- Welcome to this episode of LokTalk Top Tips.
This time I'm talking about a7 camera hack.
Now, we're mainly focused on my a7S II,
but a lot of these tips,
these hacks,
works across all a7 cameras.
These are also not that kind of hacks,
that actually make your camera do things
that it's not designed to do.
But it's those hacks that make it so much better.
So, let's just begin.
Out of the box all a7s cameras have this thing pop
up when you change your exposure.
Now the problem is, if you have histogram turned on,
that exposure set guide thing pops up,
and then you lost your histogram,
which you need it the most,
because you're changing exposure.
Actually you can turn this off,
just go into the setting,
the second tab;
the gear menu and then the second page,
you will find the exposure set guide.
Just turn it off, and now it performs
like it should be really; when you change aperture,
shutter speed, you can look at the histogram to do so.
(cat meows)
Yeah, my cat agrees.
Maybe not all of you want to have this function.
I found a way to turn off the screen
just by one click of a button.
Why do I want that?
It's that when I, especially when I'm shooting vlog.
Sometimes, in some situation, I know that I can
shoot video at that situation,
but sometimes, some people may not understand
and that I don't really want people
to come up to me, to ask me what I'm doing,
stop me from shooting video; I just don't want
that attention and the trouble.
OK, so how do you set that?
You just have to go to the custom key setting,
whichever button you want to set,
and then set it to finder/monitor select.
The thing is this switch between finder and monitor,
you can always set it to menu,
you have to answer button to finder/monitor select.
So now, it's manual, so you have to have a button
to switch it between.
What I find out; what a big discovery I find out
is that even I set it to auto,
now it's switched between
viewfinder and monitor automatically.
But still I can set a button to switch between them.
So now practically I have LCD screen turn off button.
It actually took me some time to figure that out,
and I'm sure someone out there would be looking
for this solution, so there you are.
Now this hack is about shooting video
with your a7 camera, and using auto focus continuous.
As you know, my a7S II are not the best in the world
in auto focus, actually it's pretty bad.
Especially when you're shooting video
and then you suddenly want to show something
in front of the camera in close distance,
it just takes forever to switch to
focusing on something close to the lens.
Now in this situation, you ought to
switch it to manual focus,
but you actually don't have to spend that time.
You just have to half-press the shutter button,
and it will just magically focus on that thing
close to the lens.
Now what's funny is that is not that
Sony camera is not capable
of switching that focusing; it's just not switching at all.
It wants to keep focusing on the thing at the background.
Of course this is not for smooth focus racking,
but this is just a time saving method.
I just don't like screen protector.
I've never used any screen protectors
on any of my cameras, any of my phones.
I've used quite a lot of cameras before,
belongs to a company, belongs to me.
The LCD screen, I never have any problem of
on the LCD screen at the back.
But, on the Sony a7 you really want
to put on a screen protector.
And on my case, too late.
I first discovered this when
the reflective coating on my camera on the edges,
I mean it just peeled off or something.
And then I asked a pro photographer
who uses an a7R II, and he confirmed to me
that a lot of other pro photographer
find this problem as well.
The a7R II have this exact problem.
So a screen protector becomes a necessity for a7 cameras.
After that, I'm still not really convinced.
Aw it should be fine, but look at it now;
it's so bad now.
So PSA, you need a screen protector on your a7 cameras.
Don't be like me.
Oh that is really bad.
You may think that: of course you can use USB battery
for camera, is that even a hack?
Now the thing is I've seen people go all the way
to use dummy battery,
and some try to mount the battery on the camera.
Now the thing is, you don't have to find a way
to mount the battery to your camera;
what I usually do is get a long USB cable,
obviously plug in to your a7 camera,
and then keep this battery away in your pocket,
in your backpack, so when you're shooting,
you don't really have to carry the weight of the battery,
you don't have to find a way to mount the battery
on the camera; I saw people do that.
Now when you shooting, it don't really charge
your camera battery, it just prolongs.
It still uses a little bit of the internal battery,
but it prolongs the shooting time for a lot.
So that's all for this LokTalk Top Tips,
it sounds like I pointed out a lot of shortcomings
of this camera
but in fact, it is still a brilliant camera,
These hacks are worked around to
overcome these shortcomings of these a7 series of cameras.
Something interesting is that I'm shooting this
whole video with my iPhone X because I only have
one camera when I have to demonstrate this camera,
I only have my iPhone to shoot this video.
What do you think of these hacks?
Is it useful for you, or have you already
heard of all of them so these are not that good anyway.
I also want to thank you PhotoJoseph
for supporting this channel on my
Patreon page by selecting the "your name here" award.
Reward, not award.
So check out my Patreon page if you want to help out
with this channel, check out PhotoJoseph's channel,
and also check out Kai's latest Mavic Air review video.
It's brilliant, it's hilarious as well,
well as always of course.