Sony A1 Sony A1: Underexposed files, but look fine on EVF.

[Townie]

I am a professional shooter and have been using a couple of A1 cameras for 2 years after 38 years with Nikon and Canon. For 38 years, I relied on my lightmeter all day, everyday, but since going mirrorless, I rarely (actually never) look at the meter. I change my variables until the scene looks the way I want it to, and press the button. Perfect. Except..... I have always said that the beauty of mirrorless is that there is no need to chimp your photos after you take them, because you have already chimped them before you press the button. Most of the time that is correct, but I find that when I'm shooting in really low light, especially with a nice subtle colour in the sky and also especially if the subject is silhoetted against that sky, there is a problem when I download the images. The images in this case are 3 to 5 stops underexposed. To the point, that there is no way I would have taken the picture if it had've looked that dark through the viewfinder.
I have spoken with my Sony rep at length about this, and we are both stumped. And no, I am not activating Bright Monitoring.
This only happens a couple of times a year. otherwise I would get into the habit of chimping very shot taken like this.
Has anybody had the same issue?

In the attached image, the top of the Memorial Cross was plainly visible in the viewfinder.

 

[Angus Cameron]

Presume this only applies to the A1 and A9111 . As others have said this is a common accurance on most sony cameras ,my A9II does it, looking in the Evf its fine then when you download to computer it's like somebody has turned the lights off .

Hi John,

I have never experienced this issue. So I pulled out my A7R2 and A7S to test, you are correct this is not in the setup menus.
If I choose a picture profile for movie in either camera and go into manual mode for instance then the picture profile stays set as per movie mode.
I suspect this has never been an issue for me as I set up the custom mode dial with typical good starting settings as follows 1 for Portrait settings 2 for action and 3 for landscape. In assigning these to the mode memories when you set the picture profile in movie and switch to a memory recall of 1,2 or 3 the picture profile setting is altered by the memory setting, in my case it auto magically reverts to PP off in all 3 memory settings. I seldom use the mode control in Av,Tv or manual.

Maybe this could work for you?

Hope that helps.

Angus.

 

[Soundmike]

Hi John,

I have never experienced this issue. So I pulled out my A7R2 and A7S to test, you are correct this is not in the setup menus.
If I choose a picture profile for movie in either camera and go into manual mode for instance then the picture profile stays set as per movie mode.
I suspect this has never been an issue for me as I set up the custom mode dial with typical good starting settings as follows 1 for Portrait settings 2 for action and 3 for landscape. In assigning these to the mode memories when you set the picture profile in movie and switch to a memory recall of 1,2 or 3 the picture profile setting is altered by the memory setting, in my case it auto magically reverts to PP off in all 3 memory settings. I seldom use the mode control in Av,Tv or manual.

Maybe this could work for you?

Hope that helps.

Angus.

Thanks Angus for taking time to reply ,must admit my mode dial settings are similar to yours but I often forget to use them . 1 are use for BIF 2 for Still birds and 3 for landscape . Didn't know it turns ppl automatically off using the mode dial. Must admit got into the manual mode mentality so I'm going to do some experimenting soon . Had my A9II over two years now and I'm still learning

Hi John,

I have never experienced this issue. So I pulled out my A7R2 and A7S to test, you are correct this is not in the setup menus.
If I choose a picture profile for movie in either camera and go into manual mode for instance then the picture profile stays set as per movie mode.
I suspect this has never been an issue for me as I set up the custom mode dial with typical good starting settings as follows 1 for Portrait settings 2 for action and 3 for landscape. In assigning these to the mode memories when you set the picture profile in movie and switch to a memory recall of 1,2 or 3 the picture profile setting is altered by the memory setting, in my case it auto magically reverts to PP off in all 3 memory settings. I seldom use the mode control in Av,Tv or manual.

Maybe this could work for you?

Hope that helps.

Angus.

 

[Angus Cameron]

Hi John,

Very much still learning myself. I found Mark Galers you tube channel and his Patreon site really good. My set up is based on what he calls his PAL system, I found that a great starting point and customised things to suit my own taste from there. I think I find little use for the other modes on the dial because I have three of the rear custom buttons reflecting modes 1 2 and 3 using the registered shooting settings.
Reg 1 portrait is set to button 9 (AF On), Reg 2 action is set to button 10 (AEL) and Reg 3 landscape is set to 15 (trash), no matter where I am with the camera I can hit one of those and instantly pick up settings for portrait, action or landscape. If you're a back button focuser you could use the movie record button for portrait.

You may of course use these buttons for other things but if you have not tried the registered shooting settings they are worth exploring.

I've become so accustomed to this set up on the A1 that I've just replaced my A7R2 with an A7R4 in part because it has the three memories on the mode dial and the same layout of custom buttons.

One tip, if you are going to mess around with all those settings use the save/load camset feature to save the settings you have now so you can revert to them if you don't like the way any modified set up is without undoing each step (don't ask me how I know this ).

Angus.

 

[Soundmike]

Hi John,

Very much still learning myself. I found Mark Galers you tube channel and his Patreon site really good. My set up is based on what he calls his PAL system, I found that a great starting point and customised things to suit my own taste from there. I think I find little use for the other modes on the dial because I have three of the rear custom buttons reflecting modes 1 2 and 3 using the registered shooting settings.
Reg 1 portrait is set to button 9 (AF On), Reg 2 action is set to button 10 (AEL) and Reg 3 landscape is set to 15 (trash), no matter where I am with the camera I can hit one of those and instantly pick up settings for portrait, action or landscape. If you're a back button focuser you could use the movie record button for portrait.

You may of course use these buttons for other things but if you have not tried the registered shooting settings they are worth exploring.

I've become so accustomed to this set up on the A1 that I've just replaced my A7R2 with an A7R4 in part because it has the three memories on the mode dial and the same layout of custom buttons.

One tip, if you are going to mess around with all those settings use the save/load camset feature to save the settings you have now so you can revert to them if you don't like the way any modified set up is without undoing each step (don't ask me how I know this ).

Angus.

Thanks Angus for the information,yes I've looked at Mark's patreon sight and got a lot from it ,he's like the workshop manual for every sony camera, it's just as well people like this are around because the instruction manual you get is basically useless . You do get into a bit of a rut sometimes with photography and camera settings,since I've been doing birds in flight I've always used Apsc crop basically to get as much of the bird in shot as I can but as time and experience goes on I've learned that quality without it does improve . That's why forums like this are so helpful .

 

[Brownie]

Thanks Angus for the information,yes I've looked at Mark's patreon sight and got a lot from it ,he's like the workshop manual for every sony camera, it's just as well people like this are around because the instruction manual you get is basically useless . You do get into a bit of a rut sometimes with photography and camera settings,since I've been doing birds in flight I've always used Apsc crop basically to get as much of the bird in shot as I can but as time and experience goes on I've learned that quality without it does improve . That's why forums like this are so helpful .

Right here on this very forum. Find your camera, choose 'manual', choose "online help guide'. It is searchable and very thorough.

https://www.alphashooters.com/cameras/

Sony makes all of this available on-line. The days of bloated printed manuals are long gone.