as someone who's had
the Sony A seven C for I know a year and a half.
I have learned a lot from shooting with this camera, both in video and photography, and these are the settings that are working
best for me in street
photography.
At the moment, these settings slash set up are broken down into four parts.
The
first is going to be metering.
The second will be autofocus, The third is
custom buttons and the fourth quickly is philtres.
So first from metering, there are lots of different ways you can use in your Sony camera and on the A
seven c.
I particularly choose the centre weighted metering and the highlight metering
If I'm shooting in the street photography scenario and there's a specific subject that I want to make sure they're
exposed and I will sacrifice the exposure of the background.
Then I will use
centre weighted metering to focus that on my subject in order to make the right adjustments so
they're correctly exposed,
and I can
either let the background full of darker or fall a bit too bright into the
highlights.
Now I'm only really doing that occasionally for the most part.
I'm
using highlight
metering, and what I do is I push my
exposure just below plus two.
So just before that, plus to an A 70 starts flashing about 1.7, sometimes
even solid
plus two, anything up to
there?
That's where I expose my shots at.
And that means that I am maxing out my exposure, the
absolute highest exposure, the most amount of light in my
frame without sacrificing any highlight detail
next into our autofocus
settings.
So for the most part,
I'm using one or a
focus area mode, and that is the flexible spot area.
I
find this focus area mode best for me because if I'm walking
up to a scenario and I sort of
see a subject, I can sort of see a potential composition.
I will set up the spot
to where I wanted to be on
the frame savings, a composition, or if it's horizontal, I will set the spot where I think the
subject is going to need to
be for it to work.
Then when I get there, I just line them up on the spot, adjust it if I need
to, But then I just get them lined up,
take a shot and we're all good.
I do use this a little bit in terms of tracking as well, which I'll get onto into our next section,
which is custom buttons.
So first, what is that custom button that I just mentioned for changing the position of our flexible point?
We'll have that set to the centre of the D pad so I can just tap on the centre button and then move
it
around with the D pad, similar to how I actually used to use my Fuji X 100 s.
I tend to use that if I'm just making micro adjustments or from trying to keep the camera really steady.
I'm just moving it a little bit
and I don't want to touch the screen.
I'll do that as well,
Then Another custom button for all the focus is the F on burn.
I use this AF on
button as a whole for tracking, so if I have that flexible spot on the subject, I will
hold the AF on button for tracking.
Let that subject walk through the frame safe like a bold subject wearing bright colours, and I want to
use them in a composition.
Get that flexible point on them, track it, and then I can move them around
in the competition and just keep them in focus.
You know, different corners
in the centre
move them around wherever.
That doesn't mean, however, that my autofocus manual Focus toggle button isn't available that I would
normally use the video.
So I actually reroute that to the record because the record burn in
photography is pretty much useless.
So I have now just set that up as my af
MF toggle.
Next is my down on the d pad.
I use this for cropping into the Super 35 mode.
Actually have a couple of videos on this on my channel.
But when you listen video on the A seven c, you don't lose any resolution, but when you do
it in photography, you do lose resolution.
But it's really useful safe.
You're shooting a prime lens and you want to drop it in this 28 mil.
Cropped in goes up to
a 42 mil, so it's super useful if you're just in a
bit of a tight spot, and you think
I could do with, like,
an extra 14 million.
This
is fine.
Tap that
down on the D pad and then you've got it.
The last customer and I have set up specifically for street photography is left on the D pad, and I
have that set up for the silent mode.
And I find Silent Murray
to be really, really good when she and street photography because it doesn't attract attention to you, and
it sort of makes people less aware of your presence.
So if they're about to walk through a frame, it makes them, like, less hesitant to, like, walk around you or something.
Because sometimes people are
almost like, too polite and they want to go around the back
of you, They'll they'll like Wait before you take a photo or something like that,
I always try to encourage people just like Oh, no, walk through.
Don't mind
me.
I'm literally just, you know, photographers taking a photo of this.
This area,
having it on silent
tends to throw people off a little bit less, and you gotta think like when you take photos on your
smartphone, that silent mode you never actually have the camera sound on your
phone and lastly, just going to quickly talk about Philtres.
So when it comes to Philtres, I'm always using a diffusion philtre for street photography.
Just because I like to blame highlights.
I
often find like car headlights, shop window lights, stuff like that, that little bit of haze.
You get around subjects.
Just add something, and especially with
the way that I'm editing at the moment, it just seems to really lend quite a lot in terms of doing, like a bit of film emulation,
and often it can lift shadows a little bit more.
So
if we are exposing for highlights something eyeshadows drop, it's sort of lifting the tiniest little bit
as
well.
Those are my settings for the A seven C for street photography right now.
I'm curious.
Do you agree with all these settings?
Would you use them?
Do you have any other ideas?
Drop them in the comments below.
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