Every Sony Alpha camera has powerful features tucked away in its menus. Knowing about them can drastically change your results and prevent potential mishaps during important shoots.
Coming to you from Jason Vong, this informative video highlights several overlooked Sony camera settings that could save you from major headaches. For instance, the silent shutter feature seems perfect for discreet photography during quiet events. However, as Vong explains, silent shutter isn’t always reliable. Under artificial lighting conditions, silent shutter can cause bands of distortion, and this issue isn't limited to artificial lights alone. Even shooting outdoors, quick camera movements or fast action can lead to distorted, unusable images. Knowing when and how to safely use silent shutter is crucial, particularly for event coverage or fast-moving scenes.
Vong also addresses the common frustration of transferring high-quality photos wirelessly to your phone, only to find the transferred images disappointingly low in quality. By default, Sony cameras send smaller, lower-quality images to your phone. The good news? There’s a simple adjustment in the Imaging Edge mobile app settings to ensure full-resolution transfers. For raw shooters, Vong recommends bypassing wireless altogether, opting instead for a USB-C card reader. This approach provides reliable, rapid transfers for immediate editing, crucial when speed and quality are equally important.
Another underrated setting discussed is the "toggle on, toggle off" feature for auto-exposure and auto white balance. This allows quick locking and unlocking of automatic settings, particularly valuable when transitioning between dramatically different lighting conditions. For example, if you're filming outdoors and move between sunlight and shade, locking the exposure ensures consistent footage without constant manual adjustments. This not only saves valuable shooting time but significantly reduces post-production corrections. The toggle feature works similarly for autofocus, streamlining your workflow during fast-paced shoots.
The video then introduces "bright monitoring," a lesser-known setting ideal for nighttime or low-light photography. This temporarily changes your viewfinder or LCD screen brightness, significantly simplifying composition and framing in pitch darkness. Astrophotographers and anyone shooting long exposures will particularly appreciate this feature. Unlike increasing screen brightness, bright monitoring provides enhanced visibility without affecting exposure settings or image quality. It’s essentially a built-in night-vision mode, hidden deep within Sony’s menus. That's just the start, so check out the video above for the full rundown from Vong.
Great info! The best thing is the Bright Monitoring when doing Astro Milky Way captures. I assign to the Trash Can button, so out in the dark of darkest places you can frame your shots FAST vs taking a few shots and reviewing first. For those who want to buy a used Sony camera or even some still selling new like the Sony A7M2 versions (yes still selling new at some places).
One thing not shown is a way focus on the stars at night so the stars are sharp when doing astro Milky Way manual focus with colors like red or yellow where only the stars are have the color selected.
Manual focus assist is handy when using cameras lens unchipped and only a manual focus ring also good when using MF assist when doing different focus points and later merging together for sharp near and far if using and older camera that does not doing automatically, keeps you from buying a newer camera.
Also you do not get a big thick book with your camera just a big piece of paper with a lot of minor information BUT if you do a search for Sony and your model and add help guide it will take you to the Sony web site for your selected camera where things like updates but a selection for Help Guide (web manual) where you can star it and save to tab bar for fast access for fast answers vs that big paper.
The banding happens with mechanical shutter too under some artificial lighting. No real diff between the 2 in that circumstance.