Sony A7III & Sony A7RIII Camera Settings

Righto! Now it’s time to get deep into those camera menus and show you how I setup my camera to shoot surf and ocean images. I’m only going to give you a run-down of the relevant camera settings I adjust specifically for surf and ocean photography. I’m using the Sony A7RIII for this guide, the Sony A7III would be exactly the same. Most other Sony cameras will be similar and although other manufacturers will have a different menu system and slightly different terminology most of the information should be transferable over to other camera systems. 

If you have an A7RIII or A7III it will be easy to follow along by using the numbers on top of the menu (below is in Menu 1) and noting the menu screen numbers (below is 1/14). 

File Format – I only shoot RAW. There’s just a lot more information in a RAW file that you can use when editing your images. Basic stuff like being able recover lost highlight or shadow detail is worth it alone. The more you learn about post processing in Lightroom (or other applications) the more you’ll appreciate RAW files. If you are not confident in processing RAW files and you just want to shoot JPEGs then consider shooting both RAW & JPEG formats at the same time. You can have your JPEG quick fix and then if you nail a super sick shot and say a magazine wants to run it then you can give them the RAW. Or just think of future you, once you get your post processing dialled you’ll be stoked to go back to your earlier work and have the RAWs to re-edit. 

RAW File Type – I shoot compressed RAWs. The Sony A7RIII shoots massive 42 megapixel files and if I was to shoot uncompressed they would be double the size. That’s going to make everything run slower, your camera will take longer to buffer (process the images), your computer will take longer to load and process the images, your cards will fill up faster as will your hard drives. I find there is very minimal difference to the compressed and uncompressed RAWs. Uncompressed you’ll be able to push a little harder in post processing, like if you wanted to really bring up extreme shadow details etc. But personally I find the compressed RAWs great to work with. If I was shooting landscapes I might switch to uncompressed.

Focus Mode – Continuous AF as described in the basic section above. 

Priority Set in AF-S – I don’t use single-shot AF but this setting works the same as the next description below.

Priority Set in AF-C – This is where you dictate if you can fire a shot when your subject is out of focus. I don’t see the point in having any out of focus photos, so I’d rather the shutter didn’t fire until it’s focused properly so I set to AF.

Focus Area – As described above in the basic section, Medium flexible spot is my go to. 

AF Track Sens – You can adjust how sensitive your autofocus is. 1-5 scale where 1 will keep it locked when other things are crossing in front of your subject and 5 will just grab anything that pops up in the frame. If you were shooting surfing from the beach and some whitewash splashed up off the rocks in front of you, you wouldn’t want your focus to instantly latch onto the whitewash, so I set mine on 2. 

AF w/ shutter – Some photographers like to disable the auto focus from their shutter button so all it does is fire off frames. And then you can assign another button (usually the AF-ON button you can see top right) and use that to focus instead. So focusing and shooting are two different buttons. A technique called back button focus that a lot of folks swear by. For me I feel the Continuous AF mode does a great job so I just keep my AF assigned to the shutter button. Occasionally if I was shooting in very challenging light and struggling to lock on focus I might switch to back button focus like in this image where I have focused on the foreground water at sunrise. 

Pre-AF – If you have this switched on your camera will be constantly auto-focusing even without you half depressing the shutter. Kind of handy if you always want to be ready to go, but will drain your battery a lot quicker so I turn it off.

AF Area Regist. – This is a really cool and useful feature that I only recently discovered. If you have it turned you can register a particular focal point position. Then you can setup a custom button that will toggle between your current focal point position and your chosen custom position. It’s really difficult (impossible) to use the focal point joystick when your camera is in a water housing, so what I do is I register my focal point position so it is low in the centre. Then when I setup my camera in the housing I position the focal point dead in the centre of the frame. When I’m out swimming if a wave breaks further down the beach then I hit custom button 3 and it instantly moves the focal point from the centre of the frame to lower middle and I can position the wave a lot lower in the frame giving it a nicer composition as in the image below.  

Exposure Comp. – This is how you can change the auto exposure so it meters darker or brighter, but the A7III and A7RIII both have a designated dial for exposure compensation so you wouldn’t need to search through the menus for it. 

ISO – Have discussed this in the basic section above, Auto ISO is how I prefer to shoot.

ISO AUTO Min. SS – Have discussed this in the basic section above, 1/1000th is good for action. 

Metering Mode – I find multi gives the most consistent results for nicely exposed images. 

SteadyShot – If you turn this on then it activates the sensor stabilization which is amazingly useful if you are shooting a stationary subject at lower shutter speeds. Basically the sensor can move to help eliminate hand shake and give you a sharper image. But for surf I’m shooting a fast moving subject and apparently the steady shot can actually work against you in that circumstance so I turn it off.

Auto Review – If this is on each frame you shoot will play back in the viewfinder which means you can’t see what’s happening live. I turn it off.

Prioritize Rec. Media – Decides what card slot your files will write too. Slot 1 writes faster, so go with that. 

Recording Mode – With the dual card slots you have different writing options. If you were shooting something very important you could set it up so it wrote duplicate files to both cards at the same time incase you had issues with a corrupted file on card slot 1, then you’d have a backup on card slot 2. This is actually how I have it setup to shoot weddings. I’ve never actually had a file corrupt on Sony, so for surfing I have it setup to standard which just records your files to one card.

Auto Switch Media – If you have this turned on when you fill up card 1, then it will automatically switch to card 2. Really handy when you’re out swimming. 

I’ve recently got a couple of the new Sony Tough SD cards. They are pretty much indestructible! Waterproof and an innovative one-piece moulded design which doesn’t have those delicate little ribs that I always used to break. They write crazy fast too! With those 2 cards in my camera I can shoot over 5000  frames during a water-shoot. 

Airplane Mode – If you’re swimming with your camera in a housing the last thing you want is to run out of battery. By switching Airplane mode on it turns of some high drain features of your camera that you don’t actually need while shooting like Wifi.