality and we go into the menu we stay on the main section on settings and then we go up on the pages until we come to page number five which then takes us into touch operation sensitivity touch panel pad and so on and I'm going to walk through all of them to explain you how they work and how you can tweak the settings the first menu entry is touch operation and here you can deactivate touch at all if you go to off and whatever you do here nothing will happen you can touch whatever you want there is no reaction even if you go into the function menu which we are going to cover later if you tap here nothing will happen and if you are on playback mode so let's go here into playback we have an image here from New York you cannot pinch to zoom you cannot swipe nothing will happen the touch functionality is completely disabled let's go back into the menu and let's activate now on playback only if we do that and we go back into shooting mode in live view still nothing works here we cannot touch no reaction to my touch or finger Taps but if we go into playback mode we can for instance now zoom in here if I tap this you get all the details of this image I can zoom out I can also pinch to zoom and pinch back I can also swipe between different images let me do that so here we can swipe no matter what we can always use the usual touch functionality in playback mode like you're used to doing it on your smartphone for instance alright let's go back into live view let's go back into the menu and now let's say we want to have touch operation on and then it's not only working in playback mode like you see here so again let me zoom into that picture maybe here double tap let me zoom out double tap and so on all the gestures you're used to from your smartphone you can also use it now in live view and if I tap for instance now on the background lights here they will become sharp and in focus and the focus moves away from my foreground which is my The Witcher model here to the background lights and it also says here tracking cancel that means it's now in some kind of tracking mode and that can confuse you because that's the setting what you have if you take the camera out of box and in order to cancel the tracking you have to push the control button here at the center and then you see it moves back to the foreground I could now easily focus by halfway pressing the shutter button I will come back to that tracking feature later in the video or in a moment let's go back into the menu so we have touch operation on and then we have touch sensitivity and there is standard and sensitive sensitive is very useful if you want to operate the camera with gloves if you don't wear gloves in Winter for instance when it is cold outside you don't need sensitive if just keep it to standard let's go back here to the menu then we have touch panel and touch pad and that's an interesting notion Sony is using here so for instance whenever you operate with your finger on the LCD screen that area is called a touch panel and that means you are in live Shooting via the LCD and the live view on the LCD screen if you use the electronic viewfinder so you have your eyes close to the electronic viewfinder then you can use the LCD screen as a touch pad in order to move your focus field for instance and here we have now a couple of options let's go into that menu here and then we have first of all both valid and both valid means that whenever you have your eye on the electronic viewfinder you can use the LCD as a touchpad to move your focus field for instance and if both valid is activated you also if you don't shoot via evf but shoot in live view on the LCD you can also use the LCD as a touch panel for your touch operations if you move here to to touch panel only then only if you are shooting in live mode with the LCD and if you are not having your eye on the electronic viewfinder you have that touch functionality and if you move to touchpad only it's the same story reversed your LCD is not used as a touch panel but if you have your eye on the electronic viewfinder you can use the LCD with the touch functionality as a touchpad now the question is what's the right setting for you for me actually it is touch panel only which is also the default selection if you get the camera out of box and the reason is that if I'm here in live view and I look at the LCD don't have my eye on the evf I'm happy to choose the touch functionality to operate the camera but if I have my eye on the electronic viewfinder I have my pointing finger on the shutter release button I cannot reach a lot of the LCD anyway now you can tweak what area is used as a touchpad I show that in a moment but for me that feature is just not feasible so I keep it here on the menu entry on touch panel on but it's up to you of course and how you want to get used to it if you shoot via the evf how to move the touch functionality and the operations via your finger while your eye is on the evf the next setting is touch panel settings and there is only one thing you can tweak here namely a swipe up question that means if I swipe up with my finger on the LCD screen it opens the function or FN menu in the same way as if I would have pushed this button here so let's first of all have to set off and if I swipe up nothing will happen except that the focus field will try to move and log on so see nothing happens here then the tracking cancel is available again but if I set this to on here then that swipe up gesture should actually work and bring up the function menu typically you have this on that button here so here it comes up hiding it coming up hiding it but let's nevertheless try it out so if we swipe up the FN menu pops up in the way we programmed it in the settings for me this setting definitely is at off because we'll later see in the customization of function buttons that there is no other function I can assign to the FN button than just bringing up the FN menu so there's also no need for an alternative way to get into the FN menu via gesture and by the way remember what I said previously namely touch panel addresses the LCD if your eye is not on the evf and touchpad settings which is what we will look at next is if you have your eye on the evf and you still want to with the selected area on the LCD screen for instance near your focus field so on touchpad settings we can now go into that menu and first of all we can select whether to show should also work in vertical orientation or portrait mode and we can switch this on or off it's currently on but it can be confusing if you have rotated the camera by 90 degrees to still get the operations right then we can choose between touch position mode and we can go for absolute position or relative position absolute position is still on here but if you want to go for relative position it might be sometimes a bit easier because it's on the increment you are moving for instance a focus field I personally don't use the touchpad mode that's why the touchpad position mode setting here is not really relevant for me I recommend that you try this out and see what's working in your workflow and then we have operation area and that's interesting you can go here for the whole screen which is not feasible for me see if I have my pointing finger on the shutter release button I cannot get more far than here on this right hand side of the LCD screen to use this part here as a touchpad so that would probably for me the right setting you also have it even smaller if your hand is smaller and and then you have also upper right lower right left one half of the screen that would then be here so you would not have your hand around the lens like I typically have it but you would have it here and operate it with your left hand thumb or you would have it even smaller on the left hand side or you would have it in the upper or lower left so there are lots of options I think that is something where a recommendation is pointless because you have to try this out you have to experiment if you want to use first of all the touchpad when you have your eye on the evf then if you want to use it where do you want to have your operations taking place right hand side left hand side upper lower corners and how large this area of touchpad operation should be for you and then last but not least we have the touch function in shooting and here we have currently activated touch tracking that's how it comes out of the box and let me illustrate this again let's go here to the background and then it will start to track the background light so they are fixed mounted on the wall nothing exciting will happen here and but that's what it is and I can stop tracking by pushing the sender button here there are other options now we can try out so there is touch Focus only if we go on that one it should actually Focus where I touch or tap on the LCD screen now when you have set this up and you touch somewhere don't be disappointed because you need to still half press the shutter button so let me try to illustrate this again that's the way it works I looked it up in the manual no other way to do it point the focus field where you want with your touch and then Focus the other half pressing the shutter button but if you want to accelerate your workflow in a way that if you tap here somewhere and you want the focus to switch to there immediately without half pressing the shutter button and taking the shot that's an option you can take in the menu so if we go back here then we have here an option which is called touch shutter now this is grayed out and it says it's not available in the way this is set up currently on the focus area so we need to go into Focus area which is a topic by itself I'm going to cover later and in the focus area let's go let's say we want to have here white and then we should actually get this option no longer great out here and you see touch shutter so let's activate this and now when I tap somewhere on the LCD screen I don't have to have my pointing finger on the shutter release button it will focus and immediately take the shot let's have a look here on the background lights boom shots taken foreground model shot taken that's the way it works on playback you see the shot has been taken in the way I want to have it so that's a way to accelerate that whole workflow without even having your pointing finger on the shutter release button you just go on touch Focus here in the way we activated it and then wherever you tap it will immediately take the shot and have the focus spot on on that point in the area where you tapped quite easy isn't it of course I can also deactivate all touch functions in shooting so if I go to off here and go back to live view I see here in this little icon that touch on my hand here and the pointing finger is off and now I can toggle through all the options I just have chosen in the menu so this is to place my focus field then I have press the shutter button and focus and I'm good to go same way on my model here sorry that wasn't placed in the right way half pressed the shutter button by the way jumps immediately to the eye which is what I'm going to show later in the video and then we can toggle further here so now we have here the tracking so if I focus on my model it starts the tracking of the face then I can deactivate the tracking or cancel it by pushing the center button and then one more option we have here is sorry let me toggle through this again is the direct chat without having my pointing finger on the shutter release button so if I point here on the model it takes the photo immediately and then in playback I have it here and can zoom in and what have you let's quickly do this pinpoint sharp right so that's the way to go you don't have to go to the menu just use that functionality here and if you want to quickly shut down all touch functionality just switch it to off that's all I wanted to say on touch functionality I walked through all these menu entries and I think it's really a bit more complex than you would assume at First Sight let's now talk about customization of the A7 R5 and there are so many different ways you can customize this wonderful camera to make it truly your own camera your own tool for your individual tailor-made workflow in photography and the first topic I want to talk about is how to create your own custom tailor-made menu and there is a dedicated icon for that if we go along the main sections and scroll up here to that very first symbol which indicates favorites then you have an option to add items here delete them sort create Pages you can really build and construct your own menu with the most important menu entries you want to have at your your disposal at all time with an easy access so let's collect some items here under add item and I don't need jpeg heif I leave this at jpeg at all times but I want to have image quality settings file format movie settings you know slow motion and so on so let's start with let's say file format here and let's say I add this to this location and then it's edit let's continue and let's say we want to have movie settings and movie settings we can now add either at the end of the list or at the beginning of the list you see that red line here jumping up and down and let's say we have this here at the end of the list so I added here that's also added now I also said I want to have image quality settings and let's add this now here at the very beginning of the list so at the top so I move up this red line here you see this jumping up and let's add it here and let's see what we created so far so if I go into live view and shooting mode and then going back into the menu here and going one step to the left I see here my menu one I also have still my menu settings so I can continue to add items and what have you but my menu one now has these three entries in the order how I assembled them into the list and that's my first tailor-made menu screen here let's add one more item so let's go to my menu setting at item and let's get here the slow motion and quick motion settings let's add them under the movie settings and if later on I decide that this is not what I want I can go back here so first of all you see here menu back is something I can also operate by touch and then I can say I want to delete an item and then it asks me what item I want to delete and that one I just added so let's delete it away again let's push it here delete this item okay and then the list again has the three original settings I stored in that list I can also say my whole page is crap and go back here into my menu settings and say delete page and then I I say this is the page my menu one which I don't like I made a lot of mistakes when I assembled these items into a list so I can delete it and then if I press OK this list is gone and is history and now I have to start all over from scratch to add my items in order not to bore you I restart my list now because I don't want to become overly repetitive but there are more things I can do I can also Resort entries in that menu here so let's go here to sort item and let's pick for instance movie settings and then you see the red line here so this is the position where it jumps to I can get it there or I can get it here or I can even get it to a new menu page and you see here there are six different Menu Pages I can actually populate here and that's quite nice gives me a lot of flexibility I'm going to show you that in a moment how that works but for the time being let's say I want to have movie settings at the top of the list so I do it and then it's reordered in the way you see it here on screen let's now look into how to create different Menu Pages and make this even what Taylor Made let's say I want to have one menu here for still images and one menu for video and movies and let's try to arrange this now let's say I want to have movie settings on a different page so we go here into my menu settings and we say sort item let's pick movie settings again and let's move it down now now it's here now it's below file format and now it jumps to my menu too so let's put it there let's add it to this location and let's do the same with file format which is also video setting so let's pick it let's move it down and let's move it into my menu too and let's move it below movie settings so here we go and if I now look at what I created I have now my menu one for still images image quality settings and I have my menu too for movie and video settings which is the movie settings and the file format quite nice quite flexible let's add one more item here so let's go to add item and let's this time go into drive mode and under drive mode let's say we want to have the interval shooting function so select it but now I can here immediately go and let's say I want to have my menu number five because later I want to fill in something under my menu three and four so I can add this to this location and then it's edit and then if I go back here I have now three pages my menu one my menu two my menu 5 and on my menu 5 I have interval shooting function so that's the way this works I think I Illustrated this in detail now and you can figure out your way yourself to make this camera your own on the favorites menu there is one more thing I want to mention namely here is one option where it says display from my menu off and on and if it is off and I'm let's say in the menu on the main section on let's go to autofocus and manual focus and let's go somewhere here and I choose this for instance whatever it is I go back into live view and shooting and then if I press the menu button again it takes me back to that function where I left the menu which is quite nice let's try this again let's go here for instance to the camera menu and on the camera menu let's go to aspect ratio and if I now go into shooting mode and Press menu it comes back to that setting I think that's the most convenient way to have it but you have the option if you go up here into the favorites menu again and we go back into my menu settings and I say now display from my menu into on then whenever I'm in shooting mode and go back into menu it goes immediately into the favorites menu here so let's say I'm here on the image quality settings I leave the menu I go on the menu button it takes me there and if I go somewhere else on the menu let's now go here to autofocus manual focus again and let's say we go here into autofocus Illuminator and we leave it now if I press the menu button it will not take me back to that last setting but into my own tailor-made menu which is the image quality settings and that's the way what the setting is for if you go here and and have this on on it always comes to your favorites if you have it on off it will always get back to the menu where it was left before which I think is the more convenient setting let's now talk about the FN menu settings and you get into this by pushing the FN button and then it shows up and if you push the button again it hides away as I showed in section 21 of this video you can also swipe up to get into this FN menu here if you have set this up accordingly in the touch functionality which is here and the touch panel settings and then you go to swipe up and then it opens the FN menu in the way I showed before in section 21 but as said there I will not use the swiping up feature because there is no other function I can assign to the FN button than just bringing up the FN menu and hiding it what can we do with the FN menu it gives us easy access to settings we prefer to have at disposal at all times and the first one here is the drive mode I've by the way already customized this so these are not the original settings out of the box and we can cast customize this photo I'm going to show this in a moment but how to operate it is simple you can use the joystick and you can then push here for instance and get up the settings here on the left hand side for instance on the focus mode so single automatic continuous and what have you you can also use this four Direction control going up going down going sidewards that's all fine and then if you want to change something let's say here on metering mode you just rotate and then it gives you the options here and you can scroll through so spot standard for instance sender multimetering mode and so on you can also if you have selected the field let's say here for instance on drive mode use the front control wheel here and go through the same settings as what we just saw with this wheel here so there are many ways to operate the FN menu and probably there are more ways than what I've just shown here but these are the most common ones as I said before I already made some selections here and customized my FN menu but what if I want to change it what if face memory here is something I don't use that often and want to replace place it by something I use more frequently then we go into the menu and in the menu we are on the main sections in the settings and in the sub sections we go up to page number three and then we have here FN menu settings and if I go into that I get F and menu settings to be customizable for still images as well as for movie shooting and I can do them individually and there is no dependence between the two so what I wanted to change here on still images is face memory and replace it by something else and they are also here three layers there is a main layer here and then there is a sub layer and then there are entries which I can choose to appear as a function on this particular field and let's say I want to go here to image quality and I want to have here maybe under file create a new folder let's say that's the one I choose if I press now the center button you see my icon here changed and that's the way to customize this let's do another one here let's say white balance is not what I want let's go here to color tone let's say we want to switch here on or off to the range optimizer let's choose it and then you see how these two fields in this two by six Matrix changed and that's the way to use it if I go now back here and push the FN button I have here now my create new folder and here I have the derange optimizer in the way I customized it if you're interested in my final selection for the function FN menu here it is so I have on the first position the drive mode then Focus mode Focus area subject recognition autofocus face priority in multimetering mode recognition Target then right left eye selection face memory metering mode which is important I toggle this in different ways all the time image quality settings interval shooting and pixel shift multi-show and that's the way I go for it for still images and in the same ways I customized this here and I showed and demonstrated to you you can also customize now your FN menu in movie and video shooting let's now talk about customizing buttons control wheels and what have you and first of all a lot of buttons here are pre-configured when you take the camera out of box for instance here you see markings ISO display the series for drive mode so let's try this out if I go here to the right hand side it brings me the iso menu and I can also choose here on the iso range what is the minimum what is the maximum if I'm on auto ISO then I have the native base eyes or off the camera 50 and then it goes up all the way let's call through this very quickly which becomes very bright so we are here now at 64 000 80 000 ISO and 102 400 so that's quite a lot to offer here on the sensitivity settings then we have here on the left hand side drive mode if I go into that I get my drive mode settings and I also configured this as you saw before on the FN menu here on the upper left hand side and that is of course a duplication so I could change that if I wanted and then we have the display button and it toggles through different views on the live view here so here we have a different view we have here a histogram for instance coming up we have here level metering the camera we have here an oversized screen with all the settings we've chosen so far and then we are back in the original mode and that's the way to toggle through the display settings and that is of course convenient the good news is we can customize them individually for still image shooting and for video shooting which is then the second menu here so let's go into that and then we get here an illustration on the right hand side of the camera and we have basically five pages so this is page number one or five page number two page number three four and five and on all of these Pages we can customize certain buttons here for certain functions or features let's start with page number one to get into it you either push the center button here or you just go to the right here and then you come into Auto exposure lock that's this one here you see here a tiny little orange marking of the button we are talking about we have the back button Focus here we have white balance which is C1 here on the camera we have Focus mode which is this button here sorry and then we have touch operation select which is actually at the trash bin here so let's try this out I think we looked already in back button Focus Auto exposure lock gives you here a little symbol with an asterisk so you see that then we have here white balance this comes up here so we can scroll through our white balance settings and then we have here the focus mode which I also have on a different place on the camera and then we have here Below on the trash bin we have the touch operation off or touch operation on which we can also toggle by this little icon we saw before more but the difference is if you do it via the trash bin it's basically gone so here is also switched off but if I push the trash bin button again this icon is gone and then I cannot accidentally by touch activate or deactivate certain touch functions moving on to page number two we have here the focus standard on the joystick then we have the center button not set to anything special than just the choice or selection button we have the drive mode which I showed before we have the iso mode and you see here again this orange marking on that little graphic here and then we have another function not set so if you want to set that now we push the center button and then we have again main layers here we have sub layers and we have entries and if I want to now assign a function or feature to pushing this down here let's select something let's go here maybe into let me see what I want here um I think silent mode is good let's go to switch to silent mode I activate it and now you see it's populated from nothing is signed before or not set as it also says under two switch to silent mode let's try this out quickly let's go into that and now we have silent mode on silent mode off and that's the way you can customize these type of functions on page number three we see buttons at the top of the camera so the movie button which is also indicated by a red circle and custom function button number two and we also have of course the button on the lens because these G Master lenses like the 24 1.4 which is currently mounted they also have a function button on the lens and that is pre-populated typically with Focus hold which is not what I want I'd rather want to have here exposure and then want to have exposure Auto exposure lock and let's assign this here and if we go back now here and push that button on the lens you will see that asterisk coming up here which we saw before which indicates as long as I press and hold it I have Auto exposure lock activated on the camera the same customization options we have for movie shooting so if we go in here we again have five pages and we can individually assign functions to these buttons and control wheels so that they suit the workflow in a video shooting if you take the camera freshly out of box most of these customizations here follow the settings which are applied in still image shooting so you see here this little camera icon in Brackets and if I scroll down by the way I also can do this instead of using this control here I can also go by the control wheel here on the rear side you see most of it is set to the same settings as what we customized before here under still image shooting so that's kind of coupled but we can also decouple it in different settings so let's try this out let's say for instance I want to go here on custom button number two and want to change this I can also individually choose whatever I want so there is no need to bind this to the settings we have under the still image section in playback mode we have much less options if I go into that we have rear side three buttons to customize and top side two buttons and you also see here follow custom that means it follows the settings we have for instance the still image mode so not much to do here there are a couple of more things I want to point out on customization of buttons and the first one is let's go into still image shooting there are certain Elements which cannot be customized and I mentioned before that the FN button is one of them so let's go into here and then we follow the orange dot here and you see the FN button no matter what I do so here I'm currently now on Focus standard which is the joystick here but if I go further down it jumps immediately to the center button here so the FN button is omitted and I cannot assign any other function to FN than just bringing up the FN menu and that's why I also don't need that swipe gesture which we looked into under touch functionality another setting on buttons which is also embedded here is not only the FN button but also the display setting here you see jumps from the joystick immediately to the center button and then goes to the left hand side the right hand side and the down button here and the display button is submitted so there's no way to give this here A different meaning than just talking through the different display views and the second remark I want to make is you can also customize control wheels and that's at the fifth page here on custom key dial settings and first of all we can hear checkbox whether we want a separation of shooting in fully manual mode or in program mode in aperture priority or shutter priority and if I check box this I get a second column here which gives me then control so I can distinguish between fully manual mode and automatic or semi-automatic modes let's quickly go through the default settings here so I'm in the manual mode column here and then it says in Brackets what my front control wheel which is number one here is doing it namely controls the aperture value and of course if I have an aperture ring on the lens like here on the 1.4 24 millimeter G master I can also use that aperture ring and then on the rear control wheel on the left hand side we can change the shutter speed and on the second on the right hand side the rear control wheel we can do exposure compensation that's the way it is set up now in the column for manual mode and on all other modes we see here that we can control if we have an aperture priority the aperture value on the front and the rear control wheel and if we are in shutter speed priority we can control the shutter speed on the rear and the front wheel and we have exposure compensation on the same wheel as where it was sitting on fully manual mode of course I can customize this now I don't want to change these settings in the first two rows so in one and two because they are natural choices of what should happen if I operate the control Wheels but let's say in fully manual mode I don't want to have exposure compensation I want to have ISO here so let's push the center button let's go and to exposure and then let's select ISO here and then it changed you CT and the entry on this table it changed and if I'm in fully manual mode now I can control with this wheel here which is indicated with an orange color here the iso value that's actually all I wanted to say on customization of buttons and control wheels and you see this camera body is highly flexible you can create your own workflow here and set this up in the way best possible suiting your shooting and helping you to take great images since we just spent a lot of time in the main section on settings and subsection number three let's look into something else which is worthwhile a tip namely different set for stilts and movies and that is an interesting one because normally for instance aperture shutter speed ISO exposure compensation metering mode white balance and so on that all is coupled and bound together means what you set up under still images will also be the same setting under movie shooting let's not try this out so I'm here in aperture priority and I've set my aperture to F 1.4 and on the menu here I've not checkboxed anything so now we should have a one-on-one relationship between parameters set in still images and they should be carried over into movie shooting let's try this out I go here into movie mode and then you see the same aperture as what's selected on still image shooting let's now go back to still images and let's go into that menu here and let's change the setting for the aperture so I simply check box this here don't forget to push OK otherwise it will not take that value as checkbox and what happens now is if I let's say stop down here to an F 4.0 and switch into movie mode it still has the former value of f 1.4 so a separation took place here let's here stop down to an F 2.8 and go back into still images it still has the before chosen F 4.0 so we have separated now for the aperture in particular the settings between still image shooting and movie shooting if I now go back to the menu and deactivate that check box here so I take it away again again don't forget to press OK here otherwise it will not be set and then we have here in still image shooting F 4.0 and you remember before on movie shooting we were at F 2.8 but now if we switch to movie shooting it's again F 4.0 so we have coupled it back to the still image shooting that's the way this works and is quite interesting that you can do this and I like this feature a lot it looks like a minor thing a minor tweak but it can actually change the world if you switch a lot between still image shooting and movie shooting by the way if you want to replicate this exercise for yourself make sure if you have an aperture ring on your Sony lens like I have it here on my G master 1.424 millimeter to have the aperture into the a setting because if you set the aperture ring manually to an aperture on the lens it will always use this aperture independently of whether you couple or decouple the settings between still images and movie shooting so make sure your lens is in the a mode on the aperture ring before you repeat this exercise for yourself let's look into a totally different topic namely silent shooting let's say you are a wedding photographer you are shooting in a church you don't want to be disruptive so you want to get all noise eliminated from your shooting and the already customized here the down button to switch between silent mode on and silent mode off and if silent mode is off we have first of all the beep here and I'm currently ozone mechanical shutter so you will also hear the shutter noise let's do this beep Shadow noise pip shutter noise so that's not silent if we switch now silent mode on the beep will be eliminated and the shutter will switch from mechanical to electronic shutter let's do this again no noise at all right but there is one caveat if we stop down now and by the way let's do this here now again on the aperture ring so let's say we stop down to an f8 there is some residual noise which you will hear in a moment so let me try to get my microphone from my body away to the lens here and let's try to do this again let me just try to get this right so I move this here to the lens and then I halfway press the shutter button listen to that sound when I focus do you hear that noise and that is coming actually from the aperture opening widely for being quicker in autofocus so let's have a look and turn around the camera so I will stop down at f8 let's quickly open the aperture so you see the moving parts here the aperture gets opened to its widest open setting of f 1.4 and if I focus now the aperture is already wide open and therefore catches sufficient light to get a quick autofocus executed let's try to focus by halfway pressing the shutter button so nothing happens here because it's wide open if I stop down again to F 8.0 and you see it stop down now and if I now have pressed the shutter button you see it will open and if I again place my microphone next to the lens you will hear that noise so why is it opening it's opening because it catches more light in that way and autofocus will have a better performance and that makes some noise if you open the aperture in the focusing process by halfway pressing the shutter button now there is actually a setting in the menu where you can tweak this and get rid of that noise coming from the aperture when it is stopped down widening up to actually catch more light for the focusing process and that setting here is on the autofocus manual focus and it's called aperture Drive in autofocus unfortunately it's grayed out and if I press the sender button here it says this operation or setting is not available in silent mode on and that's what we had here right we have silent mode on so let's switch silent mode off and let's go into the menu again and now this aperture Drive in autofocus is actually available and has three settings here Focus priority so it will open even wider the aperture when it focuses standard that's a balance and then silent priority let me quick quickly try this out under standard you still hear that noise we now need to by the way get separately in separate ways rid of the beep and the way to do this is to go into the menu go into the settings and then in the settings we go here to sound option and then we say audio signals off and then the beep is gone we still have the aperture noise and we can also switch now to electronic shutter so here we are still on mechanical shutter listen to the shutter sound and we now go to electronic shutter and we find this here in the menu in the camera menu under shutter and silent and then we can say here we want the shutter silent mode settings that's currently set to off but we go now to shutter type and say hey electronic shutter and now All That Remains the beep is gone the shutter sound is gone but the aperture is still making that noise let me get again the microphone close to the lens so you hear this it's still there now if you go to the menu now and go back here to where we've been before namely to autofocus manual focus let's quickly go there and then we have here aperture Drive in autofocus and now since we are not in silent mode but we manually deactivated the beep and switch from mechanic to electronic shutter this is no longer grayed out and if I now go here to silent priority and let me get the microphone again close to the lens you will not hear that sound any longer let's just do this now it's completely silent but you also see it's a bit hunting force and back on the focus and that was the warning we just saw on that setting let's go back into the menu and if we go here to standard and then switch back to silent priority it says the focusing speed May decrease because the aperture and the focusing process is not getting wider therefore not catching enough light and that's why your focus slows down but the noise is eliminated and that might be your priority once in a while there is not a big difference between standard and focus priority I tested this in the past but you know if you are obsessed by having the fastest autofocus at all times you might want to go here to focus priority and then it says the aperture Drive may be audible so let's also listen to that sound here if you hear a difference between standard I don't think there is a difference but the autofocus feels a bit more spot on and a bit more Snappy and that's the trick I wanted to mention told the silence in shooting is only possible if you do eliminate the beep by manual tweaking as well as switching in manual ways from mechanical to electronic shutter and then in aperture Drive in autofocus Focus priority going to silent you will sacrifice Focus speed but your camera will be absolutely silent no noise at all even if I go with my microphone now to the lens again absolutely silent compared to what we had before when in the setting we had here let's go back to the menu when in the setting we had here standard and then focused so that's the way to do it and I hope that trick is useful to you it's just one of many tips and tricks I provide in this video let's turn our attention to the menu again and there is one main section of the menu I didn't touch upon yet and that's the second one here so if we are up here we have the favorites that's the customizable menu so your tailor-made menu I covered that in detail then we have the camera menu here and in between is something that's called the main screen and here on the main screen you have in the same way as on let's say the queue menu on Fuji cameras or the status screen on Leica SL and Leica Q cameras an overview of most important shooting parameters in one view it not only gives you the information of what you're currently shooting with you also can set this up for instance by touch or via the joystick or via the control wheel what have you and you can look this up let's say aspect ratio for instance push it and then you can change your aspect ratio to 16 to 9 and it will be taken over immediately here so that's very simple you have all the information the essential information you need in one View and you can also immediately change it if you want you have a similar status screen or main menu on video mode so if I switch here now to video mode and go back into the menu I have different entries of course for instance the microphone level here which is then matching video mode so everything I'm going to show on the still images also applies to videos here let's go back to still images let's have a look at that screen now in particular useful would be if I could customize this that whenever I push a button this data screen comes up where I can immediately change my settings in a very convenient way and that's actually possible by the customization we learned before about all these buttons on the camera body let's show how to do this let's go on the main sections to the settings we've been there before under Pages let's go here until we come to custom key dial settings for still images as I said if you want to change this for the video mode go to the video custom key dial settings then we go here and we choose one particular button here let's say here we have let's see what button I want to have let's say button number five here which is C4 and that is the button we want to use so let's push this here and now let's go back here into the settings and then in the settings we find here first of all display my menu that's what we customize sometime early in the video and then we have display the main menu and if I select this it's selected here and now whenever I push here the trash bin button it brings up that main menu and I can immediately tweak important settings on my shooting parameters which is quite convenient since we covered quite some ground now in the course of this video let's look into a couple of Easy Settings which will be very short in description and first of all you have here release without a lens and you can enable this or disable it I recommend enabling this because you will immediately see if you have not mounted the lens but if you don't enable it and you shoot with third-party lenses and third-party adapters then it will not work if you have switched here to disable so keep it at enable that's the setting you should have that way the next one you need a word of caution here never have enabled shooting or releasing without a cart because your images will end up in nirvana in nowhere you will not find them and you will be under the impression that you have shut nice images but nothing will be there if you finally want to upload it to your computer so always disable release without a card because that's dangerous whereas a lens you see immediately when you have the camera in hand whether you have a card inside that slot or not that is not so easy to see at first sight so keep this disabled at all times let's talk a bit about memory cards storage and recording settings first of all in order to get the best out of the camera you need to have very fast memory cards and I use in my camera here compact flash Express type A cards directly from Sony huge capacity unfortunately super expensive but also super robust and I have the same card in both slots so I have two of them and that means I can enable here backup recording which I'm going to show in a moment you can also operate this camera via SD cards but SD cards never reach the transfer rates you have on compact flash Express type A cards so you are better advised using compact flash Express then SD cards on the Sony a7r5 now let's go into recording settings and we find this here in the main section on the camera then in the sub section here on the media and then we find recording media settings and here you have different options first of all on the camera there is a distinction between recording still images and video because you might want to have different preferences for both types of footage let's look into the options we get for still images so we can record them on card number one in slot one card number two in slot two I can simultaneously record which is my choice because then I get the same footage on both cards and if one card accidentally would break down I still have all of my footage on the second card so I will also go for recording media on movies into simultaneous recording you also get a nice little illustration down here what you've actually set up here so let's try this out let's go back to still images let's say we record them on slot number one and then you see here the still images are only on card number one which in my setting which we did at the beginning of the video is raw and jpeg in the X fine resolution with 60 megapixels so that's all Illustrated here if I go back to simultaneous recording it will show that this is simultaneously recorded on both slots other configurations which would make sense are the following let's say we want to have still images on slot number one and movies on slot number two so you know exactly where your videos end up and where you still images end up that's of course one configuration which makes sense another one would be to say we have here sort recording and on the still images and then conveniently here you can go to image quality settings which carries you back to one of the earliest screens I've shown here in this video you can also tap on that of course let's say we have chosen here salt recording then you just touch here and then you get back into the image quality settings and then we can say for instance that we want to have jpegs on slot number one and we want to have raw images on slot number two so we know exactly where the jpegs are for the preview and where the final footage is I want to then work on in post on image quality settings I switch now back to the original settings I had at the beginning of this video raw and jpeg raw uncompressed then here jpeg quality extra fine and 60 megapixel now that screen looked differently when we just jump into it coming from recording media and the reason is if you go here to sort recording and you go back into image quality settings then the screen changed and you see now I have Raw on slot 1 and Slot 2 and no longer raw and jpeg because now I indicated here in record media settings that I want to sort my footage and the camera is smart enough to note that so it changes my configuration here which I don't want to have so let's go back here let's go again to simultaneous recording and then if I jump back my original configuration is untouched in the way I want to have it the last point to mention here is if I would say I record everything on slot 1 and do this also for videos then I can enable auto switch media on and that means if my card one is basically full and all the footage is on that card there is no more space any longer than the camera switches automatically to card number two I would call this an overflow function so the footage flows over to the second card if the first card is completely depleted my configuration here as I said a moment ago is simultaneous simultaneous this one here is on off because then it doesn't make sense any longer and I preserve my image quality settings in the way I set them up at the beginning of the video the next tip concerns file and folder settings and that's in the main section under camera subsection file which is number three and then file folder settings if we go into that you can change a couple of things first of all you can reset the counter on your images and typically it's counting up all the time until you reset it now I never reset this because it gives me also the shutter count of the camera so I would not recommend doing this but if you want to start from scratch with image number one that's your way to go then you can also have a forced file number reset and that means that you do a reset on the still image file number and you also create a new folder in one shot and if you want to do that if this is helpful for you because you want to have a different way to sort your images for instance then this is what you can do here more interesting for me is set file name let's go into that here and the standard default value if you take the camera out of box is DSC which is typical for Sony let's tap into that and let's change it and what I want to do here now is first of all I erased these three letters you only have three but what I want to do here is since I shoot with many different camera brands I want to have here an s then I want to have here an o and then I want to have an N to indicate to me that this is footage coming from a Sony camera and that's the way to go for me you might also go for a7r or a75 what have you whatever in terms of acronyms is helping you to identify images coming from this particular camera and then the last option on this page here is the folder name you can go for the standard form which is what you typically see when you open the memory card on your MacBook or you can also go for the date which can be helpful sometimes to identify immediately when the shooting took place another important section here is copyright info I think that becomes more and more important for pro photographers because people tend to steal your images from platforms social media what have you now it's not a perfect protection of course because you can edit metadata with suitable editors but for me I always do this and let's quickly do that so I can tap here I want to have here math photographer let's do this in this way when you have filled in your information you can push OK and then it's stored you go another time to OK and that's it do the same on copyright and let's do this here when you fill in your information you can display it by going to this section here and then it shows you the photographer name as well as the copyright holder name and you can also write this into metadata by going here to on and then this is represented in the metadata and everyone who opens this and has not manipulated your metadata will see that this is an image taken by you besides the copyright info which can actually have an explicit name like in my example here math photographer you can also direct the camera to write the serial number in the metadata which is actually a good idea because it also is an additional layer of protection if someone claims that an image is from her or him and you know that this image is from you you can verify this in the metadata if it has not been manipulated before we had a serial number of your camera last but not least we have on this section here the option to write iptc information into the metadata of the camera so you always have a good image management here and iptc stands for international press and Telecommunications Council and it's a standard where you can download the preset from the Sony website and then populate it for instance with the models you've used in your shooting with the location with copyright its licenses what have you and that all is then stored in the image in the metadata which is very convenient and as I said it's an expression of good image management I'm sure you will have my next tip because it will make your workflow and your life much easier and what I have done now here is let's go into the FN menu I have set up this camera now let's say for landscape cityscape for still scenes where nothing is moving where we don't have to recognize faces where we don't have sports in action so I have here first of all single shooting in drive mode I have here autofocus single I have Focus area spot small I have switched off subject recognition and so on and that is a typical scenario I've programmed here which you use for instance for landscape now let's say you've grabbed your camera and you walk a city and you do street photography with that setup and you use the settings you have here what if all of a sudden you come to a sports and action scene which fascinates you so much that you want to shoot it then you have to go tediously in into the FN menu and start to tweak all these settings into some parametrization which are suitable for sports and action and that can actually be done before you walk the city and can store it in convenient ways first of all in three different configurations in the camera itself and you can recall it from the mode dial here there is a one a two and a three configuration marked on the dial and you can also store four more configurations on the memory card which you then can recall from the memory card if the time is right for changing your parameters for different shooting situations so before I now change all my settings here into a configuration which is suitable for sports and action let's make sure I store this one and for this I go into the menu and I can choose here camera set memory and then I get a convenient overview screen with all my settings for instance here multi-fit metering or autofocus single which we just saw before Focus area is spot small and so on everything here is visible in one View and I can decide now whether I want to store it in the camera and then use the more dial to recall it so that would be configuration number one two and three or if I want to store it on the SD card or the compact flash Express type a card here and then give it a name configuration M1 M2 M3 and M4 and that can also be recalled if the cart with the configuration is in the camera slot since I have now stored my configuration for still scenes in memory place number one in the camera let's change now the configuration to something more suitable for sports and action or model photography so first of all we go here to continue shooting High then we go on Focus mode to autofocus continuous of course we go here on the focus area to tracking let's go back here let's go for tracking white we go on subject recognition to on and we also want to have face priority in multimetering so let's get this also to on and then we are basically good to go and maybe one more I want to change here is in sports and action I don't want to have multimetering here let's go here to Center or maybe even spot maybe spot is even better which will brighten the scene immediately because the face of my model where the focus is sitting is a bit more dark so that's the configuration I have set up now for sports and action with all the elements I think I need so we go back into menu and we go here again into camera set memory and we say this goes now into my place number two and now it's registered the camera is now set up for sports and action but if I want to go to my still scene configuration I just use the mode dial up here you cannot really see it and I rotate it and bring back place number one let's quickly do that here we go and by the way you see now here it says memory number one so if I go back here on the model I'm in fully manual mode here I'm in shutter speed priority aperture priority and so on if you look here where my thumb is resting but that's configuration number one and if I switch now back into the FN menu I see it has switched it back to my configuration which I stored I'm in single shooting drive mode autofocus single I'm in spot here so we are back in the configuration in the way I started if I want to switch back now to Sports in action I just rotate the mode dial one more Notch here and then it switches to MR2 and now I'm back into my sports and action setting you see here we have here high speed burst shooting we have autofocus continuous and we have tracking and all of that and that's a convenient way to pre-store configurations which you already know today that you might want to use them in the course of the day or the night and to not having to configure every single parameter all the time scratch again before I close the chapter on configurations and how to store them let's quickly go through the workflow how to create a configuration and store it on a memory card so let's go back into the menu and let's say we can store this here on slot number one so card number one or card number two let's say it's card number one and now let's change very quickly the configuration I have here into something suitable for the Milky Way so let's quickly do a pre-configuration for a night sky or Milky Way shooting and let's store them then on card number one in slot number one first of all I've set the camera now in fully manual mode here second I want to have self time of course because the camera will be on a tripod let's say a five second self timer I also want to change from auto ISO here to an ISO of 3.2 K so let's quickly go there here we go of course we'll not see a lot in a moment when I make the shutter speed slower and we leave the aperture widest open at F 1.4 and we create a shutter speed of let's say 50 in seconds for a long exposure at night so let's store this here alright I think that's it on the FN menu not much to say we have the self timer autofocus single and so on we have multimetering here what have you that's all good and now let's store this on the memory card and for this we go back into the menu and we go into camera set memory again and then we go now here into the M slots so these three slots they are for storage of a configuration in the camera then here we have four configurations we can store on a memory card and let's say we go for the Milky Way to slot number four and let's register it that's it now it's registered the situation now is the following let's say I came back from a sports and action shooting so I'm in MR2 here so which is the second storage slot for configurations in the camera itself and now let's recall that Milky Way configuration because it's getting dark and we have a crisp and very beautiful night sky so I want to prepare the camera up front although I will tweak my exposure of course when I'm on the spot and shooting and let's go to recoil camera setting and if I go into that you see here my configuration which is loaded is configuration number two for sports and action if I would switch here to configuration number one it would show me the configuration for the still scene we configured at the very beginning of this chapter here and now I go to let's say slot number four you see slot one two and three are not stored on the card let's go to four and now I can recall it and you see all my settings are here I'm in fully manual mode I'm at 15 second Expo closure it's all stored in the configuration I have my ISO value of 3.2 K I have a self timer and everything I pre-configured is in that slot on the memory card so let's recall it and then we are back here and now we can immediately shoot I will clearly tweak my exposure a bit depending on the situation and the environment I have but it is all pre-configured and I don't have to do a lot of configuration or parameter settings on the ground in the dark at night if you like my explanations on how to set up custom configurations storing them and recalling them you might like my next tip even more because there is a quicker way for a short amount of time to access a certain configuration and let's say for the time being we are here in the custom mode on one so you see this here by camera recall so this is the still scene I can also go to the sports scene let's quickly do that here and then we have the sports scene and here we have empty empty empty and here we have the Milky Way now let's go back to one because that I think is better suitable for what I want to show here and if we have these configurations we always have to work with the mode dial and with the menu to recall a certain configuration if it is stored on the memory card and it's a quicker way of doing this and I'm going to show this now in the next couple of minutes so I'm here now in my still scene configuration on camera slot number one we also have a camera slot number two which is then for sports and action but say that's the configuration I'm shooting in street photography in a city I've not traveled to before and now let's say I want to very quickly switch to something more suitable for sports and action without turning the model or recalling a configuration from the memory card the way to do this is as follows let's go to the menu and then we have a bit of a cryptic menu entry which is called registering custom shoot set as I said sometimes the wording in the Sony menus is not very fortunate but anyway we have three configurations we can store here and let's go for configuration number one and now we get different things we can recall if we hold a custom key so we are going to assign this to a key and we can first of all have here the shoot mode so we can go here to aperture priority let's say then we have the aperture the aperture I think is with f 5.6 good for me the shutter speed because the aperture priority will be chosen automatically drive mode we want to have here continuous shooting and on exposure compensation 0 ISO Auto is fine metering mode we want to have here spot let's say this time Center focus mode is I think in continuous autofocus and focus area is tracking so we go for White and the tracking sensitivity is standard and so on and that is the configuration we can now register so let's do this here we go this is registered now and now we need to find a suitable button where we can recall this and for this we go into the menu and we've seen this before how to customize buttons and control Wheels we go down to the very last main section on settings and then we go down here until we find custom key dial settings and we can now go here we are in still image shooting so let's say we want to have here let's go down here a little bit first of all here let's say we want to have this on this button here so C1 is the right one and let's assign it so I push the button here and then we go here to the camera section on the main section on the subsection to shooting mode and we find here recall custom hold one and we choose it and now we are good to go it's registered it's up and running and when I'm now back here in the main menu you see I still have here configuration one which is my still scene configuration with all the parameters in the way I set it and if I want to Now quickly switch into sports and action I just have to press and hold the button C1 you see it changed now immediately into the sports in action mode which we also have stored as a configuration here and it stays in that spots and action mode which I pre-configured and just recalled by pushing the C1 custom Button as long as I press and hold if I let go I'm back in the still scene configuration which we stopped before here I'm back in sports in action here I'm back in the still scene and that is of course a very quick way changing a lot of parameters with just the push of one single button and I'm sure that is something which will make your workflow easier let's do something fun now namely a focus pool or in other words smooth Focus transitions in video mode and that is something which can create very nice very creative effects I'm here now on the video mode I'm in aperture priority as you can see here my shooting parameters are simple we have 4K autofocus continuous that's important in video mode we have the white tracking Focus area and all these parameters by the way I also have subject recognition autofocus on and I have Jennifer here from The Witcher and she's a good model for trying out what I wanted to demonstrate here first of all I can tap now here and then Jennifer will stay in focus and it also tracks the focus if I would move Vienna for now it will track Jennifer no matter where I move it and that is of course quite convenient in video mode but now I can transition the focus to the background to Darth Vader let's get this done here we go you see how the transition worked let's go back to Jennifer and that is of course very nice now I can also tweak this and there are a lot of settings in the menu which help me to tailor-made customize this for my own needs the first parameter I want to talk about is autofocus transition speed and there's a range here from 1 up to five and five is very fast as said here on the LCD screen so let's try this out let's go back into live view let's transition very fast you see very fast probably not very creative because you want to have a longer smooth Focus transition but smooth it's anyway so let's go back here and let's tweak this to the slower setting and you will see the difference is huge here so let's go here let's do this again and let's transition Focus now to the background to Darth Vader see how creative this looks very cinematic if you go to a slower transition speed here looks really good is a lot of fun and is by the way very hard to do in manual focusing by the way I don't know if you noticed but there is something interesting going on on the controller LCD screen here when we do these Focus transitions first of all I'm in autofocus continuous as you can see here on AFC and the moment in time I do the transition it stays on AFC until it found focus and then it will switch to MF for manual focus so let's have a look it's still on AFC now Focus has been found and it's switched here to MF for manual focus and that means I can override now with the focus ring wherever the focus is sitting which is quite interesting and by the way it's also still tracking here because we still have Focus cancel up let's transition back to Jennifer and again it switches into MF so I can manually adjust if I'm not happy with the focus and the result or can add another creative effect which is quite nice and I thought I should quickly mention that I stopped the focus tracking by pushing the center button here but there are more interesting parameters to tweak here on subject recognition and autofocus transition let's go back into the menu and we covered autofocus transition speed we are on continuous autofocus that's all fine but here is autofocus subject shift sensitivity and that goes from very responsive down to locked on and probably a good compromise is here the three in the middle but what it actually does is something we should try out so let's go to the extreme on the right hand side value 5 responsive I have someone coming from the sideline now and moving into the frame and so far the focus still is sticky on Jennifer but if I block yanifer the focus switches to that guy and also stays with that guy which is quite interesting right so it stays here on the other face coming into the scene because it's catching attention it's moving and it blocked Jennifer for a moment if we now go back into the menu and change this from responsive where autofocus is quickly to change from one subject to the other to locked on let's see what happens then so let's bring in the guy from the sideline let's do this again here he comes nothing happens let's Block Jennifer nothing happens right it still stays on Jennifer you see that I can block Jennifer as much as I want but it will not catch up and will not move the focus or steal the focus from Jennifer to this new guy and that's what happens if you are here in the menu on locked on instead of unresponsive let's go back to responsive coming in here the other guy blocking Jennifer catching the focus stealing it from Jennifer and also keeping the focus you see that's the difference in the menu if you are on responsive versus locked on and I think that's worthwhile to know because it will help you to tailor-made the way your autofocus is reacting in videography the next setting in the menu is autofocus assist and that's a very simple feature I can cover in a few seconds if it is off and I have my focus here sitting on Jennifer and I turn the focus ring nothing happens and I cannot fine tune or adjust my focus it's just the automatic autofocus which is finding Jennifer and her face or her eye if I activate autofocus assist so we go here to on and my focus is sitting on Jennifer I can now overrule with manual focus on the focus ring here and that is the only difference if I deactivate it it will be gone off and I can no longer use the focus ring and override the focus which was found automatically by finding Jennifer here in the scene let's spend a bit more time on subject recognition and autofocus first of all I've switched it on second I have as Target here human and that worked quite well with Jennifer here in the foreground but we also have here animals and birds as a collective Target we have animals isolated Birds isolated insects which is the first time I've seen this on a camera actually and we have cars trains and airplanes and the A7 R5 is the first camera of its kind where so much artificial intelligence and so many tracking targets are embedded in the way we sit here and can tweak them in the menu on this particular page of settings I want to provide a few more tips and tricks so first of all we have here right and left eye selection and I have this on auto currently that means it's a bit at random whatever the camera thinks is closer that I will get priority but I can also steer this in a directed way so let's go here into that and let's say I want to have the right eye always then you see it will get sticky on the right eye and I can switch it now to the left eye by going into this again and pointing at the left eye and then it is the left eye so that's quite convenient and depending on your preferences you can tweak this or leave it to the camera to decide and typically it will pick the eye which is closer to the camera then we have subject recognition frame display and this is currently on off I recommend to keep this on on I mean here the eye is the one which gets the focus so there is no frame here in addition but under certain shooting situations and parametrizations this will show a frame around the subject where the focus is sitting and then an interesting one is face memory and I want to quickly illustrate this by means of Jennifer which shows how good this algorithm is working that it even memorizes and recognizes the face of a figure from The Witcher and not even truly a human face so let's get the Jennifer a bit closer to the camera and then let's go here into this setting here and let's say you see we have here eight storage places let's say we want to register Jennifer's face now I cannot move that rectangle I really need to carry the camera now to the face in order to recognize it and store it let's focus here let's push the middle button and then it says register now I can register it and can say this is Jennifer's face so let's go here let's bring this back into where it was before register and now the face is registered and if you look here now we have one face and that can help to even better lock on the autofocus to a certain person you know in the scene where you are shooting so let's try this out and let's see the effect of face registration for subject tracking and we have here another menu entry which is registered face priority and that is currently switched to off and I show you what happens if this is switched to off compared to what happens if it is switched to on if I switch face priority on let's see what happens I have in the C now placed the other guy in the foreground and Jennifer a bit in the background but it's recognized here with the face and the eye let's now pull the focus to the guy in the foreground so this is now in focus and tracking kicked in and now let's cancel the focus tracking and let's see what happens Focus switches back to the registered face that's the priority I'm talking about which I just activated here in the menu let's now switch this off and let's see the opposite effect so here again focus is sitting at Jennifer let's pull the focus to the guy in the foreground and let's cancel the focus and then Focus stays with the guy and that's the difference I'm talking about here and that menu entry really makes a difference for registered faces in this case here on Jennifer's face the next entry then on the list in subsection number four is focus map if you switch this on here you get a color coding on what's In Focus and not in focus and you can look up what color means what it's actually sometimes quite helpful but in general more confusing me than helping but it shows nicely the foreground namely Jennifer which is here in focus and then there is as I said a different coding on the colors I typically have to switch to off but a more useful tool is to focus magnifier let's activate this here and then I can go here and see how sharp actually my subject is and where I believe the focus is sitting and that is quite useful and that is best placed by assigning it to a custom button so for instance if we would go into the menu here and we go down in the main sections to the settings and then we say here on the sub sections let's go down here to custom key dial set on video and let's go here now to the down button here we go that's the down button and that follows currently the menu we have in still image shooting but let's choose this here and then let's go here on the main section up to autofocus manual focus and on the sub sections let's go here to focus magnifier so here it is and let's select it and now it's activated here and whenever I'm in live view in video mode I can push the down button and then get my magnification and see how nicely Jennifer's face is in Focus here you can also specify here the focus magnification time I have this on No Limit because I decide with a push of the center button when I want to get out of the magnification mode and you can also say what the magnification is and I have this at 100 here which is what you will later see in post then on the next page we have focus peaking and that is something I use mainly in still images not so much in video but you can switch it on in video and I have it here on high instead of mid or low and as a color I've chosen blue and if you do that you see immediately with the focus peaking what's in focus and what's out of focus namely the background here very easy very simple but I typically use this more for still images and not so much in video that's why I switch it off here and by the way the setting and the functionality the parameters you can tweak are exactly the same as in still images so I cover this only here in the video section there is a big difference when it comes to subject tracking in video mode compared to still image mode and I'm here in video mode and I have here wide area tracking we have autofocus continuous we have subject recognition on and we still have Jennifer's face also registered and here in video mode I don't need to have my pointing finger on the shutter button the focus will update the moment in time I move Jennifer and as long as I stick to my minimum focusing distance coming from the lens I have mounted I can move wherever I want Jennifer will always be sharp because it's the only moving subject here and focus doesn't get distracted by anything else that is different and still in image mode Let's go to still image mode now if I have pressed the shutter button it recognizes the eye and Jennifer is sharp and Crisp And if you go into the FN menu here I'm still in order to compare it on white tracking and autofocus continuous I'm here in single shooting in drive mode that doesn't matter for my demonstration here so if I move now Jennifer here in still image mode Focus will not automatically update it will become blurry and the focus plane was fixed once I focused on her eye and only if I get back to this Focus plane Jennifer will be halfway sharp if I here on a track I need to have my pointing finger on the shutter button and half press it down have a look here now if I keep half pressing the shutter button the focus is sticky on the eye and it sits where it sits and then we don't have any problem it will always update the focus so that means if you do a burst shooting in a model shooting for instance in still photography you need to have your pointing finger on the shutter button or you configure it for autofocus is on which I have here let's do this and then I can conveniently just use back button Focus here which is also doing the trick and my pointing finger doesn't need to be on the shutter release button next I want to provide a mini tutorial on autofocus and focus settings and I'm here in still image mode but a lot of what I'm saying is also applying to video and once you've understood the principles it's very easy to carry this over from still Image Photography into videography I'll do my explanations by means of the menu but for a lot of these functions I showed before how to set up custom buttons here on the camera body or using the FN menu or the main menu or my menu with your favorites what have you so let's start here with Focus mode and we have in Focus mode we have five different options we have single shot autofocus which is good for landscape of course and still scenes where you don't have moving subjects but most of the time if you're on street if you are a wedding photographer if you are doing a model shooting what have you you need to be on either automatic autofocus or continuous autofocus I actually recommend to go to continuous autofocus because it gives you more control in automatic autofocus that's sitting somewhere between the single shot and the continuous autofocus the camera based on the intelligence embedded into the camera will decide by itself whether it shoots single or continuous and that's not what I want I want to determine myself whether I shoot in single shot autofocus or continuous autofocus so most of the time you will be on continuous here then we have direct manual focus that allows you to override autofocus by adjusting and turning the focus ring on the lens and we of course have manual focus which I use most of the time for night photography as well as for macro shootings let's quickly try this out in order to understand what direct manual focus means and then there's also a setting in the menu I want to quickly show I mean autofocus continuous now and when I half press the shutter button it focuses and if I simultaneously turn the focus ring nothing happens but if I go to DMF direct manual focus and then half press the shutter button autofocus kicks in and if I now when half pressing the shutter button rotate the focus ring I can fine tune my focus in a magnification view which is quite nice in all other Focus methods here if I go for instance to autofocus single this doesn't work only in DMF so half pressing the shutter button here and turning the focus wheel nothing happens but there is a setting in the menu where you actually can get direct manual focus in all of these settings here so in af single AFA AFC and so on and that's something I want to quickly show here it's on the first page in the main section autofocus manual focus if I scroll down here to the second page of subsection one it says full-time DMF and this is currently switched off so as I just showed when I'm an autofocus single for instance half pressing shutter button nothing happens but if I switch this on here then I have always the option to overhaul my autofocus by manual focus so let's switch it on let's try this out still an autofocus single here no DMF Chosen and then half pressing the shutter button and now I can overrule with my focus ring here the autofocus and try to adjust this better by manual focus and that's the way it works I typically have this on off although it's a nice feature because when you hold the lens and the camera in hand accidentally turning the focus ring is very easy and I think the autofocus on this camera here is highly reliable so I don't need that but if you want to have the option to always overhaul but manual focus then this clearly is the way to go the next two menu entries are about priority set in autofocus single and autofocus continuous and that helps you to determine the trade-off between getting the shot done and having your subject in focus and most of the time you will have this unbalanced emphasis but if you say I'm happy to risk that some of my shots are waste and will not be sharp you can go for release and that increases speed or you go for precision and then you go for autofocus I have this most of the time I'm on balanced emphasis because the camera does a good job in deciding itself what to do the same actually in autofocus continuous then I covered already in the video mode before when we talked about focus and focus pull autofocus tracking sensitivity when we played between Jennifer and Darth Vader and that's the same in still images just remember that in order to track you need to have press the shutter Button as I explained before and that's the trade-off between being locked on in terms of focus on your subject or being responsive and happily switching to something else that moves in the scene and I think balance is good here unless you have any particular shooting situation where you want to tweak this yourself autofocus Illuminator has two options here Auto and off and auto means the camera detects whether there is enough light for focusing or it switches on that tiny little LED on the front side of the camera to illuminate the scene a little better and if you have it on off that's of course if you don't want to have that disturbing light coming up and then you just switch it off I have is typically on auto because I don't care about that little light which helps me to illuminate the scene in front of the camera when I spoke about silent shooting I in detail explained aperture Drive in autofocus and since I don't care a lot about some aperture noise I want to have Focus priority and in this way get my autofocus on steroids and that's what you also should do if silence is not a big topic for you I'm not a wedding photographer I don't care if my aperture makes a bit of noise and if I can boost performance by going to focus priority that's clearly my preferred setting here below full-time DMF there is one more menu entry I want to show in this context and that's pre-autofocus and that's currently on off and I showed before that whereas in video mode if you have your hands off the camera autofocus will always update to the subject like here Jennifer in the scene in still Image Photography you always have to half press the shutter button for tracking and to catch the focus if you have activated here pre-order Focus then this is almost like in video video mode and let me quickly show that so here we have autofocus now at this particular position where Jennifer is standing in front of the camera in the scene but if I move the NFL then after a while pre-order Focus will kick in and it will automatically focus on the face and the eye of Jennifer have a look here how focus is updating this is actually almost like what you've seen in video mode before and this of course a feature which consumes a lot of power because autofocus is permanently active and permanently updating the focus and that's why I have typically switched this to off but if you care about a super quick autofocus and the autofocus already pre-adjusting where it later will sit when you have pressed the shutter button then this of course is a very nice feature because it keeps the camera in terms of autofocus updated all the time and whenever you have pressed the shutter button the focus is already sitting where it's supposed to sit so it will accelerate your focusing process but on the flip side of the coin consume a lot of battery power and that's why I have this most of the time on off let's talk about Focus area so in Focus area we have white we have sewn we have Center fix we have spot what and in spot we can adjust here between small medium and large and then we have here expand spot and we also have here tracking expand spot and here also you have some options kicking in I'm currently in single shot autofocus so tracking expand spot will not work and in order to make this work invisible I have to go here to AFC and then I can actually also choose that option here let's go here again expand spot that's where we dropped off and then we have tracking expand spot and here we can also choose between different options in terms of white and so on and these autofocus areas they are very important to understand in order to get the best out of a scene when you're shooting in particular in a situation where you want to track subjects let's quickly go through these different choices on the focus area so you understand what that all means and I have two options now I don't want to half press the shutter button all the time in still image so I can either switch on here pre-order Focus but that is not as quick as if I switch to video mode and everything I'm going to say on Focus area applies in the same way to still images and videography so I will switch here to the video mode and then my focus is permanently updating so the first option you have here is white and white is also a good mode for tracking but it works in particular well if your subject is isolated if there would be many different people now coming into the scene autofocus can very quickly get confused and not picking maybe the subject you want to have in focus and we saw this before on the different menu options here what we can choose for instance on subject shift sensitivity and then you can try to improve it but if there is a populated C in a crowded scene in front of you focus will very likely not end up where you want it to be so if you want to be more specific where your subject is where you want the focus to sit you can go for instance to Zone and then you get here an indication of a rectangle in the middle of the frame brain and whenever the subject you want to track or focus on is in that frame Focus will find it and of course if I move out of the frame autofocus will not update it still recognizes the face but it's not updating in the same way as if I would be in the frame so here I'm out of the frame you see Jennifer is not sharp the camera focuses now in the background if I bring Jennifer in again into the focus zone then autofocus finds Jennifer and also finds the eye here there are different things I can tweak in the menu here so for instance this rectangle here is now indicated in a white color I can also give it a different color here under Focus area color let's go on red and then you see that rectangle is red I typically have white because red for me means not in focus and is kind of an alert that's why I don't like the red color here when I actually know that the focus will have found Jennifer so I go here to White then we have here circulation of focus point and currently the focus point is a Zone in the center of the frame and if I go here and look at that you see that rectangle indicated I can move it I can move it to the left I can move it to the right and in this way becomes specific specific about on which particular part in the frame I want to have my zone I can move it up I can move it down and all of that and if it comes here to the right hand side border you see no matter how much I torture my joystick here that's end of story and the same here and what you can do with this circulation of focus area or Focus point is you can say circulate and then when it moves out of the frame here on the right hand side let's do this quickly it comes back on the left hand side and you see how it is circulating now and that is a feature you can turn on I don't use that very often so I typically have it here and does not circulate but it is an option you have of course and by the way let me quickly show that it also works in vertical Direction let's go back here to circulate and now I can move my frame and now it comes again at the bottom it leaves the frame at the top and comes back at the bottom and that is something you can tweak here in the menu the next choice or option here on Focus area is centerfix and that means you have here a small rectangle you cannot move it with the joystick as we did before with the zone and whatever is in that Center as a subject can actually find Focus if I move it out here then it starts to focus on the background because it's no longer in that Center rectangle here if I'm moving anything back then Focus will be found and focus will be pinpoint sharp on Jennifer and the same works of course in the other direction there is absolutely no way Focus happens outside of the centerfix rectangle here and that's the way it works you can use this of course for focus focus tracking and then recompose there are many ways you can do that but you are restricted to the center of the frame in the meaning of the word centerfix the next Focus area is spot and spot comes in three sizes we have small we have medium and we have large let's look at the different sizes here so this is small this is medium and this is large let's go back to small here because that's my most widely used application and you can move now that Focus field also here and the way the increments are when it jumps to the right hand side or to the left hand side can be tweaked in the menu so first of all if I have to feel somewhere else I've set up my joystick in a way that whenever I push it it jumps back to the center of the frame the increments can be tweaked here so we have autofocus frame move amount and this is on standard so it jumps in these increments let's get it back to the center if I go here to large then the increments are larger let's have a look how this looks like so here you see now it's larger and by the way if I want this to circulate I can also activate this like I showed before here and can say circulate here so now if I move that Focus field it leaves the scene at the top and comes back at the bottom and the same let's Center this again on the right hand side for instance it leaves the scene here and comes back here and you see also if your subject is not in that spot field here then it will not catch Focus now it catches Focus again so it's quite simple and of course if you can tweak the size here by medium or large or small and if you can tweak the increment here how this is moving let's go back to standard and if you can also tweak this to become a circulation here if it comes to the borders of the frame you have a lot of optionality here let's try this once more remove the field away now the camera focuses on the background for instance here on my Nikon C9 and then if I get the feedback here to the subject then Jennifer is in Focus let's Center this again and let's look into the next option because the next option is a close relative it's expand spot and the difference is if we are on spot you see that rectangle here if we go to expand spot this will enlarge a little bit and you see here now an indicated rectangle around the spot or this Focus field here and if the camera doesn't find focus on the inside field it expands with autofocus points to the outer boundaries up to this rectangle here expand spot can be moved in the same way as spot and everything I applied in terms of going into circulation or into the amount this moves can be tweaked in the same way as I showed before now I'm currently in the video mode and in the video mode that's it in terms of focus area we have white we have sewn we have centifix we have spot small medium and large and we have expand spot in the way I showed in the last minutes in still image mode let me switch here we have one more section here so we have here let's go white zone centerfix that's all the same as in video spot small medium large we have expand spot and we have tracking white tracking Zone Tracking Center fix tracking spot small medium large and we have tracking expand spot so in still image mode we have more options here to choose than what I just see here in video mode where we came from and as far as I see in the web and in blocks that confuses a lot of people and I will quickly explain what's going on here so let's stay in still image mode for a moment and let's explore this last Focus area option here namely tracking and let's go here to let's say spot small if I now have pressed the shutter button it will find the eye of my model and will focus on Jennifer's face if I would go here to standard spot that will not happen it will stay on the body on the chest of Jennifer it will not jump to the face days so let's go back here to tracking spot small and then you see if I have pressed the shutter button it jumps to the face and if I continue to half press the shutter button it will now check my subject my subject can move in the scene and tracking kicks in in a very nice way and tracking in the way I just showed is then applied to all different choices here under tracking Focus area so if I'm in white if I'm in zone if I'm on centerfix if I'm on spot small medium large or expand spot let's try this with expand spot and then we have this additional indication of rectangle with expansion of autofocus points if I have pressed the shutter button it finds the eye it will track my subject even if it is very quickly moving and it's very sticky on the eye of Jennifer here let's go here for instance to Zone so let's go to Zone then you see this large rectangle here applied let me half press the shutter button let me continue to half press the shutter button tracking kicks in and in this way I can have very nice burst shots for instance in sports and action or in model photography and use this tracking feature in still images now the question is what happens in movie mode because if I'm switching here back to video that option is not available let's go here into my options again so we have white we have song we have centifix spot and expand spot there is no tracking here and the reason is that tracking in video mode works differently which I'm going to show Now quickly in order to show you how tracking is working in video mode I went here to spot small to have a very precise field where I'm focusing here and clearly if I have pressed the shutter button in video now it jumps from the chest to the eye here and recognizes the eye of Jennifer but what I need to do to track now is and there are two ways to do it the first one is I go into touch function in shooting in the video mode and say not touch Focus but touch tracking so let's do that and let's move Jennifer out of the frame so Jennifer becomes blurry and the camera focuses on the background based on that small Focus field here and now let's touch on my subject here and then Jennifer becomes sharp and in focus and the face and the eye is recognized and now it says here tracking cancel that means I'm now in tracking mode let's move in it for a little bit let's see how sticky this is even if I move quickly let's cancel tracking and then tracking will stop and if I move now and if we're out of that Focus field range again it becomes blurry so that's the way this is working let's catch the subject now we are in tracking mode now we can move the subject so whatever is happening in the scene with that subject is captured in terms of autofocus and if I want to stop tracking in video mode I just push the center button here that's the first way to get this done there is a second way I want to quickly show and if we would not be here in the menu on touch tracking but just on touch Focus then it will no longer track so let's have a look here I get on my subject I move the subject there is no tracking the focus field is static and nothing is updating in terms of autofocus having said that I still have touch Focus although it's not tracking so I can touch my subject and Jennifer here is then in Focus again and the face and the eye is recognized now the second way to get tracking up and running in video is to assign tracking to a custom key and we can do this in the menu and we saw this before it's the last main section then it's here subsection three operation customize and we have here the custom key dial settings for video if I go into that I can now choose a certain custom key let's say C3 here so I go down here follow the orange marking on the camera illustration here we are it's button number four and then I push the center button here and then we go into autofocus manual focus here and in Focus area and here is a setting called tracking on toggle if I choose that I have now the same functionality I had before we attached tracking but now with a custom key so first of all let's move Jennifer out here so it's not sharp it's blurry let's move her in so Focus catches up with Jennifer and now if I push that custom key here C3 which we just assigned for toggling on the tracking you will get the same message here as what we saw before on touch tracking let's get this done now you see tracking cancel that means as long as I don't push the center button here now Jennifer will be tracked Focus will stay with the subject and also will recognize the face and the eye and I can cancel this then in the same way as I did before in method number one via touch tracking by pushing the center button and then if I move her out she's no longer there let's Center the field let's do this once more so I can touch here we go in toggle on tracking then we can move the NFR Focus will be sticky on Jennifer then we can cancel the tracking and then yanifa will get blurry because the focus field is here that's the second method you can do for tracking in video and there is I think no other way to track in video than these two touch tracking or by assigning a custom button with toggling on tracking I think in this long video I covered the main features you really need to know and understand to operate this Sony a7r5 successfully but I want to provide one more hint because I was not able to cover every single menu entry here of course and this video of course is getting very very long it's the longest video I ever posted on YouTube so what can you do if you find a menu entry like here for instance in the main section playback and it says display as group and you don't know what it means and there is an embedded help function on the Sony a7r5 which you can activate by pushing the trash bin button here or delete button let's do this and then it says display as s group means sets whether or not to display images shut with continue shooting or interval shooting as a group and now you know what it is and that works with all menu entries is a very smart way to always keep your manual for the camera with you because it's already embedded in the camera and that particular setting if you do for instance a time lapse and interval shooting it will Mark the images and will provide them clustered as a group which is very helpful later in post if you want to sort everything out and the same works with all the other buttons here let's go here for instance too that's a very cryptic One display specified time image if you don't know what that is just push it displays the image of the specified date and time which is another way to sort and manage your footage and that's the way it works I hope you liked that video I know it's a very long video but since I provided more than 100 sections where you can directly jump to it I hope it is very useful for you to select the content you are specifically interested in if you like that video because it's a lot of effort I would be grateful for your thumbs up stay tuned on my channel there is always more to come help to spread the news about the content I'm providing by subscribing and hitting the notification Bell stay safe and healthy and of course peace out and happy New Year

Channel: mathphotographer

Views: 181,499

Keywords: Sony a7R V

Id: MmOEmPUd3G8

Length: 121min 30sec (7290 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 31 2022