
A super quick overview/refresher on the necessary 11 settings to adjust to have your Sony camera create the most cinematic autofocus experience possible.
Explore autofocus transition speed for rack focus, from one subject to another on a 1–7 scale. Set around four for balance, adjust for slow motion, and enable on-the-fly control.
Enable autofocus assist to use the lens focus ring for rack focus in a manual autofocus workflow; ensure lens switch is autofocus, AF assist is on, and focus is manual.
Master the Sony camera autofocus focus area options, from wide and zone to center fix, spot and expanded spot, using the touch screen or knob, plus tracking for moving subjects.
Set the focus area limit to simplify scrolling through focus areas, selecting wide spot and zone, with quick on-the-fly adjustments via a custom button or function menu.
Master the Sony autofocus right/left eye select to keep the eye closest to the camera in focus for most shots, and shift to the further eye in high-contrast scenes.
Set the focus magnifier to a five-second duration to review focus before the image returns to normal, ensuring you frame accurately and avoid postproduction surprises.
Adjust the peaking color on Sony autofocus systems to red, yellow, blue, or white, moving beyond the traditional red color for clearer focus cues in video production.
Hold focus by half-pressing the shutter to lock focus, then keep the plane of focus steady, or switch to the focus hold button or manual focus without touching the ring.
Demonstrate how slow-motion frame rates influence rack focus speed by varying shift sensitivity and transition settings, from 24p base to 30fps, 60fps, and 120fps.
For decades the autofocus feature on cameras has been exclusively for photographers. You would be laughed off set if you switched your video camera to autofocus.
But the autofocus system for the most recent Sony Alpha cameras is a GAME CHANGER for video production, something as important to the world of digital photography as the release of the Canon 5D Mark II back in 2008. The face and eye detection in these new Sony mirrorless cameras is so reliable and precisce that you can now free yourself up to think only about your framing and subject's performance. On larger productions, you'll no longer need to hire focus pullers or first ACs, saving yourself some serious cash.
But with all these new features, it can take a few weeks of experimenting with your camera's settings before you truly grasp everything you need to. That, or you can take this 1-hour course.
We'll cover all the in-depth camera settings such as the AF Transition Speed, AF Subject Shift Sensitivity, the Seven Different Focus Areas, Focus Point Circulation, Focus Peaking, and how to Register Faces within the camera and give them ordered focus priority. We'll even discuss a hybrid AF/MF approach and cover customizable buttons that will allow your camera to quickly capture the most cinematic content possible in any situation.
The concepts learned in this class apply to many different Sony cameras, but the specific menu layouts we will be working with are found in Sony a7iii, Sony a7siii, Sony a7iv, Sony a7riv, Sony a7c, Sony a6600, Sony fx3, Sony fx30, and Sony Alpha 1 cameras.
This class is all about Sony's AUTOFOCUS. It is not an all-encompassing course on these Sony cameras or video production at large.