8 Sony Settings I Wish I Knew Sooner

As a wildlife photographer silent shutter is a must unless you like scaring away your subjects. 🤣

This my homie right here, but don't be ma at me my guy I have to slightly make a disagreement with proper explanation. Silent shutter is awesome but you have to treat it like a video mode... in photography. To make it make sense here lol... Natural light like you said agreed... inside anywhere, you have to use shutter angle so like our U.S. peeps 1/60 and my U.K. peeps 1/50. For U.S, you need to shoot 1/60, 1/120, 1/180 or 1/200 for certain cameras. UK 1/50, 1/100, 1/150, 1/200 ... etc. Don't shoot too far past max shutter speed/HSS, it freaks and the lines just multiplies lol. With agreeance, get on location early like you're supposed to anyways and test your settings to see where things work and not then when this roll out, you can dial in and enjoy your shoot.

For the banding lines w/ silent shutter, if you can use shutter speeds lower than 1/60, you should be fine. It happens when there are LED lights, because of their blinking frequency. If your speed is lower than that frequency, you'll get it lit for every row of pixels. But, if you need faster speeds, yeah: just disable silent shutter.

These are really good tips, Jason! Though I’ve been a Sony shooter for years I only recently got an A7Rv and these really helped.

Jesus those two tips about the eye af and the AF in retrospec really are new to me. Thanks for this one !

Been a Sony user for years - but some great new tips. Every day’s a school day! Thank you.

Thanks a lot for the helpful tips and especially for including both menu systems! I happen to own an a7CII and an a7RIV, so I actually needed both. You saved my a lot of time!

I will just add another important points: 1. not to forget fast moving subjects gets distorted with e shutter, 2. I hear electronic curtain causes bad bokeh balls, 3. use sky or wall with small aperture like f22 to see all dust on sensor(your nightmare), disable sensor protection when off if you need to clean sensor, then turn it on back, 4. new cameras can stack a lot of photos even with raws and its not like a phone to easily pinch and see sharpness, so sigle take can save a lot of your time, 5. sometimes getting focus and sharp picture is hard on phone, apsc, not to mention fullframe will make it way harder, getting further or decrease aperture to slower one like f10 can help, 6. turning off wifi can increase battery life.

I was pretty well aware of most of these, but changing the folders to the date and having a hot key for staring the photos are going to be HUGE time savers for me. Thank you for always putting out easy to follow and useful content.

1:39 “Tip Number 2” is amazing! @JasonVong I have had my Sony A7IV for 2 years, and just now, because you posted this, I NOW have set that (Face/Eye Frame Disp.) set to ON, and now I unlock all the awesome eye autofocus features the camera has which i was I was unaware I wasn’t taking advantage of. Thanks for such a timely post!

As always, Jason, succinct, clear and funny; thank you.

Silent shutter, auto flicker or just know your country electricity frequency, it's just between 2. 50hz or 60hz. Also for most non flagship highest end Sony camera, jello effect due to slow readout

Thanks so much for sharing your great tips!!! I love all of them, but especially like the setting up a custom button for rating images. I had no idea I could do that. This is definitely going to save me some time.

The setting to turn off Audio signals in the 1.0 menu is actually in page 2, Custom Operation2 listed as Audio signals. The one you showing in the left at 1:36 is just silent shooting, which caused banning as mentioned by you in the beginning :D

"MEGAPICKLES" yes!

Some solid tips! I like the explanation of the file folder tip, I was stuck having the piles ups of footage as well!

This is a camera feature I regret not using in my early years in photography. It’s good for capturing candid and spontaneous expressions of people without the wait for the click.

AWESOME VIDEO JASON, I’m a long time Sony mirrorless shooter and I think half of your Settings you wish you knew sooner were ones I was unaware, all of the settings you point out are very useful. Thank you.

Thank you, Jason! This is such invaluable information! I used your old settings video back when I got my a6400 a few years ago, and now looking at this updated version as I'm setting up my new (happy birthday to me🎉) a6700 camera. Thank you for sharing your many years of experience with the community.

Thank you for the tip about shooting in low light on silent mode. I had low light inside a theater and noticed the banding when I got home.