Thad E Ginathom

As is probably to be expected, you have more choice/power with the a7 series. No such choice on the a6500: zoom goes to the focus point, and that's it. But that's what I like, and probably what most would want. Another nice touch is that the dial displays forward and backwards keeping the same place in the images. Well, I like it! As to playback or view, Chrissie has put his finger on my discomfort with "playback!" I guess it is what the > symbol on the button has come to mean --- and may be more movie than stills oriented. Although "view" works for both too. Mustn't grumble! Sony manuals may not be exactly chatty, but Japanese documentation in English has come a very long way in a few decades.

Based on a6500, I do not know what other models have this feature.... Press the zoom button in playback mode and it goes to the area of focus and zooms in on that. I have no idea how accurate this is: there is no mark or anything to tell you that you got the eye rather than the nose, but you can certainly tell if you got the face, or the right face face. In other words... sort of. I guess that the imaging post-processing software just looks for contrast and marks that.

More information? Sony A7 and Google Photos don't seem to go together, so I am guessing what you mean is... Sony A7 -> Mobile Phone -> Google Photos? Here's my guess/hunch: Maybe they are now being put in a different directory on the phone? Go to Google Photos settings, where you can select the directories to backed up, and make sure that the right one is checked.

You got it right the first time! Disclosure: I have neither horse nor personal interest in this race. I do not use Windows, so this software is not available to me anyway. Hey, I'd actually love to try Capture One! But not at the cost of what would be a very difficult Windows installation, not to mention the money. And, as far as I know, Windows still wouldn't read my ext4-file-system files anyway. If I was still in the Windows world, I'd probably have given Photoshop and Lightroom a whirl, at least, by now. But not now, ever. Subscription models and economics as a pensioner don't go together.

I can't comment on video, because I'm a stills man, but I've recorded audio in the past. I would not like to have that job plugging the mic input straight into a camera, or any simple recording device: I'd want control over those levels before they got near an ADC. I'd want separate sound recording. I'm guessing there's a portable recorder that will do the job. I'm sure there was when I last looked, and that's a while back. Or is that making a two-handed job out of something you want to do, on your feet, with one hand?

The main point is selling it, and the concept of software as a service takes that to whole new levels. That is not to say that it is not of any use. It has all the uses it had before anyone called it "the cloud," and more. But people should be very careful before letting themselves being sold a cloud version of something that they are doing very happily already. From Google Photos to Dropbox and more I use all sort of things, but will always follow what is now an old-school computing model: my data, my programs, my hardware. I'd feel and follow the same, for primary resources, if I was still working in IT.

Don't think you can, you can only choose EVF, Monitor or Auto, So if you are using the LCD, you can turn off the EVF completely. Also, there's a pre-auto-focus thing. I think that is started by the sensor. Make sure that is off.

A couple of basics: Maybe you set menu item to EVF? Choice is for Screen, EVF or auto. (Menu item FINDER/MONITOR) It is possible to program a button to turn off the monitor. Maybe you did and maybe you pressed it. I've caught myself out with the latter.

And M Mode? Don't have an A9, or any FF camera, but that's the way it is on the a6nnn cameras (and a6500 allows bulb in AF-C)

So far as photographs is concerned, I don't delete the pics on my memory card unless or until I have to, so that is one copy, but I don't count it. So far as photographs and all other data on my computer is concerned, I keep two external portable drives (It has just become necessary for me use 2Tb drives). About once a week, I make a backup to one of these drives and swap it with the other, which is kept at a friend's house in a different area. Technically, I use a linux program called grsync which just copies new files to a mirror directory tree on each drive. I also use tar for occasional systems backups from which I could (probably) restore my entire system without reinstallation. All this is very OS specific --- back in windows days I had an excellent sync program, but I forget its name. This is a low-discipline, low-security, somewhat haphazard regime which I would have laughed at when it was my job to do this stuff. But it is good enough for me. If I lost a week of concert photos it would not be the end of the world, but if I lost a holiday's worth, that would be more serious. Professionals can add frequency, discipline and rigour. It occurs to me to emphasise the importance of two things. First, a back-up disk should not be connected to a computer or to mains power except when in use. Second, one back-up should be at a different location. I have not mentioned the cloud. I do not use it at all much, except for sharing. IF I had huge bandwidth and high internet speeds, I would use it --- as a convenience, or as another string to the bow. Personally and professionally (but long-since retired anyway) I believe in having physical possession of*, and responsibility for, my data. There is no company that is so perfect, whatever its size, that it will never have downtime, or so huge as to be completely immune from catastrophe. Coming back to brass tacks: there are at least two, if not three (sometimes four!) copies of my photos (and music, and personal stuff) at nearly all times. The times when there is not is counted in hours and days. *Including that vital off-site storage, of course.

Oh! Don't know how I picked up that misconception (I guess it's easy to inhale misconceptions on the internet!). Thanks for correcting it.

If you have a fixed idea, based on age and experience, maybe going back to SLR film days, of what a 16mm lens will be like, and what a 24 mm lens will be like, then: Yes. 16mm lens will look like a 24mm lens on the a6300. Isn't the crop factor actually 1.6? Anyway, being bad at numbers, 1.5 is close enough for me.

More to it than I thought!

I find it quite useful: It sometimes tells me that I accidentally pressed that button, and am in manual-focus mode. AEL gets a star in the viewfinder; I wish MF got a symbol too. Peaking (if enabled as per previous post) goes with manual-focus mode, not the method of turning it on

I guess I do in-a-way portrait photography! I am mostly photographing musicians at South-Indian classical music concerts. The f1.8 is the lens mostly on my camera (SEL50F1.8: I think there is a full-frame, non-OSS one too). Another thing to say about that lens is that it is nice and light-weight. I have a 90mm manual lens that I use when I want to get closer in, and I'm probably getting the Sony 85 soon. Remember the crop factor. That 50 is not so good when you want to capture a group, unless you are clear to take a quick walk backwards. It is not even wide enough to capture all three of the musicians on stage from my usual seat about 15 feet away. For an informal post-concert family group, yesterday, I needed to do a quick change to my Sigma 30/1.4, which is also the lens I keep on the camera at home for cat snaps, around the garden, etc. Not only is it much more like a "standard" lens, but it also has a much smaller minimum-focus distance.