Gain IOS scroll controll

[Ty Turner]

Is there a way to scroll through different DB's or iso's instead of only having the H/M/L setting with out going into the camera and changing the default H/M/L settings?

[Christopher Young]

Short answer no. That's a DSLR thing. The 700 was designed around the commonly accepted practice on video cameras of having L/M/H gain settings. A shame I know.

There is a sort of semi-workaround I have found useful on a number of occasions. Usually if you want to work at a set aperture on a manual lens although it will work with any lens basically if you want to lock the iris at a given aperture. First set a top limit on your 'Auto ISO Limit' setting. Let's for argument in this example say 4000 ISO. Now assign 'AE Shift' to one of your assignment buttons and set the 'Gain/ISO' switch on the left to 'Auto.' If you are working with an E-mount lens it will have to be in manual focus mode for the following procedure to work. You can still use the momentary ‘auto-focus’ button but in doing so it will de-activate the AE Shift button so you will have to tap that AE shift button once more to access the AE Shift adjustability.

Ok what to do now? What this set-up will allow you to do, let's say working with the 18-105 locked at F4, is that you can now roll the left side menu roller wheel between 800 and 4000 ISO once you have activated the assigned AE Shift button. The AE Shift function has a range of +/- 2.0 stops. Keep in mind that the ISO is still in 'auto' mode so the auto ISO will still react to reasonable changes in light levels. In fairly stable but still changing light conditions it now gives you the ability to adjust your exposure fairly smoothly over a 4 stop range whilst maintaining a constant aperture.

Yes it’s a fudge but it is useful workaround in some situations. I find it works best working with my manual primes and zooms. You may have some luck with ‘the fudge.’

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Chris Harding]

Hi Chris

I use the very same on my EA-50! However I'm only using manual lenses so I can actually leave the camera in auto (just for ball park exposure) and then set my ISO (I use gain still but it's the same thing) to a max level (21db for me) I then have assigned AE-shift to a custom button and if I'm not happy with the camera's exposure (say in a backlit situation) I can blip the AE shift button and adjust up or down.

Dunno if the 700 is the same but it will only adjust AE shift if the icon on the EVF has a highlighted rectangle on it so sometimes I have to give the button a second tap to make the AE shift "active"

It works very well and gives you ISO adjustment in nice small steps too without needing to physically adjust the aperture which might mess up your DOF

Good tip and I assume it will work the same on the FS100 as well?

Chris

[Ty Turner]

Originally Posted by Christopher Young

Short answer no. That's a DSLR thing. The 700 was designed around the commonly accepted practice on video cameras of having L/M/H gain settings. A shame I know.

There is a sort of semi-workaround I have found useful on a number of occasions. Usually if you want to work at a set aperture on a manual lens although it will work with any lens basically if you want to lock the iris at a given aperture. First set a top limit on your 'Auto ISO Limit' setting. Let's for argument in this example say 4000 ISO. Now assign 'AE Shift' to one of your assignment buttons and set the 'Gain/ISO' switch on the left to 'Auto.' If you are working with an E-mount lens it will have to be in manual focus mode for the following procedure to work. You can still use the momentary ‘auto-focus’ button but in doing so it will de-activate the AE Shift button so you will have to tap that AE shift button once more to access the AE Shift adjustability.

Ok what to do now? What this set-up will allow you to do, let's say working with the 18-105 locked at F4, is that you can now roll the left side menu roller wheel between 800 and 4000 ISO once you have activated the assigned AE Shift button. The AE Shift function has a range of +/- 2.0 stops. Keep in mind that the ISO is still in 'auto' mode so the auto ISO will still react to reasonable changes in light levels. In fairly stable but still changing light conditions it now gives you the ability to adjust your exposure fairly smoothly over a 4 stop range whilst maintaining a constant aperture.

Yes it’s a fudge but it is useful workaround in some situations. I find it works best working with my manual primes and zooms. You may have some luck with ‘the fudge.’

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

THANKS A LOT! I'll try that

[Christopher Young]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

Dunno if the 700 is the same but it will only adjust AE shift if the icon on the EVF has a highlighted rectangle on it so sometimes I have to give the button a second tap to make the AE shift "active"

It works very well and gives you ISO adjustment in nice small steps too without needing to physically adjust the aperture which might mess up your DOF

Good tip and I assume it will work the same on the FS100 as well?

Yes Chris exactly the same. The AE shift symbol has to be highlighted for the AE Shift function to work. That's why I mentioned that if you select momentary auto focus when using the kit lens or any other E-mount lens the AE Shift becomes de-activated and needs to be selected once again. Haven't tried it with an FS100 but I would imagine it would be much the same or similar.

All best in the west for '15 :)

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Chris Harding]

Thanks Chris

Hope you also have a great 2015 over East!!

Chris

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Ty Turner

Is there a way to scroll through different DB's or iso's instead of only having the H/M/L setting with out going into the camera and changing the default H/M/L settings?

My nex-ea50 that I sold a year ago had exactly the same issue, my rx10 has a scroll wheel that allows you to quickly roll through all iso's while you are shooting and that makes all the difference when you need to act fast.
That h/m/l setting is something all professional camera have but only really worked on smaller sensor camera's that got too noisy once you went past 6b like on my xh-a1 so you just assigned 0, 3 and 6 db gain which worked perfectly for any situation. But with today's large sensor and low light sensitive camera you want to be able to cover a range between the lowest and highest iso because almost all are usable and then such a switch can be a real pain. As I see it it's a design mistake Sony made.

[Christopher Young]

"As I see it it's a design mistake Sony made."

Yes in this day and age where nearly everything is programmed into FPGAs you would think that it wouldn't be too hard to implement 'Dial an ISO' unless there just isn't the hardware links to do it. That is one aspect that's quite nice on the X70 is that you can dial gain from -3 to +33dB in 3dB steps very quickly and fairly smoothly on the roller wheel.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Chris Harding]

To be perfectly honest, I don't have any issue at weddings using the EV Shift. As long as my gain is limited to 21db on the EA-50, 99% of all exposures fall within the auto exposure range so I only really need to tweak if I have a severe backlit situation which I obviously try to avoid and in situations at dark wedding venues where I have the speech makers lit against very dark walls so I use EV shift to again avoid the skintones being blown out when the camera "sees" lots of black and only a tiny portion of well lit subject. I remember my old Panasonics had to be locked out at 9db otherwise I got a lot of noise so a H/M/L switch at 3, 6 and 9 was quite practical but with the bigger sensors you simply have too much gap between min and max ISO

However, yes a scroll wheel would be nice but the EV value is not a hard workaround to implement once you get used to it and I cannot see Sony changing firmware now anyway. At least there IS a workaround which is practical.

[Noa Put]

As long as my gain is limited to 21db on the EA-50, 99% of all exposures fall within the auto exposure range so I only really need to tweak if I have a severe backlit situation

"Auto" functions of a camera do serve a purpose and do use them in some occasions where I know the camera will do a better (read quicker) job then me adjusting for fast changing light situations but I never would use it as a general way to adjust my exposure. I"d say at least 95% of the time I"m adjusting my exposure manually and I believe that is the only way to secure the right exposure. That's why being able to scroll through your iso's quickly is so important. On the nex-ea50 you can change your shutter real quick but for some reason the engineers decided to take away that option for iso and it looks liek they did the same for the fs700. Sony is also not exactly known to bring out firmware updates based on user feedback.