this week I'm going to show you what zebras are and how you can use them to
help your photography
the zebra function is a highlight warning indicator and it's come across
from videography but now we have hybrid cameras that can shoot both of video and
stills you can also use it in your photography it doesn't control exposure
but it warns you of a certain exposure level on parts of the image it may make
the image on the monitor look very strange but this isn't recorded in the
final photograph or video so basically it's a function that helps you with your
exposure to turn it on in your Sony a7 three go into the menus and select tab
to page six out of nine and click on zebra setting turn them on and then
select zebra level in this you'll have settings from 70 to 100 plus and then to
custom settings the numbers can be equated to Ayari levels this is a very
geeky term and basically it refers to your brightness or luminosity an IRA is
a unit used in the measurement of composite video signals it's name is
derived from the initials of the Institute of radio engineers a value of
100 I re was originally defined to be the range from blanking level to peak
white in a video signal 100 could be equated to 100 percent brightness zero
can be equated to zero brightness so pure black and pure white well if we
look at the back of the camera I've purposely overexposed this image I've
set my zebras to 100 plus and you can see the zebra pattern on this screen
when I look at the preview image you can see that the Blinky's show that this
area should be overexposed however when I bring the image into Lightroom I can
still recover the highlights this is quite misleading and quite frustrating
as well because the whole idea of zebras is that you bring them up so you see
them on the screen and then you pull your exposure back a little bit so the
zebras disappear and you know you're at the point just before overexposure it's
always a good idea to go and test it for yourself so I suggest even if you go out
into the garden or outside your house or apartment take a few photos and then go
back in have a look to see what happens on your
computer then by doing this test you'll start to learn loads about your camera
and how it works and how you can get the best out of it as the zebras are
basically a videography tool they'll show you a certain exposure or Ayari
level on the back of the camera on the monitor or in the EVF now this is
basically a JPEG readout the format that these cameras film in is the h.264
format h.264 is basically the video version of a JPEG it bakes in lots of
different settings and you don't have the flexibility like you would in RAW so
then I had a little play around with the custom function in the zebra settings
even though the manual didn't have much on these this is what I've found there
are two settings the first one is lower limits and the second one is standard
plus range lower limit seems to be like the preset figures however to get the
same as 100 plus I have to set it to 99 plus standard range gives you a level
and a range of Ayari numbers you can set the zebras to as I predominantly shoot
stills at the moment I want to get as much out of the camera as possible and
fully utilize the whole dynamic range that the camera offers therefore if I
can get the zebras to show the actual overexposed part on a raw file I'll know
that I'll be at the limit my highlights won't be blown out but I'm squeezing as
much information out of the camera as possible so I did a test with each of
these custom settings seeing how far I could push the image before the raw file
became overexposed in the highlights first of all I set it to lower limit and
100 plus I took a photo with no zebras on the screen and then another photo
with zebras on the screen both of these still had details in the highlights next
I set the lower limit to 105 plus and took another two photos one without
zebras and one with zebras again both of these shots had details in the
highlights the third test I did was with low limit and I set it to 109 plus again
I took two photos one with zebras and one without now this is where it gets
interesting the first shot I can bring back in lightroom by pulling down
the highlights and the exposure there is still detail and good color in the
highlights with zebras showing at this level now when I try and pull the
highlights back I start seeing there's some funky colors in the sky this shows
that it's lost certain colors and basically these have blown out and the
camera hasn't recorded any details in all of the color channels so therefore
when I set it to this limit and there are no zebras I know that I'm at the
limits of my highlights I'm not over exposing them and I'm not under exposing
them now as I'm pushing this camera as far as it can go and really squeezing as
much detail out of the highlights I'm gonna test this over the next month or
so just to see what results I get I'll be keeping the Zebras set to low limit
109 Plus just to see what results I get I'll make sure when I'm exposing the
shot I'll get the highlights on the screen
and then I'll bring the exposure down a little bit to get rid of those zebras
it'll be interesting to see how the camera copes whether or not I start
losing details in the highlights and also to squeeze as much of the dynamic
range out of the camera as possible if you want to see how I get on over the
next month with these settings head over to my website scroll down to the bottom
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tested standard Plus range in this setting when you set the range to a
really low amount like one you only get a thin strip of zebras so part of the
image could be overexposed without zebras on it if you set it to 100 plus
or minus one you know that the zebras are only going to show on 99 to 101 when
I set the range to 5 I got very similar results to the test that I've just done
this is why I recommend using lower limit with standard Plus range you could
have air that are overexposed without any zebras
on the best thing to do is to go out and test it for yourself I keep saying this
but the more of these little tests that you do even if you just go out into your
garden and take some images and bring them back into your computer you'll get
a better understanding of this setting and you'll be able to work out what
works for you the Dro setting basically lets the
camera adjust the exposure to have more dynamic range available for the mapping
of the image this often reduces exposure to get more details in the highlights
therefore this will affect the Zebras but not in how they operate just in how
the shot is exposed so you might see the Zebras moving subtly if you turn
DRO off or on but the zebras will still cover the levels that you set them to
with dr aid i'd recommend turning this off picture profiles do not affect your
RAW files so as long as you're shooting in RAW there is no reason to have
picture profile switched on these are mainly a function for videographers to
get as much dynamic range out of the shot as possible
they are profiles that are baked into a video file or a JPEG so as long as
you're shooting in RAW which you should be doing you should keep this function
off when shooting photographs another use for zebras is where you can get a
good exposure on a person's face if you take an average Caucasian person you set
your zebras to 70 when you then get them on the screen you'll set the exposure so
you can see the Zebras on their face so for an example I've set this camera up
to level 70 and you can see I've set the exposure so the Zebras do appear on the
brighter parts of my face when I switch to the normal view you can see I've got
good exposure in theory this works really well but say if you have someone
with very pale skin or slightly tan skin then this may mess up the system so I
stay away from this one now even though I don't use this technique I'm just
making you aware of it so then you have the option of using zebras in this way
and that's about it zebras are a really good tool to use to
help you set your exposure correctly if you don't mind the zebra pattern being
on the image of the back of the screen knowing that it's not going to be
there on the final image you can use this and very quickly dial in your
exposure as always if you like what you see give me a thumbs up if you didn't
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