New to Sony A7II - Tips Appreciated

I picked up an open box Sony A7II at Best Buy for $460 and got a Sony FE 50mm / f1.8 along with a Viltrox 28mm / f4.5. I also downloaded Pixelmator Pro on my MacBook. Here is my 1st couple weeks of trying to learn to shoot.

 

More

 

Pictures

 

Very nice pics.


I would advise try to avoid 3rd party lenses. With my experience with my old school Nikon DSLR the 3rd party lenses didn't work well. Ex Tamron 150-600 were extremely slow to focus at 600mm. Image was more on the softer side. Had another macro lens and image quality wasn't as good as Nikon.

I use Adobe Light room. It was purchased like 10 years ago and the license was one time pay. Now I think everything is yearly subscription.

Imo having dual monitors is a must. One screen to edit and the other one have full screen preview. If possible have a calibration tool for the monitors. But I don't have it. Just learn the right amount after printing few pics. I don't have fancy apple computers as well. Just using windows. LoL.

 

haha fair enough, yeah I had a YouTube channel for a bit and had to edit 4k content. Needed all the horsepower I could get lol

 

Pics are good. Are you looking for photography tips or tips for just that specific camera?

 

Tips on general work

 

My wife is a real estate photographer, I am but a humble hobbyist so take this with a grain of salt. i.e. I take "pictures", she takes photos.

(not knowing your experience level, I'm shooting from the hip)... Biggest tip I've gotten from her over the years was to shoot in manual. While modern cameras are very good at exposure and will produce great results, setting the camera to manual (or even playing with Aperture or Shutter priority settings) really opens up an understanding of how each setting affects the image. Manual settings also allow you to maintain a constant look from photo to photo where, in auto, the camera may make slight adjustments each time the shutter button is pressed.

After the photo is taken, editing in "pick any editing program" is a whole other world of learning. I assume, since you edited video, you have some idea of how endless the possiblilties are.

 

thank you! Yeah I got the camera a week and half ago lol most of these shots are with manual with auto ISO

I watched a dozen YouTube tutorial from how to shoot in different modes, how to use and set up my camera and basic composition.

 

That's very interesting.
90% of the time I'm on aperture priority and ISO in manual control. I only want my shutter speed to adjust and apature and iso should not change unless I need to change manually.

I go to shutter priority for very specific scenarios if I need a faster speed or forcefully need slower speed.

Couple example pics (screenshots) from my Google backup -
Low light high speed event.


Broad day light purposely wanted slow shutter speed. I was probably driving at 10 or 20mph in the neighborhood.


BTW, I's also just a family picture guy. No technical knowledge on photography.

 

Same here, plus I understand people will make things work for their set up and way of doing things. Just curious of more the general consensus on what is considered a “good vs bad” picture. If I get a yeah everything looks good then I’ll just work on refining things and learn to bracket and edit more deeply

 

"Good" is relative to what the photographer is trying to capture or create. Do your thing and play around with editing and just have fun. That's the joy of digital cameras. You don't have to worry about wasting film (yes, I'm that old ha ha).

I've found taking multiple angles and camera settings of the same scene helps me see what looks better. My wife can tell before she takes the picture. I have to see it on the computer to really catch what I should/ could have done (or she points out things).

Your photos look fine. One thing I've noticed about uploaded or linked (I use Flickr) photos is that they look soft when viewing on the forum. I've uploaded photos that were sharp when viewing on Flickr, but soft after I hot-linked and viewed them here.

PS- Shoot RAW (or both RAW and jpg)