Sony NEX for stills: settings?

Kilby

Kilby

Active Member
Hey gang,

I was just curious how you are setting up your Sony NEX (5, 6 or 7) for taking stills from your multi rotor. Just this year I started using it, but I've spent so much time focusing on new gimbals and other equipment, that I haven't dived in very deep to the settings of the camera itself. I'm almost ashamed to admit, but several of my shoots have been in auto mode, but still came out pretty good. I'm ready to jump in a little deeper now though and find the specific settings for each environment.

Any suggestions from others that are already doing this?

-Terry
 


T

tombrown1

Member
It depends on if you're using an HDMI converter and an IR trigger. If you are using both of those things then you probably need to shoot in manual focus. This means you will need to look at something as far away as possible and focus for that (infinity focus).

We do a white balance before each shoot. Get a white card and point the camera at it. Use the white balance spot meter to balance it.

ISO depends on the stability of your rig. Our rig has a few jitters still, so we like to shoot ISO 800 and take out the noise in post. The lower ISO the better.

On nice sunny days we like to use a polarizing filter.

We like the Sigma 19mm lens a lot. Much better than the pancake 16mm.

We also use shutter priority mode.

Hope this helps a bit.

Best,

Tom
 

A

andytee

Member
I use a Nex 5N, and find it pretty good.. Try to keep the ISO down to 400 or less, as I find it is a bit noisy at high iso, but keep the shutter speed up above a 500th if you can, to lose any vibration, (having said that I have had good sharp shots at a 250th). Aperture needs to suit the lens, the 18-55 kit lens is a bit soft and seems to be best around f8, I am getting great results with the sony 10-18 mm lens at f5.6. I'm happy with that for the wide angle stuff, so I'm not buying the sony pancake lens or the sigma 19mm, but I am waiting for a sony 30 mm f3.5 prime lens to arrive, and may well eventually bite the bullet and buy the Zeiss 24mm f1.8
Make sure you shoot raw, so that you get the maximum possible out of the system.

If you use shutter priority auto then watch for the images being slightly underexposed, especially if there is any sky in the shot.. I sometimes add 1/2 a stop of exposure compensation to increase the auto exposure, just watch out for burnt highlights...!!!

As Tom said above, it is good to white balance manually, before the flight, and a polarising filter, or a graduated neutral density filter are good things to use on bright sunny days.

The IR shutter control and HDMI output problems are easily resolved by setting the focus mode to
AUTOFOCUS FLEXIBLE SPOT this allows the remote led release to work whilst outputting through the HDMI port. I use a freefly HDMI converter feeding a DJI OSD mk 2 into a DJI 5.8ghz tx. that way I can use the OSD device to switch between the FPV camera and the NEX5 output.

Hope this helps..
Andy​
 

J

jimmygixxer

Member
Hi Andytee,

Thanks for the info, Ive been having trouble getting the shutter and record stop start functions to work.
Nex5r Z15 DX6i Ar6200 only using 6 channels I can get all other controls to work apart from the Shut, Rec, Also forward and down will not work.

Thanks
Jimmy
 

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