Matt Grum Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Beni wrote:
I find the zebra pretty useless for stills, it's way too sensitive even at the lowest setting when you're shooting raw and it's horrifically distracting.
With zebras, just as with focus peaking, even though it's not perfect it has its uses.
The A7 cameras are regarded as being "ISOless" in that the read noise is so low there's no practical difference between amplifying the signal in camera (by raising the ISO setting) and bumping up the exposure during RAW conversion. Except that raising ISO risks blowing the highlights, for no real benefit. A good strategy would thus be to shoot RAW, leave the camera set to the lowest ISO and fix all exposures in post.
In reality however, the sensor may well be ISOless but the camera is not. What I mean is that if you do leave the camera set to ISO100 at all times but want to make use of a key advantage of EVFs, the ability to preview white balance, pictures styles, DoF etc, you can't. In poor light you'll see nothing in the viewfinder, making it very difficult to compose and focus your shots!
So you want to raise the ISO enough so you can see what you're shooting, but not too much that you risk clipping any highlights in the scene. This is where zebras come in really handy. Use the most conservative zebra setting you can (80% or something like that) set your creative controls (aperture and shutter-speed) to whatever values you want/need and then spin the ISO up (I suggest using the wheel on the back) until you see the zebras in the viewfinder. Then you'll be able to see what you're doing whilst keeping several stops of headroom in reserve.
I've recently switched my main body from a 5D mkIII to an A7R and this is one of the many areas I've had to retrain myself, no more pushing the ISO right up the very limit of clipping to try and reduce shadow noise!
Edited on Aug 14, 2014 at 09:29 AM · View previous versions
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