Original subtitles

Hey, I'm back.

In this short little video, I'm gonna teach

you how we set up our A9.

So feel free to skip this if you

use another camera.

But some of the custom settings I'm gonna

go over are likely options with most of

the mirrorless cameras out there.

So you might get something from it.

Now, there are a lot of menu items

in this A9.

So many menu items that it can be

a little bit intimidating, but most of them,

to be quite honest, we leave in the

factory default.

There's only gonna be about 13 that we

change.

So we're just gonna go over those specifically.

So first, let's look at the top of

the camera, okay?

So we've got this dial over here.

Call it, I don't know what the technical

term is.

Your drive setting, I guess it is.

Your drive setting, that's what it is, right?

So how fast your shutter speed works.

We keep it on L for most of

the day because when you have it on

L, I think it's about three frames per

second.

When you have it on medium, it's 10

frames per second.

And when you have it on high, it's

20 frames per second.

Now, if we're trying to line up a

really fast-paced action in the same frame

as something else that's moving, we might bump

it into high for a certain part of

the day.

But it really sucks, Colleen, when you forget

to put it back down into low.

Last wedding, Lani shot all the details in

high.

So I had to cull through literally 500

pictures of centerpieces.

Hopefully, he'll learn his lesson.

Okay, down below that, we have our AF

options.

See it there, Brett?

We have this on AFC all the time,

which is AF Continuous.

Okay, and I'm gonna get into why that's

important later.

But basically, it allows your autofocus to continually

track a subject if you hold it down.

Okay, over here, we keep this in manual.

I'd say 99.9% of the time

because we shoot in manual, right?

Occasionally, and I mean very occasionally, if we're

shooting in one part of the room and

something in the other part of the room

with a completely different lighting scenario happens and

we don't have time to change settings, we've

got this holy shit setting, okay?

So we dial it over to one here

and it basically turns our camera into full

auto mode so we can at least capture

the moment, even if we don't have full

control over the exposure.

And you know what?

The camera does a good enough job to

capture that moment and the moment trumps everything

else, right?

Over here is our exposure compensation.

With the way we shoot, we never touch

this.

Okay, so let's go through the menu now.

And like I said, there's a lot of

menu items.

I'm just gonna go through the ones that

we change.

Most of them stay at factory default.

Okay, and we'll go over them in order

here.

So I'm gonna start over at the camera

one.

Okay, so the first thing on the menu,

RAW and JPEG.

So that's the file format.

So I always switch that to RAW and

JPEG, right?

And later on in the menu, I'm gonna

show you how you can have it write

RAW to your memory card slot number one

and JPEG to your memory card slot number

two.

It would have been handy if they'd included

it in this menu, but they didn't.

They just wanted to make it extra confusing

for us.

Okay, so that's it for page number one.

Let's go over to page number five.

Two, four, five.

Okay, focus area.

Come down to here.

You've got a number of options here.

We go down to the very bottom option,

which is tracking flexible spot S.

Okay, the tracking is a really nice feature.

That means once you lock focus onto something,

it's gonna track that focus throughout the entire

composition until you let go of your thumb.

I'll show you what that looks like.

Okay, so let's say here's my center point

focus.

I lock on this guy here.

As long as I hold that down, no

matter where I move my composition, it's gonna

stay on him, okay?

I use the small flexible spot because I'm

often shooting between things, right?

And I wanna shoot something in the background.

And if I have a large flexible spot,

it sometimes grabs focus onto the wrong thing.

Let's see if it'll work focusing between the

bride and groom here.

Not quite, but there we go.

Gives you an idea.

Okay, so let's move back to the menu

now.

Okay, number six here.

AF tracking sensitivity, okay?

I have this set at the standard, which

is three out of five.

If we're moving really fast-paced action, like

the dance floor, for example, I might move

that up to five in terms of its

sensitivity.

Okay, down here, AF with shutter.

You wanna make sure this is turned off,

okay?

If you have that on, you can't back

button focus.

So this basically turns the autofocus off on

your shutter button.

Okay, now I'm gonna move on to menu

number 12 on the camera one.

Okay, white balance.

Just wanna make sure that's set at auto.

Okay, so that's it for the camera number

one menu.

Let's move on to the camera number two

menu.

So we're gonna go all the way to

menu five.

Okay, shutter type.

This is really important, okay?

So most of the time, we have our

shutter on electronic shutter.

And the reason we do this is because

that's how we can get that high frame

rate.

And it's also how we can use and

take advantage of silent shutter.

However, when you're shooting off-camera flash, you

have to be in mechanical shutter.

And I'm gonna show you a little shortcut

I have for that in a few minutes.

But this is where you change your shutter

type.

Let's move to number seven here.

Okay, display button.

This is personal preference.

But when I press this display button, basically

determines all the things that show up on

my display when I'm shooting.

And usually, I either want all the settings

turned on so I can see my aperture,

ISO, and all the other focus points and

all that sort of stuff.

Or I want nothing showing.

So I've only got display all info and

no display info.

And that way, show you here.

I've got all the info showing or I've

got no info showing.

And I don't have to go through all

those other options to get no info showing.

Okay, let's go to number nine.

Okay, this is a big one.

This is where we set up our custom

keys.

And this is all personal preference.

It's kind of like how you set up

your seat when you're driving in the car.

Some people like to be really close.

Some people like to be far away.

And Lani and I actually have our cameras

set up slightly differently with this.

But this is how I have mine set

up.

So custom key here.

So I've got my aperture set up on

this wheel here.

I've got my back button focus center point

set up on this here.

And I've got my eye auto focus set

up on this point here.

So I'm just gonna quickly navigate out of

here and show you what that looks like.

So this is my center point focus, right?

And if I hold it down, it tracks.

This is my eye focus.

And look at it, it even locks onto

the eye of a ceramic model.

That's pretty amazing.

And if I move my model closer or

further away to the side or let's say

he's dancing like crazy.

Oh no, it doesn't do well with him

dancing.

But it does pretty well when you think

about it.

So that's my eye auto focus, right?

So that's how I've got those two custom

buttons set up.

Number four, which is this button right here,

I'm gonna explain in a few minutes.

But basically, once you start shooting off camera

flash and you've got a transmitter on your

camera, you've got your, and you're in mechanical

shutter and your wireless flash is turned on,

for some reason, the A9 doesn't show you

what your exposure is.

So this button allows me to see a

preview of that exposure.

It'll make sense when I show it to

you in a few minutes.

Okay, number five here, down here, show you,

is set to shutter type.

That's this one, okay?

So I've got electronic, mechanical.

Those are the only two I use.

I never use auto.

And that's just so when I am switching

between off camera flash and natural light, I

don't have to navigate through the menu to

find it.

I can just press that button.

Okay, let's move on to this page here,

which is the second page of the custom

keys.

Okay, so number one is this button here.

I've just got that for the focus toggle

point, which I rarely use.

Number two, which is the middle button in

the wheel, I don't have set to anything

because we often accidentally press that button and

I don't want it set to anything.

Number three, which is the left side of

the wheel, I've got press to audio signals.

So I'm gonna show you that, right?

So usually I have my audio signals turned

off so you can't hear my shutter, and

that's very intentional.

But there are certain times when we wanna

hear the shutter, right?

Especially during portrait sessions.

It gives some feedback to our couples.

In that case, I will turn on the

e-shutter, just like that, and then you'll

be able to hear the shutters.

See?

But normally, actually I'm gonna turn that back

to off.

Okay, let's continue with that.

Number four, which is the right side of

the wheel, I have set to my ISO.

So number five, I have set to my

focus area.

And then up here, C1 button, I have

set to my ISO as well.

The reason I did that is because when

I switched from Canon to Sony, that's where

the Canon ISO button is.

So I wanted it the same on the

Sony, just for my muscle memory.

And then number two, the two button up

here, I have set to my wireless flash.

I'll show you that as well.

Because when you're shooting, sorry, when you're shooting

off-camera flash, there's two things that need

to change.

You need to change to your mechanical shutter

and you have to make sure your wireless

flash is turned on.

Okay, so if I press this button, it

won't let me do it because I'm in

electronic shutter and I need to be in

mechanical shutter in order to change the setting.

I'm gonna go down here, change my shutter

to mechanical.

I'm gonna press this shortcut and my wireless

flash is already on, perfect.

Okay, so that's it for custom keys.

Now we're gonna move over to the toolbox

menu here.

Okay, so monitor brightness.

I'm pretty sure the factory default is manual

as I've got it here, but I just

wanted to mention this because Lenny and I

accidentally once had it set to sunny.

And when we got home and downloaded the

photos, they were all a little bit underexposed.

Wasn't a big deal.

We could bring them back up, but just

make sure that's set to manual and not

in sunny.

Okay, so let's go to number two on

the toolbox.

Touch operations, okay?

I have this one turned off, okay?

So this is the touch screen, okay?

Because I noticed whenever I have the touch

operations turned on, it triggers the focus and

it would move my focus up into the

corner of the screen all the time because

my cheek would be touching the screen.

So I've just got touch screen turned off

entirely.

I know there is an option.

I think it's right under this one, actually.

Touch pad settings.

You can select half of the screen to

be on and half of the screen to

be off depending on which eye you shoot

with.

But for me, I just prefer not to

have the touch screen on at all because

it just messes me up, okay?

Next is on page six, record media settings.

Now this is where you set up your

camera so that it records RAWs to one

card and JPEGs to the other, okay?

So I prioritize recording media slot number one.

Recording mode is sort, RAW, JPEG.

Pretty simple.

Okay, lastly, I'm gonna show you what it's

like shooting off-camera flash with this.

So let's just switch this as if I

were shooting natural light, I'm in the electronic

shutter, okay?

I just wanna, I'm gonna put my flash

transmitter on.

Okay, and I'm gonna turn this on.

It's turned on.

It's on.

Okay, so first thing I'm gonna do is

change it to mechanical shutter.

Okay, the second thing I'm gonna do is

make sure the wireless flash is turned on,

okay?

Now, I want you to notice that it's

showing me the shot result preview for like

the first time in my life.

It's showing me my exposure.

Yeah, in mechanical shutter.

It's showing me, it wasn't doing that last

night.

All right, well, maybe it's the firmware update

I did.

Okay, well, this is good.

I mean, I don't think we should delete

this out because it shows you that, seriously,

I practiced this last night and I needed

to use this C3 button to show my

shot result preview.

And then I updated my firmware and now

it's still showing me my exposure even with

the wireless flash turned on.

So obviously, they made some improvements in their

firmware.

So that's pretty much it for camera settings.

I'm gonna link to a friend of ours.

His name's Jason.

He's done a similar video about his camera

settings with the A9.

He shoots entirely different than us.

He shoots aperture priority.

He's also a two-man alumni.

And he sets up his camera completely different.

So you might be able to get something

from his video as well.

So I hope this was helpful and we'll

see you in the next module.