today i want to show you how i've set up the a74
to be the fastest and easiest way to use for a hybrid solo shooter
hey my name is jake and i create content here to help solo creators on the go so i
do lots of drones cameras lens reviews and i do tips and tutorials on how to use them so
if that's something that interests you consider subscribing today i want to show you how i've set
up the a74 to be the fastest quickest easiest to use for a solo hybrid shooter somebody who shoots
both photos and video and you need to get around quickly and be able to switch between modes as
fast as you possibly can and also get the highest quality you can now this may not work for all of
you but through this tutorial you'll also figure out how to kind of set it up the way you want
but this is the way i want to set it up and the way that works really well to be able to switch
between photo and video modes and be able to shoot a lot of different types of content really quickly
without really having to get into the menu as we jump into this i'm going to walk you through a
few settings real quick that you need to change right off the bat and one of them is the high
temperature shutoff mode because that turns the camera or makes the camera turn off a little bit
before it needs to one tip is that if you're going to be operating for a long period of time pull
the screen away from the body because that will allow a lot more heat to dissipate a lot quicker
so but first we're going to go to menu 42 and then we're going to go down to 49 power save option
here and click high click ok and then we're going to get out of that go back up here next
we want to set up my menu because my menu allows you to get out a lot of functions
that you don't necessarily want to assign to a custom control like formatting cards and
airplane mode things like that so we're gonna go into menu my menu i've already added a lot
of things but we're going to go into my menu setting add item and i want to add something where
i can set the camera memory really quickly because that's something i find i do a fairly fair amount
so we're going to go here we're going to go down to file we're going to go down to right here to
memory or camera set memory and we're going to add that to my menu right under silent shoot silent
mode shooting next i want to show you how i set up all the custom buttons and controls because it can
be a very powerful way of being able to get around the camera really really quick and uh be able to
use them to get things set and and move through the camera quickly without ever having to get in
your menu when you're shooting out on the road so the way to do that is menu we're gonna go down to
here operation customize and then custom key and dial set i use the photo mode there's one
setting you have to use on video mode only the key menu number one it's kind
of weird they don't name name it the same as what you see but it's basically the aeo
button toggle which i leave the same number two is the autofocus manual focus switch right here
number three is i use it to set focus area so you can quick click that real quick and be able
to cycle through your different types of focus modes number four is display my menu so number
four is actually c3 over here and that's just nice because you can hit it real quick it brings
up my menu and then you can go down in here and get into whatever you need to get into number
five which is the trash can here or c4 i use to be able to turn the touch screen on or off so if i am
say i could turn the touch operation on i could tap what i want to focus on or what i want to
track through a scene i don't use touch operation all the time but it's nice to have it quickly to
be able to turn it on and off quickly now we go down to rear two which is this multi-use dial here
and the multi-touch joystick here and i have this set the uh this first bit is the audio signals
because i like to that's just what i've been using for a long time so if you push this down it'll
bring up a dialog that allows you to adjust audio signals now there's another option on this camera
that we can use which is this customizable dial here that if you need to turn up turn your audio
gain up or down when you're recording you can use that and then i use the center button right here
as my focus magnifier so when i'm taking a photo and i want to make sure i get my manual focus set
right i can push that and jump in and punch in works in video two when i'm not recording
and then five or three is the drive mode number four is my iso so you can push it and then turn
your iso up or down and then number five which is down i use to lock my white balance so that
when i shoot an auto white balance because the camera does do a good job in auto white balance
when i shoot it on a white balance i can lock it and have it not adjust on me sometimes a cloud
will go over or something like that and you can see the white balance adjusting a little
bit so it's just nice to be able to have it to be able to lock it really quickly go down here to uh
the top i set the shutter button to be movie on always and i can show you how to set that up in
a second but so my number one is my live view display select which means it switches between
what it looks like to the camera at the moment to what it will look like when the photos taken
um i don't use that all the time but it does come in handy from time to time
and then number two is my white balance so if i push number two i can switch between
all my different white balances really quickly and select what i need and then we get here
i leave that as what it's set as default which is focus hold on any lens now we get to the
dials so you've got the front dial the rear dial and then also this here which by default
is an auto exposure compensation but i don't use it for that because i tend to set all my exposure
manually or i set up set it and unlock it so what i've got is my front dial here is tv which is the
shutter speed and then the rear dial here is the av which is the aperture so front is shutter rear
is aperture and then number three i set to kelvin so i can set it to uh kelvin on the white balance
and then swing through the different kelvin values to get the kelvin set to exactly what i want which
i find pretty handy when i'm shooting in a lot of different situations especially indoor spaces and
then number four this might you might not like it but i have it set to iso so i don't have to push
the iso button i can just start rotating the dial when i'm in um getting ready to take a photo and
change the iso value as i want to so i find that a little faster or i can just dial it in really
quickly with my thumb now i said that there's one or two that you have to set up differently
because otherwise basically on the video i just have them all following the custom buttons on
the photo mode because they're pretty much all the same and they're useful for all the same but
when you come down to rear two you need to change this one here to audio record level
so that you can push that in and adjust the audio recording or you can come over here go back here
or you can come over here and come down to number three and you can change this to
audio record level so now when i'm in movie mode if i want to change the audio recording level
i can do it right there really quick and really easy which makes it nice
depending on what you're shooting and also here is where if you keep coming down you can set to
record with shutter button which just means that this button here becomes your recording button
all right so we've got all of the custom controls set up the way we want so we can get in and out
and around stuff really quickly and set the camera up quickly when especially when you're working by
yourself or you're moving through really dynamic situations but the other cool thing about this
camera is you can set three different memory modes for photo mode three different memory modes for
video mode and three different photo modes for s and q mode now i've got them set up where
number one is raw but high speed shooting so as fast as it can shoot it will shoot 10 frames a
second which is what this camera limits out on not great but it definitely works number two
is my just straight up regular raw photo mode that i use that's just what i shoot most of the time
and then number three is interval mode because i do shoot a lot of time lapses using this camera
so setting it to interval mode it shoots raws it's set to a thousand or two thousand photos i
think it's up to a few thousand photos ten seconds apart because i do a lot of astrophotography but
the nice thing is i can easily push this go down to my interval shoot function and then change the
settings that i want to change like if i don't want it to be a 10 second interval say i want
to be a five second interval really quick right there and i can get out of it and boom it's set
five seconds for two thousand photos um and i said two thousand photos because if you're doing like
sunrise sunset time lapses you just never know it needs to go fairly quickly and make sure that uh
yeah things are ready to go then if we switch to video mode right here switch that little dial to
video mode i've got three more set up number one is 4k 10 bit 422 that's what i shoot everything in
now if that's hard for your computer to handle you might need to dial it back to
8-bit but that's what i like because it gives you the most amount of dynamic range the most
amount of color information in the camera and it looks really really good but uh that's what that
is but that's a standard picture profile so the standard colors straight out of the sony which i
find in this camera are really nice a7s3 as well then we switch to memory number two right here
that's where it goes into s log three and this is where i shoot s log three in 4k 30 frames a
second 422 10 bit because i want the most amount of dynamic range especially when i'm standing in
front of snow-capped mountains that are in the sun but i'm in the shadows dynamic range is extremely
important and then number three is my 4k60 so my high frame rate slow speed ish modes to be able
to capture 4k 60 and uh and get some of that more dreamy sort of slow motion effect you switch to s
and q mode i basically have everything here set to hd 120 frames a second all my shutter speeds set
properly all my uh everything else is set right number one is the same thing it's in standard mode
uh standard color profile number two is s-log three again same thing and number three is 120
fps uh that it fills in s and q mode but then it conforms it to 24 fps instead of 30 fps so when
i'm shooting in 24 i can change it right there now to change any of your settings as far as your
file format and stuff you're going to go to the mode you want to change so photo mode go to menu
and it's all up here on this image quality here you can switch between jpeg and high efficiency
codec i stay on jpeg but that's because i shoot everything on raw so here you can switch between
compressed uncompressed raw or lossless compressed and then if we switch over to video mode this is
where you can change all of your video mode settings so here we've got image quality
file format you can change it from hs which is highly compressed i use s because it gives you
a good amount of quality but also compresses it a little bit so it doesn't use up so much space 4k
you can also switch to hd and the si is the least compressed codec but it also gives you the highest
quality also takes up a fair amount of space so i found for my workflow the s works best and then
if you go into movie settings here you can set what you want your recording frame rate to be
and let me go back here you can set what you want the quality to be so i have 200 megabits and 42
10 bit because i shoot everything in that but if you need to change it to 8 bit you can now to set
any of the camera memory settings the way you want you want to turn this to m in video or photo mode
and then go to menu get your image quality here file format we're going to put that at 4k we want
that to be 30 and 422 10 bit because that's what i like to shoot on get out of that then you want to
set your shutter speed and your aperture to what you want if you want to change your iso value to
say auto iso which is what i do you can also set your white balance to auto or whatever you
prefer you can set your focus area to be i usually use wide and you can also set your focus um you
know what type of focus you want to be and then because we set up you go to my menu by pushing c3
and you go down to set camera memory then you choose slot one two or three and that's the way
it works for all of the different memory settings and then when you hit ok it'll set that every all
of the settings for that in this camera memory so then when you recall them it'll just pop up to be
whatever you have set for that particular camera memory now if you want to take the lazy way i've
linked a file in the description you can put it on an sd card or on a cfx press 8 card load in the
camera go down to your settings and basically pull every setting that i've got my whole camera set
up the way it's set up into your camera and have it ready to go that way you don't have to fiddle
through all of the menus and stuff like that but it's still good for you to know how to do that in
case something doesn't quite work for you and you decide that you need to change up your workflow
if you want to learn other tips about how you can improve your videography and photography
click or tap right there i put together a small playlist i'll see in one of those videos as always
if you have questions ask me in the comments below or join my live stream wednesday nights
at 4 pm alaska time 8 pm eastern yeah i'll see you again soon in the next video cheers