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2.7 Suggested Configuration for Landscapes

With landscapes, you usually want everything in focus, which for the purists means a small f/stop and a good tripod. Here are some settings you might find useful:

Exposure mode dial set to “A”perture; set your f/stop to the middle of your lens’ range (this is known as the lens’ “sweet spot” for sharpness).
Fn --> Drive Mode: Single (if on a tripod, Drive Mode: 2s self timer)
Fn --> ISO: 100
Choose one of the following to help you best capture a wide dynamic range of a landscape:

MENU --> 1 --> Quality: RAW+JPG (you can edit the RAW file to recover any blown-out skies on your computer)
MENU --> 1 --> Quality: X.Fine and Fn --> DRO / Auto HDR set to HDR 6.0 EV (and you can bump up the contrast later on your computer)

Optional: MENU --> 5 --> Creative Style set to Vivid for slightly enhanced colors.
Optional: there’s also an app you can download to act as a virtual graduated neutral density filter (to keep you from blowing out the sky) and it does a decent job once you learn how to use it. It’s called “Sky HDR” and it’s mentioned (along with how to install it) in Section 5.5.
(This isn’t a setting): WAIT for the right light. This almost always means close to dusk and dawn and not noon.

2.8 Suggested Configuration for Legacy Glass

I actually make these recommendations in Section 4.1.1 for manual focus legacy glass, and Section 4.1.2 for autofocus lenses.

But I will re-emphasize the usefulness of assigning the Focus Magnifier function to Custom Button 2 – this way your thumb will be well-positioned to operate the arrows and center button once the function is invoked.

2.9 What’s Incompatible with RAW?

I give a good introduction to the benefits of shooting RAW in Chapter 15, but the A6300 offers many advanced bells-and-whistles which are incompatible with RAW mode. And some of them aren’t invokable while in RAW, while others will silently switch to .jpg shooting while you invoke them and then switch back when you’re finished. Which features are incompatible with RAW, and how does the camera behave for each? A comprehensive table appears below:

Function	The camera switches to JPG automatically	The camera prevents you from invoking it
Multi-Frame Noise Reduction (MFNR)		*
High-Dynamic Range		*
Handheld Twilight	*
Anti-Motion Blur	*
Soft Skin effect		*
Auto object framing		*
Sweep Panorama mode	*
Image Size		* (RAW only)
Picture effects (all of them)		*
Clear image zoom / Digital zoom		*
Long Exposure noise reduction		*
High ISO noise reduction		* (RAW only)

(Items labeled “RAW Only” mean the feature is still selectable if you have RAW+JPG enabled, but the effect applies only to the .jpg.)

For the features that switch you to .jpg automatically, the camera will switch to “Fine” mode (instead of “Extra Fine”, which is my preferred .jpg setting.)

2.10 My Personal Camera Settings

I know there are a lot of features to absorb and settings to understand with this camera. And I’ll try to explain each one to you properly throughout the course of this book. But, I know from history that the most often-referenced part of my previous books has been “My Personal Camera Settings”, and so I’m including them up front here just to give you a jump-start and help walk you through some of the features at the same time. Of course I change these settings a lot depending on what I’m shooting, the light level, and the effect I want to achieve. But these represent my “standard” configuration.

Recording Menu 1

Function	Setting
Image Size	L: 24 M (It’s always best to shoot at the highest quality and resize later) (Section 6.1)
Aspect Ratio	3:2 (I’d shoot 16:9 if I knew my work would only be seen on an HDTV. But 16:9 actually chops off part of the picture. More is better.) (Section 6.2)
Quality	Usually RAW+JPG (although for casual shots I’ll shoot X.FINE whose quality is amazingly good. (Section 6.3).
Panorama: Size	Wide. (Available only when Panorama mode is selected on the mode dial.) (Section 6.4)
Panorama: Direction	Either Right or Down depending on the aspect ratio I’d like to get. (Available only when Panorama mode is selected on the exposure mode dial.) (Section 6.4)

Recording Menu 2

Function	Setting
File Format	This lets you select which of three movie formats to use. If I’m not shooting 4K my everyday video mode is now XAVC S HD. (Details and tradeoffs explained in Section 6.4)
Record Setting	This lets you choose more detail for the “(Movie) File Format” setting above. If I have XAVC S HD selected, then I choose “60p 50M” (Section 6.6)
Dual Video REC	If you have the (Movie) File Format set to either AVCHD or XAVC S (4K or HD), then this feature will record TWO video clips to the memory card: one high quality, one low quality for uploading to social media. (Section 6.7)
Drive Mode	“Single Shooting”, unless I’m shooting either sports or children, in which case it’s “Continuous Lo” (with a lot of image deletions afterward). (Section 6.8)
Bracket Settings	Lets you invoke self-timer when shooting in a bracketing mode (mine is OFF), and also specifies bracketing order (I have it set to "0" first.) (Section 6.10)

Recording Menu 3

Function	Setting
Flash Mode	“Fill-Flash” serves 99.999% of my onboard flash needs. (Wireless flash serves the other 99.99%. :-) ) (Section 6.11)
Flash Compensation	I keep this set to "-1" most of the time, because the camera is designed to overexpose subjects by +1 stop when using flash. (Section 6.12)
Red Eye Reduction	I hate this feature. “Off”. (Section 6.13)
Focus Mode	I usually keep it set to DMF (which confirms focus using Peaking level, as described in Section 2.3 and also in Chapter 3). If I’m shooting anything that moves, such as kids or pets (or even sports), I set it to AF-C (Continuous). (Section 6.14)
Focus Area	Lock-on AF - Wide. With Face Detection enabled, it does an outstanding job of being a point-and-shoot. When I’m making a more careful composition, I’ll switch to “Center” and use the old Focus-Lock-Recompose-Shoot method. (Section 6.15)
AF Illuminator	This specifies whether the red/orange lamp in front of the camera should turn on when the ambient light is too low for focusing. I keep it set to AUTO. (Section 6.16)

Recording Menu 4

Function	Setting
AF Drive Speed	When shooting video, do you want a slow AF that doesn't call much attention to itself, or a fast that might be visually distracting? I choose "normal" most of the time. (Section 6.17)
AF Track Sens	Tells the camera how aggressive it should be in tracking moving subjects in movie mode. I choose "Normal" unless I’m shooting sports. (Section 6.18)
Exposure Comp.	Exposure Compensation tells the camera “Make it brighter!” or “Make it darker!”. It’s usually set to zero and I change it based on the effect I’m trying to achieve. (Section 6.19)
Exposure Step	When adjusting the exposure compensation, do you want each wheel click to change by 0.5 stops or 0.3 stops? I choose 0.3 EV (personal preference) (Section 6.20)
ISO	My default setting is usually Auto (with boundaries set from 100 to 3200), then that’s one of the first things I’ll change in the process of making the shot better. (Section 6.21).
ISO Auto Min. SS	When in "P" or "A" modes and ISO is set to AUTO, lets you specify the slowest shutter speed the camera is allowed to use before starting to bump up the ISO. I have mine set to "Std". Sometimes I’ll bump it to 1/125^th when shooting the kids indoors. (Section 6.22)