The Complete Guide to Sony's Alpha 7 II

The Complete Guide to Sony’s Alpha 7 II - Supplement

A COMPANION TO THE ORIGINAL A7 / A7R EBOOK by Gary L. Friedman

Version 1.01

Published By The Friedman Archives Press Copyright © 2015 Gary L. Friedman All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced either in print or in any digital format without express written permission.

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ABOUT THIS SUPPLEMENT This is designed to accompany The Complete Guide to Sony’s Alpha 7 and 7r ebook by Gary L. Friedman version 1.01, available at http://friedmanarchives.com/A7r Because the cameras are so similar, this supplement covers just the new features that don’t appear on the original A7. When making references to the original ebook, page numbers will be given. When referring to sections within this supplement, Section numbers will be used.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 MAJOR DIFFERENCES ...... 7

1.1 IN-BODY STABILIZATION ...... 9 1.2 XAVC-S VIDEO ...... 11 1.3 TIME CODE ...... 12 1.4 LOTS OF CURVES ...... 12 1.5 A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT MEMORY FUNCTION ...... 13 1.6 LOCK-ON AF...... 13 CHAPTER 2 MY PERSONAL CAMERA SETTINGS ...... 15 CHAPTER 3 NEW FEATURES EXPLAINED...... 33

3.1 DUAL VIDEO REC ...... 33 3.2 PICTURE PROFILE ...... 34 3.2.1 The Gamma Curves ...... 35 3.2.2 Gamma Curve Nomenclature ...... 37 3.2.3 HDTVs have Much Less Dynamic Range ...... 37 3.2.4 S-Log2 ...... 38 3.2.5 Grading ...... 41 3.2.6 The Seven Profiles ...... 42 3.2.7 Gamma Options ...... 45 3.3 STEADYSHOT SETTINGS ...... 48 3.4 MEMORY RECALL ...... 49 3.5 MARKER DISPLAY / MARKER SETTINGS ...... 50 3.6 DISP. CONT. AF AREA ...... 52 3.7 ZOOM RING ROTATE ...... 53 3.8 TC/UB SETTINGS ...... 54 3.9 HDMI SETTINGS ...... 60 3.9.1 HDMI Resolution ...... 60 3.9.2 HDMI Info. Display ...... 60 3.9.3 CTRL FOR HDMI ...... 61 3.10 UPLOAD SETTINGS (EYE-FI CARD ONLY) ...... 62 3.11 FOCUSING ESSENTIALS ...... 63 3.11.1 Other Focus Area Choices ...... 66 3.11.2 Focusing Modes ...... 67 EPILOGUE 71

Chapter 1 MAJOR DIFFERENCES

Sony introduced the very first E-mount cameras back in 2010 – a lifetime ago in terms of today’s intense product-cycle half-life. And although I have no official knowledge of Sony’s inner-workings, I can tell you that at the time nobody, and I mean NOBODY at Sony ever thought to themselves “Gee, maybe this new camera system will cause legions of professional phototographers and videographers to jump ship from other, more established camera brands.” How do I know this? Let’s look at the evidence. The E-mount platform (specifically the original NEX 3 and 5 cameras) was originally targeted at

Figure 1-1: Lots of megapixels and in-body stabilization means I can get a great crop shot of this rare Swallow-tailed Kite bird using a legacy lens (Minolta 80-200 f/2.8 G) and LA-EA4 adapter).

8 Major Differences mobile phone users who wanted to upgrade, but thought that DSLRs were too large, expensive, or intimidating. So the bodies were intended to be as small as possible. Image stabilization was done in the lens (rather than in the body, as in all previous Sony interchangeable-lens cameras) to keep the body tiny and because Sony’s original SLT camera, the Alpha 55, taught them that moving sensor stabilization gets HOT when shooting long movies. Focus motors had to be in the lens (quieter for movies) and the user interface was designed for a person who grew up shooting pictures on their phone (which irritated experienced photographers). And there’s one additional characteristic which I don’t believe was intentional: the distance between the front of the lens mount to the sensor, officially known as the “flange distance”, was small. Really small. It was so small, in fact, that you could mount pretty much any interchangeable lens ever made to it, with plenty of inches left over for the physical adapter. By the time the NEX-7 was introduced, third-party manufacturers were starting to make E-mount adapters for every lens brand known, and Sony helped in this regard by releasing the mount and interface specifications for free to any manufacturer who cared to make an accessory. (That’s another first. Usually third parties have to pay a licensing fee to get the official specifications.) The E-mount cameras started to become popular because it suddenly offered new life to legacy glass – Everything from WWII-era Leicas, and Voigtlanders to Contax lenses suddenly had a digital body they could strut their stuff with. Adapters for modern-day Nikon and Canon lenses – some even supporting autofocus – came into being as well. “Gee, we certainly weren’t expecting this demographic!”, said a Sony manager after looking at the market research. “These are the serious shooters we have been trying (and failing) to court with the A-mount system we acquired from Minolta. What else can we do to cater to them?” “How about making the user interface more in-line with a DSLR? That certainly worked for the RX-series of Cybershots!” “Okay!” ordered the manager. “What else? Can we stick a full-frame sensor in there?”

“I’m not sure about that!” said one of the engineers. “The mount was really optimized for APS-C sensors. Putting a full-frame in there would be a tight fit. The light hitting the extreme corners would come in at a steep angle and not register well, resulting in some vignetting and possibly some color fringing with older lenses.” “Do it anyway!” barked the manager. And so the A7 was born. And there was considerable industry buzz followed by considerable industry sales. Two more models followed – one offering the same sensor Sony made for the Nikon D800e, the other including a Sony sensor made for one of their professional camcorders – a 12-megapixel full-frame which excelled at video and, as a result of the very large pixel size, exhibited extremely low noise at high ISO. Professionals with online followings were starting to switch brands very vocally – these new cameras had all of the image quality of the big cameras, but none of the bulk or weight. More focus groups followed. “The body design is kind of quirky” said some. “And I wish you hadn’t specified lens-based stabilization back in 2010 because if you went back to sensor-based SteadyShot, all of my old lenses would be stabilized and then this platform would be REALLY compelling.” Enter the A7 II, which addresses these desires. The first thing you’ll notice is that the body is more intelligently designed – the buttons are more intelligently placed and the shutter release button is positioned where God meant it to be. The grip is also of a more reasonable size, making it more usable when long lenses are attached. But…

1.1 IN-BODY STABILIZATION But the In-Body Stabilization (IBIS) is this camera’s most impressive engineering feature (and that’s saying a LOT! Any idea how much computing horsepower is in there? Where did they put it? How can such a tiny battery power it for as long as it does?)

10 Major Differences

Here’s what makes IBIS so difficult: When shooting movies, a lot of data moves off the sensor, creating a lot of heat. Normally you bind a chunky heat sink to the back of the sensor to solve this problem, but that would make the sensor significantly heavier, making it that much more difficult to move quickly when stabilizing. Also, the stabilizing actuators can generate a lot of heat too when doing their thing for a long time, making this a perfect storm for heat buildup. This is one reason the original NEX engineers opted for in-lens stabilization – less heat buildup and smaller bodies resulted – and I’m really glad I wasn’t on the design team which managed to squeeze everything in and still keep the heat buildup issue under control.

TIP 1: The A7 II still uses a heat sink, it’s just not as large or heavy as used on the original A7. TIP 2: When shooting movies on a warm day, pull the display away from the camera body to help dissipate the heat buildup.

But wait! Not only did they squeeze in the stabilization mechanism, they also added three additional dimensions: roll (twisting the camera left and right), pitch (pointing the camera up or down), and yaw (panning the camera left or right) in addition to horizontal and vertical!! Sony released a promotional video showing the system at work with only some of the axis disabled so you can see their individual effects: http://bit.ly/1Gg5I8r . Want to see your IBIS in action? Just do the following:  MENU  4  Release w/o Lens  Enable,  MENU  7  Movie Button Always (or rotate the exposure mode dial to “Movie” position)  remove the lens, and turn the camera around so you’re looking at the sensor  Press the red button to start recording movies. Watch as the sensor tries to correct for your shaky hand in real time! Pretty impressive.

TIP: What if you attached a lens that already had optical stabilization built-in? Then the camera will use the lens’ features and whatever axes weren’t being corrected by the lens will be handled by the sensor. No double-correcting.

More about this system (especially the relevant menu items) appears in Section 3.3.

1.2 XAVC-S VIDEO Let’s clear up all of this XAVC S vs. AVCHD vs. MP4 confusion up front. XAVC S does NOT give you 4K shooting. All three formats shoot roughly the same number of pixels so the resolution doesn’t actually increase. The biggest difference in these three formats is the compression level. This is analogous to the difference in QUALITY levels for .jpgs (STD vs. Fine, vs. X.Fine) – all three of these formats shoot the same number of pixels, but STD .jpgs are compressed more than X.FINE, taking up less valuable space on your memory card at the expense of some (difficult-to-notice) loss of detail. So the native .mp4 setting represents the equivalent of the STD .jpg setting - offering the most compression with a bitrate of 12 megabits per second. Weighing in on the other end of the spectrum, the new XAVC S format is the equivalent of “X.Fine .jpg” at a whopping 50 megabits per second. You also have your choice of frame rates, as the table below illustrates:

Format Bitrate Resolution Frame Rate Frame Rate (NTSC) (PAL) .MP4 12 Mbps 1440 x 1080 AVCHD 17-24 Mbps 1920 x 1080 24p 25p (depending 60i 50i upon sub- 60p 50p options) XAVC S 50 Mbps 1920 x 1080 24p 24p 30p 25p 60p 50p

12 Major Differences

TIP 1: For some reason, you must use a SDXC card in order to shoot XAVC S video – an SDHC card that is rated to absorb the 50Mbps data rate cannot be used. TIP 2: AVCHD produces .m2ts files that are kind of difficult to work with and not universally read by all video editing programs. (My friends who work at Paramount Studios, for example, were unable to open them on their high-end pro equipment.) XAVC S videos, on the other hand, appear as a universally- readable .MP4 file on your memory card.

1.3 TIME CODE This is another feature familiar to professionals that makes it a little easier to align several different cameras in post-production. But there’s a big feature missing (not to mention a serious bug), and I’ll talk about all of them in Section 3.8.

1.4 LOTS OF CURVES The ability to compress the dynamic range of your scene and then selectively “expand” it to fit the limited dynamic range of an industry- standard HDTV is a common feature for professionals and absolutely mind-bogglingly intimidating to non-professional videographers. I explain these curves, and the other variables that are part of the Picture Profile feature, in Section 3.2. Just to give you an idea of what these tools can give you, here's a link to a video made by someone named "Colin_" which shows off what's possible using the 7s (the A7 II can do it too except for the 120 fps mode) in extremely difficult light using the S-Log2 gamma curve. From the filmmaker: “I just wanted to share with you the video I did with an old swiss lens the switar 50/1.4 who cover the APS-C crop in 120 Fps converted to 24 fps, during a music festival. It was a stress test for the Slog-2, High iso, high contrast with light & shadow. The bundle was very compact, I could put

Contents of this book Copyright © 2015 Gary L. Friedman. All rights reserved. A slightly Different Memory Function 13 back my camera in my jacket and drink some beers. The video is very short (1:30) https://vimeo.com/114569160 “

1.5 A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT MEMORY FUNCTION The original A7/r had 2 memory locations in which you could store a collection of camera settings for later recall. The A7 II expands that to a total of 6 memory locations – two in the camera and up to four which are stored on the memory card. This means you will lose your ability to recall your settings for M1-M4 if you switch memory cards (or format them in-camera as I used to do to quickly erase the stills and movies.) Is there an advantage to keeping these settings on the memory card instead of camera memory? I can’t think of one. However, in theory more memory locations are better. More in Section 3.3.

1.6 LOCK-ON AF This is going to get confusing. In the original A7, Sony named a feature “Lock-on AF” which allowed you to tell the camera “I’m putting my subject in the center of the frame. Track it!”. In addition to “On” and “Off”, this function also contained a third option called “On (Start w/ shutter)”. But in the A7 II, Sony has split this into two different functions, accessible via two different menus. The first two options (“On” and “Off”) have been renamed to “Center Lock-On AF” and appear in MENU  6  Center Lock-on AF. The third option “On (Start w/ shutter)” has now been renamed to “Lock- On AF” and appears in the bottom of the Fn  AF Area menu. Got that? Because the fine points of these focusing modes seem to cause universal confusion, I actually made a video building up autofocus principles from the ground up (the best way to explain ANYTHING complex) using the Sony Alpha 77 II (the A-mount camera). Just about everything in this

14 Major Differences video applies to the A7 II as well. Watch it and you’ll gain a more intuitive understanding of how the camera makes its autofocusing decisions, and what the difference between “Lock-on AF” and “Center Lock-on AF”: http://bit.ly/1KUf7T6 So, to recap: The A7 II actually has two versions of this feature which are mutually exclusive: The “Lock-on AF” feature (designed to be used with still images), and the “Center Lock-On AF” feature (best used with movies). Because the menu item has moved too, I’m not going to refer to the original ebook here. I’ll explain everything you’ve ever wanted to know about focusing in the last section of this supplement, in Section 3.11.

Chapter 2 MY PERSONAL CAMERA SETTINGS

The A7 II menus have been rearranged somewhat from the original A7 and A7r; and so a complete list of My Personal Camera Settings for the A7 II appears below. Functions that are new to the A7 II are listed in Red, and are each explained in the next chapter of this supplement. Functions common to the A7 and A7r are listed in black and page numbers to the original book are provided for explanation.

Recording Menu 1

Function Setting

Image Size L: 24M (It’s always best to shoot at the highest quality and resize later) (page 171)

Aspect Ratio 3:2 (I’d shoot 16:9 if I knew my work would only be seen on an HDTV. But 16:9 actually chops off part of the picture. More is better.) (page 174)

Quality Usually RAW+JPG (although for casual shots I’ll shoot Extra Fine. (page 175)

Panorama: Size Wide. (Available only when Panorama mode is selected on the exposure mode dial.) (page 177)

Panorama: Direction Either Right or Down depending on the aspect ratio I’d like to get. (page 177)

Recording Menu 2

Function Setting

File Format This setting (XAVC S, AVCHD, or .MP4, the latter of which is easier to deal with but also has the lowest bit rate)

16 My Personal Camera Settings

depends completely on your sensibilities – In theory XAVC S is less compressed (with a much higher bit rate) but takes up a lot of space and you may not be able to see the difference (page 431).

Record Setting The more information captured the better. If I’m in AVCHD mode I’d choose 60p 28M (PS). If I have .mp4 selected, then I choose “1440 x 1080 12M”. (page 431 again)

Dual Video REC If you have the (Movie) File Format set to either AVCHD or XAVC S, then this feature will record TWO video clips to the memory card: one low-compression, one high- compression for uploading to social media. (Section 3.1)

Drive Mode “Continuous” (with a lot of image deletions afterward). This makes for a convenient speed for most things that change, including people shots (Page 183.)

Flash Mode I keep this on “Wireless”. It automatically reverts to “Fill Flash” when I attach an accessory flash in default mode (Page 191.)

Flash Comp. Works like Exposure Compensation (“Make it lighter! Make it darker!”) except you’re varying the intensity of the flash. I keep this set to -1 except when I’m using it as fill flash, in which case it gets set to -2.7. (page 196 ).

Recording Menu 3

Function Setting

Red Eye Reduction I hate this feature. “Off”. (Not available unless a modern accessory flash is attached.) (page 199)

Focus Mode I usually keep it set to AF-S (Single-shot AF) or DMF (which confirms focus using Peaking level, as described in Chapter 3). If I’m shooting anything that moves, such as kids or pets (or even sports), I set it to AF-C (Continuous). (Page 81.)

Focus Area My default setting is “Wide”. I’ll change it when specific situations come up. (Page 202.)

Focus Settings This is just another way to get to the Focus Area function above. When you get there you adjust the Focus Area rotating the controller wheel rather than pressing the 4 arrow keys. When assigned to a button this feature does different things when you switch to Manual Focusing mode or if you have legacy glass attached. (page 205)

AF Illuminator This specifies whether the bright orange light in the camera body should be used as a focusing aid when the light levels are too dark. I keep it set to AUTO. (Note: The near-IR LED’s in the optional accessory flashes cannot be used in mirrorless cameras for technical reasons). (Page 206).

Recording Menu 4

Function Setting

Exposure Compensation This does the same thing as the dedicated Exposure Compensation dial on top of the camera. It can’t be stored in a memory location so I have no idea why it’s duplicated in a menu. (page 208.)

Exposure Step 0.3 EV (personal preference) (page 209)

ISO My default setting is usually Auto (100 minimum, 3200 maximum), then that’s one of the first things I’ll change in the process of making the shot better. High (Page 210.)

Metering Mode Multi-Segment. (If the lighting is tricky, I’ve configured the AEL button to go into spot metering mode as soon as I hit it. So there should never be a reason to change this setting.) (Page 214.)

White Balance I keep this on AWB as my default. If the lighting is tricky, I’ll use Custom White Balance. (Page 221.)

DRO / Auto HDR My default setting is DRO Auto (which is the factory default). (The chapter on this topic starts on page 477.)

18 My Personal Camera Settings

Recording Menu 5

Function Setting

Creative Style I keep mine set to “Std” (Standard). My preference is to do any image tweaking by computer rather than using these Creative Style settings. (Page 232.)

Picture Effect “Off”. (See above explanation for “Creative Style”). (Page 247.)

Picture Profile Analogous to "Creative Styles", Picture Profiles contain a collection of tweaks for video. This is where the camera's most noteworthy video feature, the "S-Log2 Gamma curve", resides. (Section 3.2)

Zoom This feature does a “digital zoom”, croping away valuable pixels in order to simulate zooming in, then it upsizes them back to 24 or 36 megapixels. I never use this feature, preferring to do any cropping on my computer. (page 182)

Focus Magnifier This feature does what it sounds like – magnifies the live view so you can focus critically. (Page 266.)

Recording Menu 6

Function Setting

Long Exposure NR Reduces noise for exposures longer than one second using a technique called Dark Frame Subtraction. On, unless I’m shooting fireworks. (page 182)

High ISO NR Reduce noise at high ISO? “Normal”. (page 270)

Center Lock-on AF This used to be called “Object Tracking” in previous Sony bodies. Once the focus locks, the camera will do a pattern recognition on the object being focused on and will track the focus as the object moves within the frame. Very handy for home video. (Page 273.)

Smile / Face Detect. “Face Detection On (Registered Faces)” (This is actually a useful feature with your kids!) (Page 275.)

Soft Skin Effect This can smooth acne-ridden skin under certain, very-

limited conditions. I keep it Off. (Page 279.)

Auto Obj. Framing I kept it “On” while I was working on this book. Now that I’ve seen what it does and have completed the writeup, it’s now permanantly “Off”. (page 280)

Recording Menu 7

Function Setting

Auto Mode When the exposure mode dial is set to “AUTO”, this menu setting lets you choose between “Intelligent Auto” and “Superior Auto”. Since I sometimes will switch the camera to AUTO when handing it to a stranger to say “Here, take our picture!”, I keep this set to Intelligent Auto” because it offers fewer surprises than “Superior Auto”. (Page 282.)

Scene Selection When the exposure mode dial is set to “SCN”, you can change the scenes using either this menu item OR the front control wheel.

Movie When the exposure mode dial is set to “Movie” position, this menu item lets you specifiy Program mode / Aperture Priority / Shutter Priority / Manual mode just for movies. (Page 283.)

Steadyshot ON unless my camera’s on a tripod. This feature is only available when you have an optically stabilized (“OSS”) lens attached. (page 285)

Steadyshot Settings These features tweak the behavior of the In-Body Image Stabilization (IBIS) (Section 3.3)

Color Space sRGB. AdobeRGB is for experts whose work is going to be reproduced on a 4-color press. (page 210)

20 My Personal Camera Settings

Recording Menu 8

Auto Slow Shut. Enables a slower shutter speed when shooting movies in certain situations. I keep it set to “On” (page 290)

Audio Recording Do you want audio with your video? I choose “On”. (page 291)

Audio Rec Level This brings you to a screen that lets you set audio levels for an external microphone (Not available unless the exposure mode dial is set to “Movie”). (page 292)

Audio Out Timing This one’s a tough one to explain, and it’s useful when you’re shooting a music video and the actors are lip syncing and you’re monitoring the audio using a headset. Just set it to “Live”, the factory default.

Wind Noise Reduct. Cuts out the lower frequencies where wind noise usually occurs. Usually I set this to OFF unless it’s actually windy. (page 294)

Memory Recall Only active when the exposure mode dial is set to “1” or “2”. It lets you recall a collection of settings from Memory Locations 1 or 2, plus memory settings M1-M4 which are stored on your memory card. (Section 3.4)

Memory Stores the current camera configuration (well, some of it) into one of six memory locations. (page 331)

Custom Menu 1

Function Setting

Zebra This feature is a handy way to know ahead of time what’s going to blow out, or whether a caucasion face is well-exposed. I keep it OFF most of the time but it can be a handy feature in situations with a lot of backlight. (Page 299.)

MF Assist Do you want Live View to automaticallly zoom in to help with manual focusing with native lenses in certain modes? I keep it ON. (Page 301.)

Focus Magnif. Time For how long to you want the MF Assist function (above) to zoom in? I keep mine set to 5 seconds (page 303.)

Grid Line You can have a compositional aid grid appear superimposed over your live view image. I personally prefer “Rule of thirds Grid”. (Page 303)

Marker Display Enables or disables video compositional aids as specified by the "Marker Settings" feature below. (Section 3.5)

Marker Settings Selects one of several video compositional aid overlays to be shown when "Marker Display" is enabled. (Section 3.5)

Custom Menu 2

Function Setting

Audio Level Display Do you want the audio levels to show on your LCD display during recording? In my case “On”. (Applies only when the exposure mode dial is set to “Movie”.) (page 306)

Auto Review Do you want the camera to show you the image you just took? It’s handy (especially to avoid chimping since you have an EVF), however I keep it “Off” when I’m shooting kids and pets because it might cause you to miss a shot. (page 307)

DISP Button Lets you specify which of several information screens to cycle through on the rear LCD or on the EVF (they can be different) each time you press the “DISP” button. (page 308)

Peaking Level A GREAT and quick manual focusing aid – all the high- contrast areas are “lit up” in Live View. I keep this set to “Mid”. (page 313)

Peaking Color Used in conjunction with Peaking Level above. Specifies which color to display when things are in focus. (Not selectable unless Peaking Level is set to something other than “off”.) I prefer Yellow unless my subject is yellow.

22 My Personal Camera Settings

(page 313)

Exposure Set. Guide This determines whether a fancy ribbon display appears when you change things like shutter speed and f/stop in certain modes. It doesn’t do anything useful but it does look pretty. I keep it OFF because when I’m in manual exposure mode and adjusting the f/stop and shutter speed, this ribbon blocks the histogram so I can’t see what I’m doing. (Page 316.)

Custom Menu 3

Function Setting

Live View Display Do you want live view to show you how your image will look before you shoot? Turn “Setting Effect ON”. (Turn it OFF if you’re shooting with studio strobes!) (page 317)

Disp. Cont. AF area Lets you see the individual Phase-Detect AF points that are baked into the sensor at work when your focusing mode is set to AF-C. (Section 3.6)

Phase Detect. Area This shows you a large set of brackets indicating where all of the A7 II’s phase-detect pixels reside. I keep it “off” because if I’m going to be tracking a moving subject I’m going to naturally keep the subject centered anyway. (Page 318.)

Pre-AF Do you want your camera trying to achieve autofocus even before you tell it to (by pressing the shutter release button halfway)? I keep this ON despite the theoretical (yet relatively trivial) additional battery drain. (Page 319.)

Zoom Setting The camera offers two digital zoom features which I just don’t care for (but you might if you’re shooting sports from the top of the bleachers). I set mine to Optical Zoom Only. (Page 320.)

Eye-Start AF [This only works when you have an A-mount lens attached via the LA-EAx adapter.] Do you want the camera to start finding focus as soon as you bring the

viewfinder up to your eye? I disable this feature because the extra battery drain can be excessive. (Page 325.)

Custom Menu 4

Function Setting

FINDER / MONITOR Do you want the camera to show you stuff on the Rear LCD screen (“Monitor”), or through the EVF (“viewfinder”)? I choose “Auto” to have the camera automatically switch when it senses something close to the viewfinder. (Page 327.)

Release w/o Lens “Enable” because I like watching the shutter work with the lens removed.  Also it will allow the camera to work with a non-native lens attached via an adapter (page 328).

AF w/ Shutter Should pressing the shutter release button halfway lock the focus? I like mine “On”. (page 329.)

AEL w/ Shutter Should pressing the shutter release button halfway lock the exposure? I like mine “On”. (Page 331)

e-Front Curtain Shutter Long story on this one. Keep this set to “On” unless you’re experiencing occasional mysterious overexposures with non-native lenses. (page 332)

S. Auto Img. Extract. When in Superior Auto mode, gives the camera permission to throw away all but the “good shot” when it decided to shoot multiple exposures on its own. I tend to never use Superior Auto mode, so I never bothered changing this setting from “Auto”. (page 333)

24 My Personal Camera Settings

Custom Menu 5

Function Setting

Exp.comp.set Do you want the exposure compensation function to adjust for ambient light only, or ambient and flash together? I prefer “Ambient Only” and I’ll control my flash intensity using the “Flash Exposure Compensation” function. (page 334)

Reset EV Comp. This is an obscure one. You know how you can change the exposure compensation using either the dedicated dial or one of the menu functions? This says “If you change it via the menu, to you want it to reset to 0 every time you turn the camera on, or keep it where it was?” This setting doesn’t matter to me because I only use the dial; however in theory there will be less potential for confusion if this were set to “Reset”. (Page 335.)

Bracket Order When bracketing 3 pictures in a row, use this order: 0  -  + . (page 336)

Face Registration Tells your camera to give AF preference to the 8 faces you can register with this function. I’ve never bothered registering faces. (page 337)

APS-C Size Capture What do you want the camera to do when you attach a lens for the smaller “APS-C” sensors? When set to Auto this automatically selects the center of the sensor when an E-mount lens is attached, emulating an APS-C camera. (Legacy glass for APS-C requires you manually change this setting to “On”. (Page 339)

AF Micro Adj. (A-mount Invokes a feature which can correct for focusing lenses only) problems when using certain A-mount lenses via an LA- EAx adapter. (page 341)

Custom Menu 6

Function Setting

Lens Comp. Allows you to enable or disable corrections for known deficiencies in certain lenses. I keep all 3 settings set to

“Auto”. (Page 346.)

Function Menu Set. Allows you to customize the top row and the bottom row of adjustable parameters that appear when you press the Fn button. (Page 349.)

Custom Keys Settings Allows you to customize many buttons on the camera as discussed at the beginning of this chapter. (Page 351.)

Dial Setup This function lets you swap the roles of the front and rear control dials. I prefer . (page 356)

Dial EV Comp This lets you reassign the front control dial to “Exposure compensation”, a customization which helps me work very fast with all of my other cameras. However, the A7/r has a dedicated exposure compensation dial! So I keep this set to OFF. (page 357)

Custom Menu 7

Zoom Ring Rotate Do you want to reverse the direction of the focusing ring (to match some other camera brand you've been using all this time?). Applies to native E-mount lenses only. (Section 3.7)

MOVIE Button This feature was designed to help prevent accidental taking of movies. When set to “Movie Mode Only” it will only function when the exposure mode dial is set to “Movie”. I haven’t had any problem with accidental movies, so I keep this set to “Always” and I’m ready to shoot movies at a moment’s notice. (page 358)

Dial / Wheel Lock Sets whether to disable the front dial, rear dial or control wheel by pressing and holding down the Fn button. It’s designed to help prevent accidental dial changing while handling the camera; however it would only slow me down and get me frustrated. Mine’s set to Unlock. (Page 359.)

26 My Personal Camera Settings

Wi-Fi Menu 1

Function Setting

Send to Smartphone Not a setting; this initiates sending a photo (or photos) to your smartphone via Wi-Fi

Send to Computer Not a setting; this initiates sending a photo(s) to your computer via a local Wi-Fi Router

View on TV Not a setting; initiates viewing of photos on a Wi-Fi enabled TV

One-Touch (NFC) Lets you choose which of the camera’s internal apps to launch when you bump it with your NFC-compatible phone. (Page 364.)

Airplane Mode Disables ALL Wi-Fi sending or receiving (even that of an Eye-Fi card, if inserted) (Page 364.)

Wi-Fi Menu 2

Function Setting

WPS Push Some Wi-Fi access points have a mechanism called “WPS Push” that makes it easy to pair (to borrow a Bluetooth term) camera to the access point. If yours has it, use this feature to get you going. (Page 365.)

Access Point Set. Lets you manually choose which Wi-Fi access point to connect to. (Page 365.)

Edit Device Name Change how your camera appears to other Wi-Fi devices (I think the default “ILCE-7” is pretty descriptive  ). (Page 366.)

Disp MAC Address Every Ethernet device (yes, Wi-Fi is built upon TCP/IP protocols which in turn is built atop of Ethernet protocols) has its own globally unique ID.

This function shows it to you. (Page 367.)

SSID / PW Reset This “unconnects” a previously paired smartphone or Wi-Fi router. (Page 368.)

Reset Network Set. Kind of self-descriptive. Resets all of the Wi-Fi settings to factory defaults (ie., a blank slate.) (Page 368.)

Application Menu 1

Function Setting

Application List Lists all the apps in your camera, either pre-installed or downloaded via sony.net/pmca. (Page 371.)

Introduction This is the first step in acquiring downloadable applications to your camera. (Page 372.)

Playback Menu 1

Function Setting

Delete Delete one or many images. (page 375)

View Mode Do you want to view stills, .mp4 videos, or AVCHD videos? I set DATE VIEW (which means you can puruse things in reverse chronological order). (page 377)

Image Index When playing back images in “index” mode, lets you choose between seeing 9 or 25 thumbnails on a screen. I like “25”. (page 377)

Display Rotation “Off” (or “Manual Rotate”) means I see every picture as large as possible. (“Auto Rotate” will try to rotate vertical pictures and make them look smaller on the screen.) (page 378)

Slide Show Automatically runs through your still images every few seconds. Ideal when hooked up to an HDTV. (page 377)

28 My Personal Camera Settings

Rotate This isn’t a setting; it’s how you would rotate an image if you had “Display Rotation” (above) set to “Manual”.

Playback Menu 2

Function Setting

Enlarge Image Not a setting; it will play back the most recent photo and let you zoom in and around. (Normally I just press the C2 button while playing back – much faster.) (Page 382.)

4K Still Image PB Got your A7/r hooked up to a 4K TV? This outputs a 4K- sized image when playing back. (Greyed out if not connected.) (Page 382.)

Protect Protect individual images from accidental deletion while they’re in the camera. (page 381)

Specify Printing Lets you control what gets printed when you hook up your camera or insert your memory card into a compatible inkjet printer. (page 384)

Setup Menu 1

Function Setting

Monitor Brightness “Monitor” refers to the rear LCD panel. I prefer “Manual” set to +1. There is no Auto mode on these cameras. (Page 387)

Viewfinder Bright. I also prefer “Manual” set to +1 (as bright as it gets) otherwise the EVF looks too dark to me. (page 388)

Finder Color Temp. Lets you add either a hint of blue or yellow to the EVF to help match it to the LCD. I don’t see a color-mismatch problem on mine so I keep it to “+/- 0”. (page 388)

Volume Settings How loud is the volume when you’re playing back movies? (I set mine to “7”, but you can then adjust it during playback pressing the UP or DOWN buttons.) (page 389)

Audio signals Do you want your camera to make more noises, like focus confirmation chirp or a beep during the self-timer? I like my camera to be as quiet as possible (even though the A7r has the 2nd loudest shutter since the Minolta SRT-101), so I set this to “Off”. (page 390)

Upload Settings (Eye-Fi This only appears if you have a third-party SD card called Card only) “Eye-Fi” inserted. (That’s right – even though your camera has this feature built-in, the legacy code to handle Eye-Fi cards has been retained!) Enables or disables transmitting of the Eye-Fi card only. (Keep it on unless you’re on an airplane.) (Section 3.10)

Setup Menu 2

Function Setting

Tile Menu Do you want to enable one of the last holdouts of the experimental user interface that graced the original NEX cameras that experienced users despised? Then turn this On. (Page 391.)

Mode Dial Guide This enables one-line “help” memory jogs which you may not find very useful. Mine’s set to “Off”. (page 392)

Delete confirm. This can save you one step when deleting an image from the memory card. I prefer “’Delete’ first”. (page 392)

Display Quality This changes the resolution of the live view image being sent to the EVF (only). It uses 20% more battery power and the amount of improvement is trivial. I keep it set to Standard which extend the life of the undersized battery. (Page 394.)

Pwr Save Start Time How long before the camera begins its power-saving regimen? My preference is usually 10 seconds; however, in situations where the wakeup time would be intolerable I choose 2 min. (page 395)

30 My Personal Camera Settings

Setup Menu 3

Function Setting

Cleaning Mode Vigorously shakes the sensor in order to loosen (and hopefully shake off) any dust particles that might have accumulated while changing lenses. (page 396)

Demo Mode Always greyed out. Is designed for retailers. You can safely ignore this.

TC/UB Settings Configures the camera's myriad of Time Code and Userbit settings (Section 3.8)

Remote Ctrrl Do you want to enable the camera’s Infrared received so you can use the infrared remote control? It consumes extra battery so I always keep this “Off” unless I’m actually using it.

HDMI Settings Brings you to three HDMI-related menus, including one that controls resolutions (Section 3.9)

Setup Menu 4

Function Setting

USB Connection How do you want your camera to appear to your computer when tethered via USB? I go for “Mass Storage” and I explain why on page 402.

USB LUN Setting This has to do with the fact that the camera can appear as multiple devices when plugged into your computer. I have it set to Multi because the manual vaguely says this is needed when used with Sony’s software “PlayMemories Home”. Mac owners should set it to “Single”. (page 404)

Language Yo tengo la mía establecido en "Inglés". (página 405.)

Date / Time Setup Lets you set the date and time. (page 405)

Area Setting Lets the camera know what time zone you’re in. (page 405)

Setup Menu 5

Function Setting

Format Quickly erases all images and movies from the card. (page 405)

File Number Specifies whether the camera resets the file number scheme when you change memory cards. I prefer “Series”. (page 408)

Select REC Folder If there is more than one directory for holding still images on the memory card, this function lets you choose which one future images will be stored in. (Page 409)

New Folder Create a new folder to hold new stills. (page 409)

Folder Name Lets you choose between a cryptic-looking folder name, and one containing the date the images were shot (but in a format that is not computer-sortable). I prefer “Standard Form”. (page 410)

Recover Image DB Attempts to recover from a corrupted AVCHD movie database while it’s still on the card. (page 413)

Setup Menu 6

Function Setting

Display Media Info. Shows you how many more stills can fit on the card, and how many more minutes of video will fit using current settings. (page 414)

Version Lets you know the firmware version of your camera. (As of this writing it ought to be v1.02 for the body.) (page 414)

Certification Logo In some countries, this menu item will display some sort of certification. (I’m in the States and the menu item doesn’t appear.)

Setting Reset Resets some or all of the camera settings.

Chapter 3 NEW FEATURES EXPLAINED

3.1 DUAL VIDEO REC

Menu Position MENU  2 Dual Video Rec(ord)

What it Does Tells the camera to store a large and a small file size for every video clip you shoot.

Recommended Setting Tough call. If you’re going to want to share this on Facebook immediately I’d set this to “On” if the camera allows it

This is a feature made especially for videographers who are also social media moguls. It is designed to address this very scenario: You’ve just shot some cool high-res video and you want to share it on Facebook while still in the field. So you bump your phone to the Camera (using NFC) and transfer the video footage to the camera so that you may then upload it to Facebook. The problem is that the high-res video footage is LARGE, it takes up a lot of space on your phone and it uses eats up your data plan in the process. There’s GOT to be a better way! Leveraging the fact that Facebook just crappifies (that’s a word!) video anyway when you upload high-res video to it, Sony has now given you the option of storing video in two different formats: The high-quality AVCHD or XAVC S format, along with a [much] lower-quality .MP4 version which is the perfect size for uploading to social media in the field. You can enable Dual Mode via MENU  2  Dual Video REC  On. The good news is it makes it easy for you to compare image quality between AVCHD and certain modes of XAVC S. The bad news is I think the .mp4 produced by this feature is of far worse quality than if you had selected normal .mp4 from MENU  2  (Movie) File Format.

34 New Features Explained

There are lots of constraints for this function. The feature is not available if you’ve chosen .MP4, or have chosen XAVC S and have it set to 60p 50M.

3.2 PICTURE PROFILE

Menu Position MENU  5  Picture Profile

What it Does Creates custom video grading profiles for later use in postprocessing

Recommended Setting: n/a

This is one of those functions where the phrase “If you have to ask what it does, you really don’t need it” applies. Just as your camera has “Creative Styles” (page 232 of the original ebook) which present several collections of image tweaks, each recallable at a moment’s notice, so too does it have a similar feature designed expressly for video. The Picture Profile setting presents seven instantly-recallable “slots” in to which you can store a collection of video tweaks, including several gamma curves (described in the next section), color modes, and very specific changes you can specify to change how the camera handles highlights and shadows. One of the variables in each Picture Profile slot enables you to choose a pre-set Gamma curve; others allow you to alter the characteristics of the chosen curve. These Gamma curve-altering features are designed for professional cinematographers and videographers who want better control over the dynamic range of their output and the “look” of the finished piece. The camera’s most famous Gamma curve flavor, the S-Log2 curve (Section 3.2.4), must be used in conjunction with a post-production process called “grading”, and probably its most important attribute is it can be used to capture more dynamic range of a scene than standard HDTVs can display. Picture Profiles are really designed for video – you could use them to shoot stills, but there’s really no advantage compared to shooting RAW and postprocessing.

Figure 3-1: In Photoshop, using the curve tool adjusts how the brightness range of the source image is rendered in the final output. In the video world such curves are referred to as "Gamma curves" and also can change the look of a scene. And before I can explain what any of the parameters within these collections actually do, there are some basics I need to explain in order to make the technical stuff make sense:

3.2.1 THE GAMMA CURVES Do you remember Dolby audio? It’s been used by the motion picture industry for decades in order to dramatically reduce the “hiss” sound from the sound track. But not many people know how it works. It’s actually pretty simple: when the master print is created, all of the high sounds are accentuated – made louder than they normally would be – and the soundtrack is recorded that way. In the projection booth, the opposite is done – Figure 3-2: The camera offers several pre- the highs are reduced, making configured Gamma curves (some of which the sound track sound appear in this graph) which alter how the “normal” and hiss is actually camera handles high-dynamic-range attenuated in the process as scenes. (This shows just 3 examples.)

36 New Features Explained well. Yeah, that’s unintuitive but it worked great. Well, an analogous process happens with gamma curves. You compress the video brightness levels in the camera (“the gamma function”), and then you have to do almost the opposite to the video footage in post-production (a process called “grading”). This process is kind of like shooting RAW for its greater dynamic range, and then adjusting the curves in Photoshop later on to place your whites and blacks where you want them (Figure 3-1). The original purpose of gamma curves was to correct for the non-linear response of the early TV’s – whatever the cathode-ray tube couldn’t display efficiently, was bumped up in the camera to even things out. The graph representing what brightness levels were being amplified (or not) was called a “gamma curve”, and the idea of using a curve to change how brightness levels are rendered in the final output persists to this day. “But the camera provides so many choices for curves! How do you go about choosing the right one that is perfectly matched to the brightness distribution of your scene?” I hear you ask. (This question is analogous to the several “Creative Styles” offered by the camera (page 232) – how to choose the best one out in the field?) The answer to both: You Don’t. Just as high-end photographers don’t mess with picture effects or creative styles (preferring instead to just shoot in RAW and figure everything out later), high-end videographers usually just shoot straight and adjust the gamma curves in post-production. Just the idea of tweaking the characteristics of the gamma Figure 3-3: A Gamma curve isn't always curve in the camera seems like in such a recognizable "S" shape, but not a good use of time out in the when it is it's easy to identify the "Knee" field. (the region dictating how the highlights are handled) and the "Black" (the region There is one important exception dictating how the shadows are handled). to this, though: the S-Log2

Contents of this book Copyright © 2015 Gary L. Friedman. All rights reserved. Picture Profile 37 gamma curve, which is actually quite useful but requires a lot of technical expertise to use properly. I’ll talk more about that soon.

3.2.2 GAMMA CURVE NOMENCLATURE Now that I just finished telling you that very few cinematographers adjust the gamma curve in-camera, I still will explain what each of gamma-curve- tweaking functions do later on, so let me talk a little bit more about the characteristics of a gamma curve. Check out Figure 3-3. As part of the “Picture Profile” collection of video tweaks (Section 3.2.6), the camera will let you change where the "Knee" begins and its slope, dictating how the camera will handle shadows and highlights. It will also allow you to adjust the level of blacks.

TIP: xdcam-user.com has a boatload of good introductions to the technical side of gamma curves from a videographer’s point of view. This webpage provides a good start: http://bit.ly/1Cl1o1z . TIP 2: There’s an excellent video on youtube by Alister Chapman giving a very good introduction to some of the different gammas available, and toward the end a good example of where adjusting the knee can prevent background highlights from blowing out: http://bit.ly/1ya4k1B . TIP 3: Here’s a comparison of some of the built-in gamma functions offered by the Sony FS-700 (many of which are in your camera): http://bit.ly/1Eblq03 Notice how subtle the differences can be – in one part he has to pixel peep to see any difference in the highlights.

3.2.3 HDTVS HAVE MUCH LESS DYNAMIC RANGE The other thing you need to understand is that while your camera's sensor can see about 14 stops' worth of dynamic range, your everyday HDTV can see only about six stops. That's it. How that came about isn't hard to understand – during the market research phase of the standards-making process many people were asked to judge the best-looking image from a wall full of different screens – not unlike how televisions are displayed at a

38 New Features Explained

Big Box electronics retailer today – and of course consumers gravitated toward the screens with the brighter colors and the higher contrast. (High contrast and High Dynamic Range are opposites.) Standards always involve compromise between what the filmmakers want and what the consumers prefer. In the past, professional cinematographers would address this intentional limitation of dynamic range by controlling their lighting – if the scene they were shooting had too much dynamic range, they would tell their lighting guys “Give me more fill!”, which would bring the darkest parts of the scene

Figure 3-4: Using S-Log2, you can record the full 14-stop dynamic range of the camera’s sensor, with the goal of not having anything blow out when viewed on an HDTV. But the image will look flat and lifeless in the meantime until things are ‘uncompressed’ in post production using a process called Grading. up to a level that the sensor (or film) could capture, so everything fit neatly into six stops. Documentary videographers have a harder time, since they don’t have that kind of control over their environment. So a new tool they have at their disposal is a special gamma curve called S-Log2.

3.2.4 S-LOG2 Choosing an S-Log2 gamma curve in the Picture Profiles section will “compress” the 14 stops of dynamic range into about six stops’ worth, all in the name of keeping details in your shadows and preventing the sky from

Contents of this book Copyright © 2015 Gary L. Friedman. All rights reserved. Picture Profile 39 blowing out all the time. With all the sensor’s natural range captured, the scene can be decompressed to the appropriate degree (according to the director’s vision) in a post-production process called “grading”. Before I go any further, let me show you how to turn on S-Log2 so you can see just why grading needs to happen. Go to MENU  5  Picture Profile  PP7. (In the factory configuration, the S-Log2 gamma curve is assigned to Picture Profile 7, although you can assign ANY gamma curve to ANY Picture Profile via customization.) Notice how flat and lifeless the preview image now looks! (Not unlike how an HDR image looks straight out of the camera.) Figure 3-4 shows what’s going on. Brightnesses are being “reassigned” to new levels – blacks are a little less black, whites are a little less white – in order that all the information that’s captured by the camera’s sensor will “fit” into the narrower dynamic range of an HDTV. But you’re looking at this compressed information via a display that can show more, and so it will look a little flat. (Both your camera’s LCD, EVF, and your computer’s monitor all have a wider dynamic range than your consumer HDTV.) So that’s what S-Log2 does – it remaps brightnesses so they can be recovered later on in post production. The actual response curve looks like Figure 3-5. This diagram is very much like the “curves” tool in photoshop – the bottom axis is your input (the dynamic range of your scene), and the left axis is your output (in this case your narrow-dynamic-range HDTV). In this diagram, the two most important curves (for the sake of this discussion) are the leftmost one labeled R709, which as you can see can only accurately represent input values from 0-100%, and the bottom-most curve labeled S-Log, which can represent brightness values between 0 and 800% (meaning 8x more brightness than what a standard HDTV can show). That’s a lot more information.

40 New Features Explained

TIP: S-Log 2 has a minimum required ISO of 3200. So if you're shooting a high- dynamic range scene on a very bright day, you might want to use some neutral density filters in front of your lens. TIP 2: For best results, when shooting with S-Log2 Gamma you should also choose MENU  5  Picture Profile  [Choose a profile]  Color Mode  S-Gamut so you can have as much control over your color as you do for your dynamic range. These two features were designed to be used together. TIP 2: If all of this S-Log2 and Grading stuff has your head spinning, there are some outstanding resources online which explain the process in greater detail from the point of view of a working videographer:  http://videoproduction.training - An outstanding starting point for video production using S-Log2 on the A7 II  Two other excellent tutorials (I've seen a lot – these really are good): http://bit.ly/1560P0H and http://bit.ly/1C3hQFH  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRI40Gl4I8g – A very technical, 1-hour long discussion of the tradeoffs of using S-Log2.  Here’s a cool example of how a professional editor / grader deals with s-log2 files (western scene): http://blog.abelcine.com/2013/01/18/sonys-s-log2- and-dynamic-range-percentages/

Figure 3-5: Here are three of the Gamma curves your camera can use to map the 14-stop dynamic range of your sensor (bottom axis, the input) to the 6-stop dynamic range of an HDTV (left axis, the output).

3.2.5 GRADING Grading is done in post production, using such popular NLE (Non-Linear Editing) computer editing packages such as Adobe Premier, Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas, and many others. There are also dedicated single purpose programs JUST for grading, the most popular being DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Speedgrade. Although the details and user interface for all of these programs vary (making it impossible to discuss how to do it in this supplement), the process in general involves applying a function called a LUT (Look-Up Table) which can selectively decompress the S-Log2 file in order to place your blacks, whites, midtones, and color so they look the way you want them. Every program requires LUTs to be in a proprietary format, and if you’re unfamiliar with how to do it in post I found a website which shows you how to apply LUTs to deal with S-Log compression with a variety of editors: http://bit.ly/1ufevgd .

42 New Features Explained

There is also a collection of LUTs designed for the A7s (but applies equally well here), generously offered on this page from xdcam-user.com: http://bit.ly/1xlfb55. And here’s a youtube video showing how to apply it using Adobe Premier: http://bit.ly/1wkb4ok .

3.2.6 THE SEVEN PROFILES As mentioned earlier, each of the seven pre-defined profiles is a collection of tweaks to variables the camera uses to capture video. Once again, to get to them do MENU  5  Picture Profile, scroll to any profile, and then hit the Right-arrow button in order to change any of its parameters. Each of these settings can be changed; and below I describe what each of the variables does.

TIP: With the exception of the S-Log2 gamma feature (described in Section 3.2.1), several cinematographers I spoke with say that hardly anybody ever tweaks these features in-camera. It's easier and un-doable when you make these changes in post production. That makes these Picture Profiles the equivalent of the "Creative Styles" used in stills – nice, but it's better to do it later in Photoshop.

 Black Level – operates on just the blacks, equivalent to moving the lower-left-hand corner of the curve to the right.  Gamma – See Section 3.2.7.  Black Gamma – Adjusts the gain of the lower (darker) parts of the gamma curve. Makes the picture look more/less contrasty. A negative value makes the darker parts of the image darker, but note that too much negative black gamma can lead to “crushed” or clipped blacks.  Knee – changes the inflection point of the bend in the chosen gamma curve. This can help you prevent blown-out highlights in certain situations.  Mode – Here you can custom tweak your curve (specifically the knee point and slope) by choosing MANUAL, or you can have the camera do it automatically for you.  Auto Set – When Auto is set in Mode (above),

o Max Point: Sets the maximum point of the knee point. (90% to 100%) o Sensitivity: Sets the sensitivity. (High / Mid / Low) o Manual Set: Settings when [Manual] is selected. o Point: Sets the knee point. (75% to 105%) o Slope: Sets the knee slope. (-5 (gentle) to +5 (steep))  Color mode – See actual examples in Figure 3-6. o Movie: Suitable colors when [Gamma] is set to [Movie]. o Still: Suitable colors when [Gamma] is set to [Still]. o Cinema: Suitable colors when [Gamma] is set to [Cine1]. o Pro: Similar color tones to the standard image quality of Sony professional cameras (when combined with ITU-709 gamma) o ITU709 Matrix: Colors corresponding to ITU-709 HDTV standard (when combined with ITU-709 gamma) o Black & White: Sets the saturation to zero for shooting in black and white. o S-Gamut: Setting based on the assumption that the pictures will be processed after shooting. Designed for use when [Gamma] is set to [S-Log2].  Saturation – As with stills, increases or decreases the intensity of the colors. Set from -32 to +32  Color Phase – This is the equivalent of the "Tint" knob on older color TVs – changing the color of your scene from magenta to an ugly yellow-green.  Color Depth - Sets the color depth for each color phase (aka color channel). Color intensity goes from strongest (positive numbers) to a lighter shade (negative numbers). This function is even effective even if you set [Color Mode] to [Black & White]. o [R] -7 (light red) to +7 (deep red) o [G] -7 (light green) to +7 (deep green) o [B] -7 (light blue) to +7 (deep blue) o [C] -7 (light cyan) to +7 (deep cyan) o [M] -7 (light magenta) to +7 (deep magenta) o [Y] -7 (light yellow) to +7 (deep yellow)  Detail - Works like the "Unsharp Mask" function in Photoshop – adds halos around high contrast areas to make the scene appear sharper. The

44 New Features Explained

definitions below come from one of Sony’s professional-level support websites: o Level: (-7 to +7) – adjusts the intensity of the sharpening methods available in the Adjust option below.

Movie Still Cinema

Pro ITU709 BW

S-Gamma

Figure 3-6: The different color modes available in Picture Profiles. With the exception of the last two, the differences are very subtle. S-Gamma is designed to be used (and graded) along with S-Log2. (10 points for those of you who are able to identify the doll 2nd from the right. ) o Adjust: The following parameters can be selected manually: . Mode: Selects auto/manual setting. (Auto (automatic optimization) / Manual (The details below are set manually.)) . V/H Balance: Sets the vertical (V) and horizontal (H) balance of DETAIL. (-2 (off to the vertical (V) side) to +2 (off to the horizontal (H) side))

. B/W Balance: Selects the balance of the lower DETAIL (B) and the upper DETAIL (W). (Type1 (off to the lower DETAIL (B) side) to Type5 (off to the upper DETAIL (W) side)) . Limit: Sets the limit level of [Detail]. (0 (Low limit level: likely to be limited) to 7 (High limit level: unlikely to be limited)) . Crispning: Works in conjunction with the Detail: Level setting, setting a threshold below which no sharpening will occur. Range from 0 to 7; with 7 being no threshold and everything gets sharpened. . Hi-Light Detail: Sets the [Detail] level in the high intensity areas. (0 to 4)  Copy - Copies the settings of the picture profile to another picture profile number.  Reset - Resets the picture profile to the default setting. You cannot reset all picture profile settings at once.

3.2.7 GAMMA OPTIONS So in the Picture Profiles, if you still wanted to modify the Gamma setting, the camera will provide for you the following options:  Movie: Standard gamma curve for movies  Still: Standard gamma curve for still images  Cine1: Softens the contrast in dark parts and emphasizes gradation in bright parts to produce a relaxed color movie. (equivalent to HG4609G33)  Cine2: Similar to [Cine1] but optimized for editing with up to 100% video signal. (equivalent to HG4600G30)  Cine3: Intensifies the contrast in light and shade more than [Cine1] and [Cine2] and strengthens gradation in black.  Cine4: Strengthens the contrast in dark parts more than [Cine3]. The contrast in dark parts is lower and the contrast in bright parts is higher than for [Movie].  ITU709: Gamma curve that corresponds to the HDTV standard ITU- 709.

46 New Features Explained

 ITU709(800%): This is an older standard designed for expanding dynamic range. It is not as good as S-Log2.  S-Log2: Gamma curve for [S-Log2]. This setting is based on the assumption that the picture will be processed after shooting. You can see just how similar some of these options are when viewing the curves in graph form (Figure 3-7). There is also an outstanding 5-minute youtube video by Alister Chapman which compares some of the curves available on a Sony EX video camera at http://bit.ly/1ya4k1B. Here he shows the differences between Cinegamma 1-4, and also talks about how he changes the knee to help keep his highlights from blowing out. Since I wasn’t able to come up with actual curves for all of these options, the next best thing is to take pictures in each of the modes and show you just how similar they are to each other:

Figure 3-7: In the Picture Profiles menu, one of the variables you can change is the Gamma curve. There are many similar-looking curves to choose from – CINE1-4 are displayed here, but there are others. Of all the choices, only the S-Log2 is worthwhile. The rest are very similar and you can achieve the same effect later on in post production.

Movie Still Cine 1

Cine 2 Cine 3 Cine 4

ITU709 ITU709 (800%) S-Log2 (before grading)

Figure 3-8: A visual comparison of the different gamma curves available.

TIP: Okay, that was a lot to absorb, but it was also an overview. If you want a more detailed description of the use of S-Log2 and grading, I highly recommend this page from xdcam-user.com: http://www.xdcam- user.com/2014/08/exposing-and-using-slog2-on-the-sony-a7s-part-one- gamma-and-exposure

48 New Features Explained

3.3 STEADYSHOT SETTINGS

Menu Position MENU  7  Steadyshot Settings

What it Does Allows for optimal IBIS with lenses that don’t communicate their focal length

Recommended Setting: Auto, unless a non-native E-mount lens is attached (in which case it automatically switches to Manual)

You already know a lot about the camera’s in-body image stabilization from Section 1.1. Here’s some more technical detail I left out: The camera’s algorithms adjust the way the sensor is stabilized based on how long your lens is – after all, when you attach a telephoto lens, not only does the image get magnified, but so does the shakiness of your hands. The camera knows the focal length of a native E-mount lens and will adjust the shake correction accordingly. What if you don’t have a native E-mount lens? That’s what this feature is for. In situations where the camera can’t ascertain the focal length of the attached lens, you can enter the value here and maximize the IBIS’ ability to do its job. There are two settings in this feature’s menu:  Steadyshot Adjust. – You can choose from Auto and Manual. When you put a non-native lens on the camera this switches to Manual on its own.  SteadyS. Focal Len. – Here you can dial in the focal length of your lens. This feature is greyed out unless the Steadyshot Adjust feature (above) is set to Manual. You can specify focal lengths from 8mm all the way to 1000mm (useful for that adapted telescope you’ve been wanting to try).

TIP: If you have a Canon EF lens with a Metabones IV adapter

(http://www.metabones.com/products/details/MB-EF-E-BM4), then not only is your focus and aperture fully automated, but this adapter also sends the focal length of the lens to the camera body for optimum settings.

TIP 1: Note that the following Sony lenses do not feature built-in distance encoders, and so will only make use of 3-axis image stabilization when attached via an LA-EA3 or LA-EA4 adapter: SAL16F28, SAL20F28, SAL28F28, SAL135F28 (STF), and SAL500F8. TIP 2: Using a teleconverter with a long lens? Your camera won’t know it. You’ll have to manually set the combined focal length.

3.4 MEMORY RECALL

Menu Position MENU  9  Memory Recall

What it Does Allows you to recall one of six previously-saved system configurations

Recommended Setting: n/a

This feature was described on page 295 of the original ebook; however Sony has expanded its functionality: Instead of only 2 memory locations storing various camera settings, Sony has added an additional 4 memory locations that are stored (wait for it….) on your memory card. Why would this be a desirable thing? I can think of only one scenario: Let’s say you’re an über-pro and you take many identical Sony camera bodies with you on location. Rather than spending a lot of time configuring each camera individually, this new feature allows you to configure your camera ONCE, store it on a memory card, and then move that memory card from camera to camera, doing a quick “Recall”, followed by another save to a local memory location.

50 New Features Explained

That’s my guess, anyway. The problem is that only settings from the Recording ( ) menu, the f/stop, shutter speed, and exposure mode. That’s it. Things like the Fn menu customization or the custom button assignments don’t get stored. Here are the locations and file names where the information is stored: /PRIVATE/SONY/SETTING/[camera-unique name]/CAMPRO01.DAT /PRIVATE/SONY/SETTING/[camera-unique name]/CAMPRO02.DAT /PRIVATE/SONY/SETTING/[camera-unique name]/CAMPRO03.DAT /PRIVATE/SONY/SETTING/[camera-unique name]/CAMPRO04.DAT (Each of these M1-M4 DAT files are 1Kb each. I tried to peruse them via a text editor, but most of the information is not in human-readable ASCII or Unicode text. Also note the camera-specific path name, meaning you can’t transfer settings between dissimilar cameras. (I guess that eliminates the possibility of conflict should the dissimilar cameras have different feature sets.)

TIP: Memory Recall (menu function) is greyed out unless the exposure mode dial is set to either 1 or 2. At that time this function will either let you recall Memory Location 1 + M1-M4, or Memory Location 2 + M1-M4.

3.5 MARKER DISPLAY / MARKER SETTINGS

Menu Position MENU  1  Marker Display

Menu Position MENU  1  Marker Settings

What it Does Specifies which of four compositional aids you want visible when shooting video

Recommended Setting: n/a

Constraints: Guides only appear when exposure mode knob is set to “Movie” and MENU  1  Marker Display is set to “On”.

Nothing Center Aspect = 4:3

Aspect = 15:9 Safety Zone = 80% Safety Zone = 90%

Guideframe Everything at once

Figure 3-9: Marker Settings choices. These are merely compositional aids you can enable to meet your particular needs.

Just as there are compositional aids available for shooting stills (Grid Line, page 303 in the original ebook), so too are there compositional aids for shooting video. There are four to choose from; and you can choose to have some or all displaying simultaneously. Center – This just puts a giant cross in the center. If you’re shooting a talking head, this can be a useful guide. Aspect – Shooting video for a project that will be shown on something OTHER than an HDTV? The camera will show you a framing guide for that format. For example, if you’re shooting for a standard definition TV

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(you know, like the TV screen you grew up with), you’d choose 4:3 and the camera will show you Figure 3-9c. Safety Zone – It turns out that some consumer TV sets have large bezels or are “out of alignment” and won’t show all of the pixels at the perimeter of the image. If you want to make sure they see everything that’s important, you’d make sure that everything that’s important in your shot appears in a “safety zone”, one that takes up 80% or 90% of the full frame. Figure 3-9e and f. Guideframe – A rule-of-thirds compositional guide. (Figure 3-9g) Things can look pretty busy if you have all of these on at once (Figure 3-9h). 

3.6 DISP. CONT. AF AREA

Menu Position MENU  3  Disp. Cont. AF area

What it Does Lets you see the individual phase-detect AF points at work when the camera’s focusing mode is set to AF-C.

Recommended Setting [It depends on how easily you get distracted]

Constraints AF-C mode only

You’ve always heard that there are some phase-detect pixels baked into your A7 II’s sensor, and this is the ONLY way to see where they are and watch them work. With this setting set to ON and your camera’s focusing mode set to AF-C (Continuous), press the shutter release button halfway and you’ll see tinier-than-usual AF points illuminate when they’ve found something to focus on. (These PDAF points are all clumped together in the center of the sensor – MENU  3  Phase Detect. Area  On shows you a bounding box within which all these focus points are contained.)

3.7 ZOOM RING ROTATE

Menu Position MENU  7  Zoom Ring Rotate

What it Does When a power zoom lens is attached, this changes the direction you twist the zoom ring in order to zoom in or out

Recommended Setting: There’s a good chance you’ll find the default behavior to be the most intuitive.

Sony makes 4 E-mount “Power Zoom” lenses, with a built-in motor designed for smooth zooming when shooting movies. These lenses are: 16-50mm E PZ 3.5-5.6 OSS 18-105mm G E PZ 4 OSS 18-200mm E PZ 3.5-6.3 OSS 28-135mm G FE PZ 4 OSS Of the four, the first three are designed for APS-C cameras like the Alpha 6000, so when mounted on the A7 II you’ll only be utilizing the center portion of the sensor, yielding 5 MP stills (and cropped but full-res movies). And the last one is a monster of a lens, designed expressly for cinema rigs. Anyway, these lenses utilize a “zoom-by-wire” mechanism: When you turn the ring to zoom in or out, all it does is send an electronic signal to the camera body, which in turn sends another electronic signal to the lens instructing it to zoom in or out. Therefore it’s pretty easy to reassign which way the camera zooms when you twist the ring a certain way. And that’s what this feature does. Your options are:  Left(W)/Right(T) – The factory default  Right(W)/Left(T) – The opposite of the factory default. 

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Focusing is also a fly-by-wire function for most lenses, but for some reason Sony is not offering a function to perform a similar direction swap.

3.8 TC/UB SETTINGS

Menu Position MENU  3  TC/UB Settings

What it Does Controls various settings of the time code embedded in video files

Recommended Setting n/a

Constraints Setting XAVC S and AVCHD only. Must be in Movie mode in order to change most parameters.

IMPORTANT: There is a pretty serious bug with this feature. The camera seems to be writing the time code metadata in a non-standard way – the time code shows properly when you play it back in-camera, but no NLE (Non-linear editing) software recognizes it. I would expect this to be the first thing fixed should a new firmware upgrade be issued. (Source: http://bit.ly/1BlkeoH )

Time Codes have many purposes in the world of post-production, but the main reason to have them in a camera is to enable the easy synchronization of footage shot with multiple cameras at a live event. It is an invisible code – not actually part of the video image – that is written within the file in an industry-standard way. (It is formally known as “SMPTE Time Code”, SMPTE being an acronym for the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. After our civilization goes the way of the Romans, anthropologists will be able to pinpoint these guys as the source of the beginning of our decline.) High-end video editors such as Adobe Premier, Final Cut Pro, and Sony Vegas know how to import and read this info. Traditionally, professional cameras would all be tethered to an external time-code generator so they would all be synchronized and to prevent drift; regretfully there is no such ability to accept an external sync signal with the

A7 II. The best workaround is for many people to “type in” a starting point in the TC Preset field, and for everyone to hit the center button at the same time to synchronize everything. Let’s talk more about each of the options in this menu: TC/UB Display Setting This specifies not what gets recorded onto the Time Code track, but what shows in the display when a video clip is played back.  Counter – Simply displays an elapsed time counter (H:MM:SS) in the Time Code Field, always starting at zero.  TC - Time Code, referring to the SMPTE time code described above. The format is HH:MM:SS:00 (the last two digits always show zero when played back on the camera)  U-bit – This one is hard to describe, but I can save you some time – NOBODY uses this anymore. 40 years ago the video standards committee thought it might be useful to have 4 fixed alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9 plus punctuation) that are recorded in the video file along with the SMPTE time code. It was designed in an era when LEDs were red, computer keyboards made a klacking sound, and David Lee Roth was still in Van Halen. The original idea was that it provided a “thumbprint” on the video track – if each camera had its own personal identifier (= Userbit), then if something looked wrong in editing you’d be able to trace it back to which camera was causing the problem. Internally, an ASCII character is represented by 8 bits, and 40 years ago, it was very common to enter ASCII characters not as 1's and 0's, but as two hexadecimal characters (you know, base 16 -- instead of 0- 9, a hexadecimal digit goes from 0-F). So using an ASCII table such as the kind shown below, you could represent the letters "WNBC" using the hexadecimal letters 57 4E 42 43. And that's what you would enter in MENU  3  TC/UB Settings  UB Preset. And on many professional video monitors of the day, the letters “WNBC” would display on the editor’s screen when enabled.

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In order for this to play back as a Userbit, though, the clip has to be recorded with MENU  3  TC/UB settings  2  UB Time Record set to Off (which in my mind is labeled completely backwards).

TIP: Although the original goal with Userbits was to have 4 alphanumeric letters show up during editing, Sony has decided to take a more literal interpretation of the standards and show you the 8 hexadecimal characters you entered instead:

TC Preset Don’t want your time code to start at zero? You can set it to anything using this variable.

TIP 1: According to an obscure Sony website, their RMT-845 Wireless Remote Commander has the capability to reset the timecode via IR. TIP 2: If you really want to Jam Sync your time code to multiple cameras, there's a third-party product called LockIt Buddy which injects a signal into your microphone jack and records the timecode onto one of your two audio channels. Hey, it's an option and pretty affordable at $155 USD: http://www.lockitbuddy.com

UB Preset This is where you can type in the hexadecimal digits representing the 4 ASCII characters of the Userbit field, from 00 00 00 00 to FF FF FF FF. This is a fixed "string", meaning it will never change or increment on its own. You can either use it as a “serial number” for your camera, or you can just ignore it like everyone else. Most NLE video editing programs don’t even read Userbits. TC Format [Note: This only applies to NTSC video models at 30p and 60p. PAL is a more civilized video standard and doesn’t need to worry about drop frame time codes.] Here you can specify either a “drop frame” (DF) or “Non-Drop Frame” (NDF). You can think of a “drop frame” in the context of a leap year – there’s not an even number of days per year – in fact there are 365 ¼. So to compensate for this non-whole number we actually do an “add frame” – add one day every 4 years. Well, there’s not exactly 30 frames per second in NTSC video. There’s actually 29.97 – slightly less. (Don't ask.) And so to make sure that the SMPTE time code always matches the exact length of the video, the concept of Drop Frame was invented – the time code will skip the first two

58 New Features Explained numbers each minute (except every 10th minute) so that no drift will result and the time code will always match the actual video length. (That’s for 30p. At 60p, the first four frame numbers are dropped every minute.)

TIP: This setting is fixed to NDF (non-drop frame) when recording in 1080/24p.

Want more detail? Here’s a good site from Apple that explains it: http://bit.ly/1BlCL49 . TC Run In the synchronized, multi-camera scenario I outlined in the beginning of this section, I talked about having several people set the TC Preset (above) all at the same time to make sure all cameras were synchronized to the same time code. In that scenario, you also want to have the TC Run variable set to “Free Run”, meaning “the timecode is always counting up, regardless of whether you’re shooting video or not”. (And when this is set you can always see the time code running in the lower-left-hand corner of the viewfinder.) If you’re an editor of a multi-camera event, you can see the benefit of this setting: When you pull the video clips into your editing program, the clips will automatically organize themselves on the timeline properly, even if some cameras were starting and stopping throughout the event. The other option for this setting is “Record Run” (commonly called “Rec Run”) where the time code doesn’t advance unless video is actually recording. TC Make When this function is set to “Regenerate”, the camera reads the last time code for the previous recording from the recording medium and records the new time code consecutively from the last time code. The time code advances in [Rec Run] mode regardless of the [TC Run] setting. (Conversely, when its set to “Preset” it pays attention to the camera’s current Time Code, whether free-running or not.) UB Time Rec

Do you want the fixed, 8-hex-character Userbit (specified in UB Preset, above) to be recorded as part of the timecode? Unintuitively, this feature has to be OFF if you want it recorded. (You can then select what gets played back via the TC/UB Display Setting above.) Notes:  Timecodes are recorded in XAVC S or AVCHD video formats only.  They can also be enabled when recording 4K video to an external 4K recorder.  Although you have to have the exposure mode dial set to “Movie” mode in order to change most of the parameters, you don’t have to be in movie mode in order for the timecode to be captured (once it’s been configured).  Video clip names reset to C0001.mp4 every time you reformat or swap out the memory card! (Not so with stills.) Videographers just hate that – how useless is a bunch of project clips with duplicate filenames? You’l have to change the names using whatever import software you have.

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3.9 HDMI SETTINGS

Menu Position MENU  3  HDMI Settings

What it Does Controls three settings related to the HD output

Recommended Setting n/a

This lets you select one of three HDMI-related functions:

3.9.1 HDMI RESOLUTION What it Does Forces the camera’s output to be either progressive or interlaced video scan

Recommended Setting AUTO

This feature really shouldn’t be necessary. One of the great things about the HDMI specification is that the first thing two devices will do when you hook them together is inquire about their resolutions and other capabilities. So when you hook up your camera to a 1080p video display the camera will know it and adjust its output accordingly – all automatically. So why did Sony include this little function? I don’t know, but I can guess – not all video sources and video displays implement the specification properly, and there probably have been cases where automatic parameter setting didn’t occur correctly. Anyway, there’s a very good chance you’ll never even need this function, but at least now you know what it does.

3.9.2 HDMI INFO. DISPLAY What it Does When you’re shooting movies, and you have an external monitor or recorder attached via the HDMI cable, do you want a “sanitized” version of the Live View image to appear on the monitor?

Recommended Setting Set to OFF if you've attached a 4K video recorder to the camera.

Normally, whenever you plug in an external monitor to the camera, all the information which normally appears on the EVF or LCD is instantly re- routed to the external monitor, leaving the EVF and LCD blank. When HDMI Info Display is OFF it keeps your EVF or LCD display information intact when you’re shooting movies (not stills!) and the HDMI port is occupied. If you have a monitor hooked up to that port, then only the live video feed will be seen on the monitor and none of the operator’s annunciators (such as battery life, exposure settings, audio levels, or whatever you have the DISP button configured to show). If an external video recorder is attached, then uncompressed video is sent out via the HDMI port when this setting is OFF.

3.9.3 CTRL FOR HDMI What it Does Disables the ability for your big screen’s remote control to control your camera

Recommended Setting On

Back on page 379 of the original ebook, I talked about Bravia Sync, a standardized protocol designed to let the remote control of a big-screen TV to control peripherals that are connected to it via HDMI. And I also mentioned that it’s not a protocol proprietary to Sony; other third-party big screen manufacturers try to comply with it too Well, not all third-party manufacturers implement specifications correctly (*cough* Sigma *cough*) and so there might be circumstances where you hook up your camera to an HDTV to view your pictures, try to use the TV’s remote control to control the camera, and things just go wrong. When that happens Sony recommends that you set this parameter to OFF to disable the Bravia Sync feature.

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3.10 UPLOAD SETTINGS (EYE-FI CARD ONLY)

Menu Position MENU  1  Upload Settings

What it Does Enables or disables transmitting for a third-party SD card called “Eye-Fi”

Recommended Setting On, unless you’re on an airplane.

(NOTE 1: This feature will only appear if an Eye-Fi card is inserted into the SD slot of your camera.) (NOTE 2: Given that the camera has a Wi-Fi feature built right in, it kind of eliminates the need for an Eye-Fi card. On the other hand, the Eye-Fi card allows you to post directly to social media sites and you don’t have to deal with PlayMemories Home to receive your transmitted images.) Eye-Fi (www.Eye.Fi) is a brilliant SDHC card which packs in a standard 8 – 16 gigs of memory and a Wi-Fi transmitter – all in a tiny little package! With this card in your camera you can automatically upload your images to social networking websites such as flickr or Facebook (or your own FTP server) from any WiFi hotspot in the world, or automatically download directly to your local hard drive when near your WiFi router. Some models also employ geotagging using an imprecise service called Skyhook which attempts to map Wifi Hotspots to geographical locations. If the card is inserted in the camera’s memory slot, then this menu function appears and it allows you disable the card’s transmitter to save battery power. Once the card is properly configured and then inserted into your camera, the only options for this feature are “On” and “Off”. The best reasons to turn it off is either to save battery power, or keep it from transmitting (which may be a problem on airplanes).

Endless Memory Mode: From the manual: “This product does not support the Eye-Fi ‘Endless Memory Mode’. Make sure that Eye-Fi cards that you insert into this product have “Endless Memory Mode” turned off.”

3.11 FOCUSING ESSENTIALS There’s more to focusing than you think, and with the A7 II Sony has brought Live View image analysis front and center to enhance some already very sophisticated focusing schemes. Many people have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices and permutations. That’s OK; I’m here for you and I’ll explain all of it. So let’s start slowly, showing what the camera needs to focus properly, and then expand to “how does the camera know where your subject is?”, and “under what conditions will it track a subject accurately?” and finally “What do all the various focusing modes do?” A single Focus Point Let's start from the basics. Your camera focusing by examining the live view video feed and looking for contrast – differences in light-and-dark that are very close together – and the camera will move the lens elements in one direction or the other until that contrast increases (meaning your subject is getting sharper). To demonstrate how this works, let’s do an experiment: With the exposure mode dial set to “P”, do MENU  3  Focus Area  Center (or access it from the Fn menu if it hasn’t been removed via customization). This tells the camera to only look for contrast within a small square in the center of the frame - everything outside that square is ignored. If you were to point this square at a blank, featureless wall, the autofocusing would get confused and “give up” (as evidenced by a flashing green dot in the lower left-hand corner). But pointing that small rectangle toward ANYTHING that has contrast – a horizontal or a vertical line for example – it zeroes in on it like an eagle zeroes in on its prey. So that’s how a single focus point works. Now let’s set the focus area to MENU  3  Focus Area  Wide. This tells the camera to look for contrast anywhere within the frame.

TIP: Your A7 II also has phase-detect pixels baked in to the sensor, but these don’t kick in unless your focus mode is set to AF-C (Continuous) and the camera has first identified the subject via contrast-detect.

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So if anywhere within the frame is fair game, how on earth does the camera decide what to focus on? The camera can guess pretty accurately using the following method: The camera generally chooses whatever is closest. The algorithm is more complex than that -- for example, it won’t choose something at an extreme edge of the frame even though it’s closer -- but there's no other way for it to really know where your subject is in the frame. How’s that for intelligence? Wait, I’m not done. Over the years Sony has gotten good at analyzing the live view feed and identifying what your subject probably is. The first iteration of this was Face Detection, a feature I’ve grown to rely on. When this feature is enabled (MENU  6  Smile / Face Detection which it is set to ON by default), the camera will analyze the live view image, and if it detects a face, it will pay attention and only to the face when evaluating contrast. Readers of my previous books will know just how much I love this feature. “Can we make it better?”, the Sony engineers have been saying to themselves? That’s a rhetorical question; the answer is “Yes”. Lock-on AF The next iteration, now called “Center Lock-on AF”, has the photographer identify what the subject is (so the camera doesn’t have to guess.) Once a subject has been selected, it then memorizes what that subject looks like and tries to track it across the frame. You can see how well the camera can track a subject by doing the following experiment. Set your camera up as follows: • Set your Focus Area to anything BUT Lock-On AF (for example, MENU  3  Focus Area  Wide • Set MENU  6  Center Lock-on AF to ON The camera will present two small squares in the middle of the screen, telling you to "Aim these squares at your subject and press the center button". Once you do so, the camera will analyze the Live View feed, try to figure out what your subject actually is, based mostly on color and shape. Once it

Contents of this book Copyright © 2015 Gary L. Friedman. All rights reserved. Focusing Essentials 65 figures it out, it shows you the subject it has selected by outlining it with two-line rectangular border. Now move the camera left and right, up and down and watch as the two white rectangles track your subject through the frame. Depending on the size of your subject, contrast with background, light level, and how quickly you move the camera, the A7 II might track the subject with ease, or it might get confused and lose track of the subject. (Try it on various subjects and see which ones track well. Not all will, depending on a lot of variables. This is an important characteristic to get to know.) What happens if your tracked subject goes outside the frame? The camera will still remember it and keep searching for it to re-enter the frame for "several seconds". After that, it forgets and you have to start again. (The "several seconds" seems to be highly variable – in some of my tests, it would forget after three. With other tests that involved faces (pictures in a picture frame to be exact), it would remember seemingly forever, even after I turned the camera off then on again.) What happens if it forgets, or simply can't track the subject? Then the camera reverts to the default behavior, which is to focus on the closest area that has contrast or a recognized face. For this example we used the Center Lock-on AF feature instead of the newer Lock-on AF in the Focus Area menu because in Center Lock-On AF mode, the camera shows you the subject it’s tracking via the double rectangles. Now let's talk about the OTHER Lock-On AF mode, the new one that works seamlessly for stills. To enable it, we'll undo the settings we made earlier: • Set MENU  6  Center Lock-on AF to OFF • Set MENU  3  Focus Area to the bottom option, LOCK-On AF and move the arrow buttons Left or Right to choose Lock-on AF Center. This uses the same algorithms as Center Lock-On AF shown above, with one key difference: You don't have to overtly tell the camera "This is my subject" and press the center button. Instead, the camera locks onto the subject in the usual way, and then uses that as a starting point for analyzing

66 New Features Explained the live view feed, identifying what the subject looks like, and then tries to track it as previously described. To see the difference in behavior, place your subject in the middle of the frame (I told you to choose "Lock-on AF CENTER” for a reason!), press the shutter release button halfway down, and then move the camera left and right, up and down, just as before. This can be a very useful tool in shooting sports, but as discussed earlier, it will either work brilliantly or will quickly default to the "focus on the closest thing in your defined focus area" if the camera can’t keep up with your subject. Do some tests in your particular shooting conditions before relying on it to shoot an important event.

3.11.1 OTHER FOCUS AREA CHOICES So far we’ve talked about two of the MENU  3  Focus Area settings: Center (one spot in the center of the viewfinder), and Lock-On AF (which is used in conjunction with any of the focus area choices and augments the focus tracking algorithm by analyzing the live view feed.) What do the other focus area choices do? A quick overview appears below:  Wide – Automatically choose from anywhere within the frame (technically the frame is divided into 289 focusing “zones” and it chooses one of those).  Zone – This is a compromise between wide angle and flexible spot focus – here you only have to enable one of three autofocus zones and the camera will choose one of the AF areas within that zone. Pressing the center button and then moving the arrows left or right will change zones.  Center – Just use the area in the very center.  Flexible Spot – “Flexible Spot” lets YOU choose which of the 289 focus areas to use via the arrow keys (which you can change at any time). You can also use the left and right arrow keys to choose a size – small, medium, or large, expanding the area in which it will look for contrast.

Figure 3-10: A situation where the Wide Area AF setting will be fooled. Switching to either “Flexible Spot (Small)” or “Center” allows me to tell the camera, “Focus on the fowl, not on the fence!”.

3.11.2 FOCUSING MODES Okay, that covered the Focusing Area. There are also four Focusing Modes, selectable via MENU  3  Focus Mode, which tell the camera whether it should try to track a moving subject or not. The four choices are: S This means, “Focus on a subject, and then lock focus until I take the picture.” This is called “Single Shot AF” (AutoFocus) mode, and is denoted by “AF-S”. This your standard point-and-shoot mode. C The camera also has a “Continuous AF” mode setting (denoted by “AF- C”), which can be used when you’re shooting sports (or anything that moves). When this mode is enabled you are essentially telling the camera “my subject is moving. Even when you’ve found focus, keep trying to focus on the subject because my subject will not stay still!” Keep in mind that in Continuous mode, once the camera achieves autofocus, it will not give you a steady green light and an audible “chirp”. Instead, it will continue to track and refocus (the subject is moving after all, right?) in an attempt to keep the subject in focus until the final shot is taken. You can always tell when you’re in Continuous focus mode, because the green focus indicator along the bottom left corner of the screen is surrounded by two sets of parentheses, which is supposed to convey movement.

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DMF “Direct Manual Focus” mode means it will start out in AF-S mode (focus on a subject, then stop trying to focus) and then it will go directly into manual focus mode, where you can quickly tweak the focusing via the lens’ focusing ring. DMF is even more useful when you have Peaking Level and Peaking Color enabled (page 313). With Peaking Level enabled, as soon as the camera switches to Manual Focus mode, the things that are in focus (areas of highest contrast, as determined by analyzing the live view image) will appear in a certain color. I find DMF to be most useful when shooting objects that are very close – and DMF allows me to either adjust focusing via the lens’ focusing ring, or (even faster) just move the camera back and forth a few inches until the item I want in focus appears in a bright color. MF Manual Focusing, which probably needs no explanation. The camera will actually magnify the center of the viewfinder for easy focusing if you invoke MENU  5  Focus Magnifier (page 266). Peaking Level functions (as described in DMF above) work here also, but they’re not as strong in magnification mode.

TIP: When you’re in AF-S mode and in continuous drive mode, the exposure is locked along with the focusing. (Exposure is never locked in AF-C mode.)

So what do I do? Okay, so you’ve just plowed through the above and your head is spinning. Let me tell you the focusing mode I use most of the time:  If I’m shooting sports, I’ll use Lock-on AF Center. I’ll put the athlete of interest in the center of the frame, press the shutter release button halfway, and then keep it halfway as I track his / her movement across the field. Then I’ll just take the picture at the decisive moment.

 If I’m shooting pretty much anything else, I’ll use Lock-on AF Wide. Here’s why I prefer to work this way:  Once I set my focus area to Lock-On AF [choose an area], it remembers that setting even when I switch out of AF-C mode, and re-institutes it when I switch back. So it’s a “set it once and forget it” kind of thing.  There doesn’t seem to be a downside to configuring your camera this way. If the new feature can be used to track your subject for you, GREAT! If it can’t, then you’re no worse off – the camera will just fall back to the older methods of tracking an object in AF- C mode.

EPILOGUE

Well then… If you’re new to the camera, and you’re just in the middle of reading both this book and the supplement, this can feel like an intimidating learning curve. Please don’t despair. These guides are designed to be used as reference books, and not necessarily read through linearly. So start slowly, consult these guides every time you have a question about what a certain feature does, and remember it is your LIGHT and COMPOSITION that make people say “Wow!” when they look at your images. Gary www.FriedmanArchives.com