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What are your setting for A100

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hmr516

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I just received my new A100. I am curious as to what settings you are using as your defaults. I am interested in things like sharpening, exposure, metering, etc. Also, do most of you shoot in jpeg or raw. Thanks.
 
I'm trying everything to see what works best. I jumped the P&S ship also and am amazed at the difference in quality of pictures. Can't say I've really settled in on paticular settings because it depends on the shooting situation I'm in.

--
rmonty
 
From the upcoming book on the A100:

"Below is my personal list of camera settings, which I shoot with most of the time (unless a special situation calls for changing a parameter).

Setting: Image Size: L: 10M

Explanation: Record as much detail as you can. If I want smaller images, I’ll throw pixels away later when I get back to my computer.

Setting: Quality: RAW + JPG (“RAW+”)

Explanation: If I’m just shooting snapshots for myself which I know will not be considered works of art, I’ll often just use FINE mode instead.

Inst. Playback: 10 Seconds

Anything shorter makes it tough to show to others without pressing more buttons. If I ever need it to be shorter, I just press the shutter release button halfway to go back to shooting.

Noise Reductn [sic]: ON

This only kicks in for exposures > 1 second.

Eye-start AF: OFF

Eye-start is a great feature, and when I’m shooting sports, candids, or weddings I keep it on because it starts the camera focusing as soon as you bring it up to your eye. In situations where speed isn’t that important I keep it OFF, since it has a tendency to start autofocusing whenever ANYTHING comes into range of the IR eyepiece sensor. The leads to unintended focusing motor activity, often at times when the focusing ring is not free to move.

Recording Menu 2

Red-Eye: OFF

It greatly increases shutter lag. Better to either use an external flash or fix it in image editing software later.

Flash Control: Pre-Flash TTL

I use flash diffusers a lot (see Chapter 7), and doing so with ADI ON can cause incorrect flash exposures.

Flash Default: Fill-Flash

This way, when you pull up on the pop-up flash, it ALWAYS fires. (Not so with AUTO flash mode.)

Bracket Order: 0  -  +

Unjustifiable Personal Preference

Playback Menu 1

Index Format: 4 Images

I can’t really see anything smaller than this. :-)

Custom Menu 1

Priority Setup: RP

Release Priority – take the picture when I say so!! (Not when the camera thinks it’s in focus!) (The opposite setting, AF priority, won’t take the picture until the camera thinks the subject is in focus.)

FocusHoldButt.: Focus Hold

Some Minolta lenses from the mid-90’s had an electronic button mounted on the side of the barrel. This feature tells the camera what you’d like it to do when you press it. This setting means "Lock the focus when I press this button."

AEL Button: AE Toggle

With this setting, pressing the AE Lock button automatically puts the camera into Spot Metering mode, and holds the reading until the AE Lock button is pressed again. I don’t have to hold that little button down! Very useful.

Ctrl Dial Set: Shutter Speed

In Program Shift mode the value doesn’t matter; but when you’re in Manual Exposure mode you can specify whether the front control dial adjusts the shutter speed (selected) or the f/stop. (The other parameter can be adjusted by holding the + - button and rotating the front control wheel.)

Exp. Comp. Set (Exposure Compensation Set): Ambient Only

If I wanted to control the amount of flash, I’d use the flash compensation button. This way I can control each variable separately.

AF Illuminator: ON

This affects two separate behaviors: 1) If the pop-up flash is up, it bursts several times to give the AF sensors some light. 2) If the external flash is mounted to the hot shoe, the near-infrared LED’s on the flash’s front will illuminate.

Custom Menu 2

Shutter Lock (no memory card): OFF

I know it makes no sense to want to take a picture with no memory card inserted… but hey, they gave me the option!

Shutter Lock (no lens): OFF

I can still take a picture when attaching exotic lenses to the camera (like a telescope).

AF Area Setup: 0.3 sec.

Unjustifiable Personal preference

Monitor Display: Automatic

Turning the rear LCD off when I’m looking through the viewfinder saves battery power.

Rec. Display: Horizontal

I don’t care for the information display to appear vertically when I shoot in Portrait (vertical) mode.

Play. Display: Auto Rotate

Normally I don’t like it when the camera shows vertical images as vertical, as it’s harder to see the detail at a glance. BUT setting this to Manual Rotate means that the orientation information is NOT recorded in the image when the picture is taken. I’d rather have the orientation info.

Setup Menu 1

LCD Brightness: [All the way High]

Battery drain tests indicate that turning the LCD brightness up doesn’t significantly increase power consumption (compared to everything else that's going on in there).

Transfer Mode: Mass Storage

I don’t plug my camera into either my computer or a PICTBridge-compliant printer, so this setting doesn’t matter to me.

Video Output: NTSC

This is the North American video standard. If I attached my camera to a TV for playback this setting matters.

Audio Signals: OFF

Unjustifiable Personal Preference

Language: English

Justifiable Personal Preference :-)

Setup Menu 2

File # Memory: ON

If this were set to OFF, every time I put in a blank card the file name sequence would go back to DSC0001. That causes problems later on when I’m looking for specific image numbers.

Folder Name: Std. Form

The other setting, “Date Form”, creates a new folder for every day you shoot. This is an Unjustified Personal Preference.

Setup Menu 3

LCD Backlight: 5 seconds

Unjustifiable Personal Preference

Power Save: 3 minutes

A nice balance between usability and power saving.

MenuSec. Memory: OFF

I can navigate menus faster if I know the starting point each time. Your preferences may vary.

Delete Conf.: No

Saves a step when deleting an image or a folder."

Hope this helps!

Sincerely,
Gary Friedman
 
Wow Gary you went all out on that one...

I may have gotten a weird one or something but my Alpha loves to underexpose. I've compensated by overexpsing by .7 to 1 stops. This yields me about 90-95% properly exposed shots and 5-10% (depending on situation) overexposed. Otherwise if left alone I would get about 90-95% underexposed with 5-10% properly exposed.

Hopefully this will be resolved with a firmware update.

--
'I reject your reality and substitute my own' -Adam Savage
 
USACanuck said:
Wow Gary you went all out on that one...
Click to expand...
Hey, for me it was a cut-and-paste. :-) And because there was a 6,000 character limit I couldn't also post the settings for the function dial (top left of the camera...)
USACanuck said:
I may have gotten a weird one or something but my Alpha loves to
underexpose. I've compensated by overexpsing by .7 to 1 stops. This
yields me about 90-95% properly exposed shots and 5-10% (depending
on situation) overexposed. Otherwise if left alone I would get
about 90-95% underexposed with 5-10% properly exposed.
Click to expand...
This might have been expected for the 7D, but from my experience this is NOT characteristic for the A100. Perhaps an adjustment is in order? (Plus, we all are dying to know how Sony handles in-warranty repairs for their own products.)

-Gary Friedman
 
Bengeo said:
Gary Friedman said:
Hey, for me it was a cut-and-paste. :-) And because there was a
6,000 character limit I couldn't also post the settings for the
function dial (top left of the camera...)
Click to expand...
How about another message for those?
Click to expand...
Well, OK... :-)

Metering Mode: Multi-segment

Generally gives more accurate exposures under non-ideal situations.

Flash Menu

Flash Mode: Fill-Flash

(Why are there two settings for Fill Flash on two separate menus?)

Focus Menu

AF Area: Spot AF area

I have always used the “Focus in the center, lock focus, and recompose” method for more than 20 years. I can work much faster this way, and my shots have always been sharp.

AF Mode: Single-Shot AF

If I were shooting sports, I’d change this to AF-C (Continuous); but for subjects that stay still AF-S (Single) tends to be more accurate.

ISO: 100

If I really am lazy, I’d set it to AUTO; otherwise leaving it on 100 helps ensure the highest possible quality.

White Balance Mode: AWB (Auto White Balance)

If I’m shooting under incandescent light (i.e., light bulbs), I’ll manually change it to Tungsten (because it provides better correction than AWB does).

D-Range Optimizer: D-R+

I don’t shoot sports, so the slightly greater processing time doesn’t bother me. Keep in mind that this setting only kicks in when you’re NOT shooting RAW.

Color / DEC: Standard

I prefer to have all of my image tweaking (including color rendering) done on the computer and not in the camera.

Contrast Saturation, and Sharpness: +0

I prefer to have all of my image tweaking done on the computer and not in the camera.
Bengeo said:
But save some stuff for the
book ....
Click to expand...
Don't worry; there's PLENTY more where that came from!

I'm hoping to have the book ready for others to proofread by the end of August.

Sincerely,
Gary Friedman
 
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