One photographer’s biggest issue with the Sony system

If you are using one of the Sony A7X system as a stills camera, you are probably familiar with the EVF. It’s that little monitor at the back of the camera that shows you what the exposure looks like depending on exposure settings.

Of course, you can also set the monitor to show you a constant “proper” exposure regardless of the camera setting. You can decide on this behavior using the “Live View Display: Setting Effect On/Off” menu. When you are at Setting Effect On, the EVF will match hour exposure settings, kinda giving you a preview of your soon-to-be-exposed photo. When you are at Setting Effect Off, the camera will give you a constant exposure. Now Rob Hall has an issue with the third option…

When you add a strobe, or a Sony compatible trigger though, the camera will move into a new mode and show you what it thinks a “proper” exposed subject will be, if you used the flash correctly. Sadly, you have no control over this override and once a strobe is introduced, you are stuck with this method of EVF display.

The problem

Now, what is a “proper” exposed subject when it’s lit by a strobe? Sony’s engineers have the answer.

Here is the thing though, if you are using a strobe, you are making some artistic choices, of course, the camera is not aware of those choices, so its “guess” of a proper exposure is probably crap. The flip side of this coin is that your ability to gauge the ambient is now gone as well.

Come to think about it, this new, forced, method is kinda similar to Setting Effect Off only with less control as you don’t know what is the subject and what the camera thinks your flash output is going to be.

This would not be an issue with a non-recognized trigger, But Sony specific triggers like the Godox Xpro-S for Sony will trigger this behavior.

The (slightly off) solution

Rob found, deep inside page 16 or so of the special function that there is a setting that can bring the camera back to showing what the exposure will look like. This is convenient especially when you wanna gouge the ambient. It’s called Shot. Result Preview, and you can assign it to any button you want. So by pressing this button, you get the same results as you would with Setting Effect On. Rob assigned it to the Exposure Lock button, but if you are using it for back focusing you would have to find different button.

[My Biggest Problem (and solution) with Sony Cameras Flash EVF issue on A7R III, A7 III, A9, A7R II | Rob Hall]