How I've set my NEX, and why. Share your settings !

Since the family seems to be growing fast, with a lot of enthusiast members, I thought we could all benefit of seing how different people set their cameras, and why.

In this post I'm going to go briefly over my typeof shooting, how I set my NEX 6, and why. Please feel free to share your settings, but don't forget to explain how they work for you and why you picked them over something else.

After spending two months with the 5N I was happy to upgrade to the 6, which offered a couple of additional features that were important to me.



As many of you know, I shoot 95% portraits, and 98% manual glass. During those rather dark winter months, most of my shooting happens in my dimly lit living room. Because I'm long gone beyond the "available light only" fad (which is, in my eye, only a reluctance and fear to learn lightning), flash is essential to my photography. Getting a standard hotshoe I could mount any old normal flash on (including my faithful SB-600, which just died on me last night, but that's another story).

For many, many years, I was an Aperture mode shooter. Coupled with Auto ISO, that's a pretty painless what to go. Pick an aperture, and let the camera handle the rest. Except... Except meters can be fooled, or simply make exposure decisions you're not entirely happy with. That's what exposure compensation is for, right ? Wrong. On the NEX cameras, exp. comp. is a PITA. You need to first press the bottom end of the thumb wheel, which enters a stupid little screen of its own with a virtual +/- wheel represented, you then need to turn that fiddly thumb wheel, then a half press of the shutter will bring you back to your shooting screen with real time exposure compensation shown. WAYyyy to quirky and annoying for me. So, I just decided to set the 6's mode dial to M. Using older lenses, you set your F stop directly using the lens' aperture ring. Meaning that leaves the useful and well dampened secondary control wheel (the one below the dial mode) to instantly change aperture. And if you have Setting Effect ON in the Live View Display menu, whatever exposure change you make by altering shutter speed is shown instantly either on the screen of in the viewfinder. That's the end of ill exposed picture, forever !!

The catch here is that you lose Auto ISO. So folks lobby for this feature to be available in M mode. I beg to disagree. We don't need no Auto ISO, that's just another crutch we can do without. 1) since you have real time exposure feedback, any ISO choice is immediately displayed and easily adjusted. 2) ISO are pretty straightforward to chose anyway, it's far from rocket science. Getting to make sensitivity decisions is excellent for budding photographers, it encourages them to take over them shooting settings.

Since I do use the built-in flash (bounced) quite a bit, I've set the AEL button to trigger enter the flash compensation screen. I button touch, wheel the compensation in. Easy.
My Fn button calls a menu set as such : WB, Creative Style, Picture Effect, AF area, Flash mode, D range.
I'm likely to swap Picture Effect with something else, since I don't use it.
I chose WB as the first item in this menu (despite having it set to my lower soft key as well), because, if I ever happen to use an AF lens in multi spots, the soft bottom key is now dedicated to entering the AF point selection screen. Being a JPG shooter nailing WB is critical for me, so I want to make absolutely certain I can access this function easily at all times.
Creative Style is super important for me as a strict JPG shooter. For color, I shoot Landscape mode with -1 contrast. I find it respects proper DR while givng a lot of color pop. I leave sharpness untouched, and only add a tad in post if needed. For monochrome I use the regular B&W option with zero fine tuning. It makes for a slightly flat rendering, which I boost a bit in post later (please don't ask me why I shoot jpeg if I do PP afterwards, it takes me a about 50s per picture and I'm happy with it).
Picture Effect will most likely get off my Fn menu as I really don't use it. It was fun to experiment with Miniature for a couple of shots, but I'm really not fond of the effects so I'll soon assign that item to something else.
AF area is a pretty important setting, even for an almost strict MF shooter such as I. There's always a time that I'm likely to swap my 18-55 in a hurry to handle the camera to someone else, of if I know for a fact I'm gonna need the wide angle end. In this case, I want to be able to chose where my AF point will be, though chances are it's gonna stay set to Center Point (if I AF, I focus/recompose a lot).
Flash Mode. This one is important. I mostly use rear, but I want other options is needed, without having to dig in the menus. Rear allows you to have immediate flash, without any the annoying pre flashes of the other modes.
D Range. Also something I want to be able to access without too much diving, even though so far I've never changed my DR1 setting. It lifts shadows *just* right without looking unnatural.
So this is my Fn favorites. I think I might swap one of the unused items for Metering Mode soon. I normally use Center Weighted average as default, but it's an important setting enough that I want to keep it close at hand for those times I'd get out of manual mode.
The top soft button calls menus by default no way to customize that, as well as the right end of the thumb wheel calls ISO.
I mostly use Kelvin for WB settings, at 4200 or 4300 (with amber/green and or blue/amber fine tuning if needed) when using flash, outdoors I set it to Auto, and inside in daylight Auto with +1 amber

My Focus Peaking settings are yellow in daylight, and white for artificial light. I usually use Medium, though some lenses will call for Low or High, depending on their native level of peaking.

So I think that's it guys, I have my settings covered. I hope some of you will find it helpful, and feel free to ask questions or add yours  

 

That's an allergy you'll eventually want to cure  

 

The best photographic investment I EVER made was my first speedlight (a Canon 430 EX at the time) and time to learn t use it.
Life changing...

 

It seems with proper research you can find a functioning hotshoe adapter. Once you get that, manual flash is actually super easy.

 

Believe it or not I've even shot the tiny XZ-1 (a compact cam) with my SB-600. Not comfortable to hold or pretty to look at, but the beauty of manual flash is that once you understand the concept, it works for ANY camera.
My SB-600 went on my NEX6 without any problem (and on my GX-1 as well, both cameras are nearly identical in size. A little unbalanced, but nothing I can't live with. It is dying now (intermittent contact with the AA's inside), so I just ordered a FL-36 (Olympus). It won't work in TtL, which I absolutely don't care about since I *always* use manual flash anyway. The plus of this flash is its smaller size, while retaining tilt, swivel, and manual control of output in small increments.
I remember being totally paralyzed at the idea of using flash. It's actually funny because now its become so natural I hardly even bother taking it off, unless there's really a lot of light.
If anybody is interested in bounce flash Manuel settings just let me know, I'll gladly share.