(soft upbeat music)
- So the Sony a7 III is one
of the best cameras you can use
for YouTube or making videos in general.
But, in order to get the best
picture, there's some settings
you wanna dial in and in this video
we wanna show you the settings we use
here at Think Media,
what I use for personal
client work, and what we use for travel,
(intense upbeat music)
coming up.
Hey, what's up,
(air whooshing)
it's Omar El-Takrori with Think Media
bringing you the best tips and tools
for building your influence
(air whooshing)
with online video and social media.
In this channel, we do tip videos
and also tutorial videos
just like this one.
So, if you're new here,
consider subscribing.
All right, so before we
get into the settings
of your camera, real
quick, just wanna run down
some of the gear we're
using to shoot this,
I guess you could say fairly basic
talking head YouTube
video for Think Media.
And so, for lighting, the first thing
is the Fovitec StudioPRO lighting box kit.
Everything we're saying in this video,
I'll be linking
(air whooshing)
up in the description below
and you can go check those things out.
(air whooshing) So for lighting,
we're using that light box kit.
For audio, we're using a RODE
VideoMic Pro, super solid
audio source when shooting
up close to camera.
Sometimes if Sean or someone
on camera is further away,
we will use like a wireless
lav, like a Sennheiser AVX,
that's what I'm using currently.
We're just using a basic tripod
that you can buy on Amazon.
And then lastly, the camera body and lens,
we're using a Sony a7
III and then for the lens
we're using the 16 to 35,
2.8 Sony G Master lens.
An incredible lens, and
the reason why we like it
is because at 2.8, you
can kinda get that blurry
background whether you're
up close or far away
and it's a very versatile lens.
At 16, it's really wide and
then you can bring it in
at 35 millimeters and it gives it
a little more compression if need be.
So as I go through the
settings on my Sony a7 III,
I just wanna let you know I have
a video on my personal channel,
(air whooshing)
Omar El- Takrori
talking about how to set
up your camera straight
out of the box for creating content.
(air whooshing)
I show you how to customize your buttons
and also your Menu settings
just to actually increase
the effectiveness and speed
of how you use your camera.
And you can find that
video on the YouTube card,
I'ma put a link to it in
the description below.
And now, let's jump into the settings.
All right, so the first thing we wanna do
is make sure we set the
camera to Video mode.
Right now, it's in Program Auto,
we're gonna put it to Video
mode by turning the dial.
Once it's in Video mode, we
wanna set our quality and frame
rate and we like to shoot
everything in 4K/30.
I'm gonna go into Menu and
here on my custom Menu,
I wanna change it from HD to 4K
and then put it on 30 frames a second.
You can shoot it 24 frames a second,
we like 30 here at Think
Media but if you want that
film look, by all means go
for the 24 frames per second.
Next, you wanna change the
exposure setting to Manual.
You want full control over your camera,
you don't want camera to
tell you what you're doing.
You can go to the Fn,
go to your Exposure mode
and you wanna make sure you
put that on Manual Exposure.
Now we have full control
over all things exposure.
The first thing we wanna do is set
our shutter speed to 60
as we do have it here.
You always wanna double your shutter speed
to your frame rate, we're
shooting in 30 frames,
therefore our shutter is 1/60 of a second.
So then we set our aperture to 2.8,
which we usually keep it at and gives
us that nice blurry background.
And then lastly, you
can just adjust your ISO
to what looks right and
I like to go based off
of this exposure meter where it says zero.
It's a good rule of thumb, if I go up
it tells me it's a little overexposed.
If I go down, it tells
me that it's underexposed
or exposed correctly, which
zero is exposed correctly.
The next thing we do here at Think Media
is we set the white balance
according to the set-up
or the scene we're
shooting in and you do that
by going to your white balance
via clicking the Fn button.
You could totally use a
preset setting on your
camera to choose your white balance,
but we like to use the
custom White Balance mode.
We use a gray card, why is it a gray card?
I have no idea but you
can use this gray card,
click Set, and set your
white balance based
off of this gray card and what it does,
it gets your colors right,
looking nice and crispy.
Next up, is our Focus settings.
The first thing you wanna do is change
your focus area to Wide, right
now it's on Flexible Spot.
You want that on wide and then you want
to change your Focus mode on Continuous.
It currently is, it's
either Continuous or Manual.
Just make sure it's Continuous
and when you have your Focus
Wide and Focus Continuous together,
it actually unlocks face detection.
You can go right into the Fn settings,
turn on your face detection and boom,
your subject or you yourself will
always be in perfect, perfect focus.
Lastly, we just wanna make
sure our audio levels are good
and so we're gonna go into Menu,
hit the Audio Record Level,
give the subject something to say.
You want your audio to live
in the negative 12 area.
You don't want it too
low or starting to peak
and so being able to see that
front hand is very helpful.
Now, the last thing we
do here at Think Media
is we turn on our custom Picture Profile.
Sony's are infamous for
being able to customize
your look and we use a
custom Picture Profile
and the way you do that
is you can just pick
one of the Picture Profile settings,
we go to the last one 'cause
it's easiest to get to.
Hit right, and then you
wanna change your Gamma
to Cine4 and change
your Color mode to Pro.
We found that this is just a good look.
It just looks awesome, it's slightly flat
so it does allow you to make
some adjustments in post
but it also does a lot
of the work for you.
It saves a lot of the highlights,
it saves a lot of the shadows.
It's just a good flat profile
that doesn't leave you
editing for ever, color grading in post.
And actually if you
wanna check out our video
on how we quickly color
grade all our footage here
at Think Media, you can check
that out on the YouTube card.
I'ma post it also in
the description below.
All right, so once you got
all your settings dialed in,
the video looks awesome on
camera, the last thing we do,
and we encourage you to do
the same, is actually get
a test clip and make
sure you just hit Record.
Record something for 20,
30 seconds, test the audio,
talk at the level you'll talk at.
And then we actually take the
SD card, stick in a computer
and check to see if it's all good to go.
When it is, you're good
to go and you could
start filming your YouTube videos.
(air whooshing)
Hey, question for you is
what camera are you
using to create content?
Are you using a Sony,
(air whooshing)
a Canon, or a Nikon?
Let us know in the comments section below
and we actually broke down everything
we take with us when we're on the road.
If you're doing run-and-gun video
and it's super helpful
video, but if you wanna
check that out, we'll put
it in the YouTube card
and in the description below.
Hey, I hope you got
value out of this video.
Hey, if you did, why don't
you smash that like button,
let me know that you enjoyed this
and we'll see you in
the next video, peace!
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