Lessons
Introduction & Basic Controls
06:10 2Top Deck: Mode Dial
12:55 3Top Deck: Other Functions
03:28 4Back Side
05:18 5Back Side: Function Button
21:08 6Back Side Other Functions
05:46 7Left Side, Right Side & Movie Options
04:07 8Bottom & Card Reader
03:47Lesson Info
Back Side
All right, Let's move over to the backside of the camera dominated by the LCD on the back of the camera. Great for viewing your images. It is a fold out screen so that you can get it in different positions and thankfully this camera has an EVF. I love EVF so that you can hold the camera up to your eye and really get a nice magnified view of your subject in bright light situations, so it's very good for holding the camera a little bit more steady because you get to kind of press it in against the side of your nose and your face for extra support when holding the camera. Now it does have an eye sensor which will automatically switch back and forth between the LCD and the EVF and if you want you'll be able to turn this off when we get into the menu system. There is a diopter and this control the focusing of the EVF or the viewfinder. So, if you have eyes that are less than perfect, be aware that you can adjust this diopter so that its a sharp view for your eyes and for everyone else, just...
be aware that sometimes these dials get bumped and you'll look through the viewfinder and everything is out of focus, simply turn that dial and try to get the sharpest focus you can on that information that you see on the screen. Now the way these finders turn on and off, is with the eye sensor, but if you want to manually control it, you can manually turn on the EVF or manually turn on the LCD if you always want one on by diving into the custom set up menu and adjusting that feature within the menu system. And on the live view display, one of the options is you can have the setting effect on or off and what it will do is it will try to show you a representation of the actual brightness of the image so how bright it looks in the viewfinder. There are two kind of interesting options that you can have. One, is that it's just kind of a good average brightness no matter what your actual setting of shutter speeds and apertures are set on to the camera. Which is nice for viewing, but they don't give you a representation of what the final image is going to look like. I prefer to have it set with setting effect on, 'cause then you can actually see, is this picture gonna be lighter or darker? And you're less likely to make an exposure mistake in that case. And we'll talk more about those as we get into the menu section. To pop up the flash, we do have a flash button down here and this will allow us to get in to the different modes on the flash as well. And excuse me, this'll pop up the flash, but if you want to change the flash modes, we're going to be seeing that in the function menu and in the full menu. So there's more information to come on the flash as we get into the class. The menu dives into the entire, what I like to call, the brain of the camera and that will be the entire second half of this class. We'll be going through this in full detail. Going through all the different tabs and features. All right. Auto exposure lock on this camera. This allows you to lock the exposure in when you're in a mode like program, aperture priority, or shutter priority. So let's do a little demo with our camera here and what I'm going to do, is make sure my camera's turned on and I'm going to put my camera in the aperture priority mode and let's dial in an aperture, doesn't really matter, but we'll just set it at F8. And I'm gonna zoom in a little bit over here, let the camera focus. And let's take a look at what our shutter speed is. So I'm at F8, my shutter speed is one-fortieth of a second. If I was to pan the camera over just a little bit, we're at one-fifteenth of a second. Well if I wanted to hold that exposure from back over here, we're at one-fortieth of a second again, if I press down and hold down on the auto exposure lock, you'll see a little star that comes up on the bottom right-hand corner, that means I've locked the exposure and I do have to leave my finger on that button and you can see we're at one-fortieth of a second on the left as we rotate the camera, the one-fortieth of a second stays there, no matter where we are. So if we like where that exposure is, it is locked in and it's as if we're in manual exposure right now 'cause we've locked that in, but as soon as I release it, it's gonna start changing. So I can lock it in over here, actually, and bring it back over here and shoot that photo. And so that's just a way to lock the exposure in. A good time for doing this might be is if you are shooting a sunset and straight ahead of you is the sun and what you would do in that case is you would point the camera a little off to the side where the sun is not in the frame, lock in your exposure, and then move the camera back and bring the sun back into the exposure. So anytime you have a tricky lighting situation where you're kind of right on the edge of light and dark, this is a tool that might help you out in some situations. And if you want, you can reprogram this button 'cause it is one of the custom keys that you can reprogram. And so this is something that you can reprogram and have do something else if you want.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
user-f49136
You've invested in the Sony A6000 so let John help you discover and understand all it can do with his terrific video class. I'm a visual learner so this was perfect for me. I printed his class materials for easy reference. Thanks to John I'm a beginner with the confidence to go out and play with my new camera!
Debbie Walker
MERCY!!! this was excellent for me!! I am not familar with cameras so this definitely helped me understand better how to use my Sony A6000; I was honestly ready to give up!!! Great explanations ! well worth the time!!!
user-36c080
Very helpful in learning all the settings on the camera. Excellent clear and useful presentation of a topic that could be dry. I found the suggested settings for different shooting situations a great place to start when venturing into shooting in manual mode.
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