Hey, I'm Donald Bell and I've recently become obsessed with this camera, the Sony NEX-7.
It's been out since 2012, but I came across when I was looking for something that was compact, but could still shoot DSLR quality video.
Now, I've been out to get some great video out of the NEX-7, but not without a few tweaks.
It's a still camera first and foremost and some of those camera settings can work against you when you're trying to shoot video.
For example an adjustable shutter speed can be a great thing when you're trying to shoot a really fast action shot.
But when you're shooting video, it can create a weird strobing effect.
Now to show an example of what I'm talking about, I'm gonna take a video of this bike tire spinning.
Now the camera right now, it set up at 24 frames per second, which is the default zoom mode for the camera and a shutter speed at about 400 which is what you might get if you're just shooting in like an automatic mode.
And so I'm gonna hit record,
spin the bike tire, so as you can see here at 1/400th of a second, the shutter speed is creating some strobing effect and it almost looks like bed spokes or warping a little bit.
It looks kind of cool, but not exactly a natural cinematic look.
Now to compensate for that, we're gonna take the shutter speed down to 1/150th of a second.
And you'll see now when I spin the tire, you're gonna see a much more natural blurring of the spokes.
It's a lot like what you'd see to your naked eye.
Now if you're shooting in a 60 frames per second mode, try putting the shutter speed at 1/120th of a second.
Not even have the option of changing the shutter speed on this camera, you have to be shooting either manual mode or shutter priority mode.
To change that, you're going to the menu, going to shoot mode, and then spin the dial until you find either manual mode or shutter priority mode.
They're right next to each other.
Use the first of the two dials here at the top of the camera to adjust your shutter speed.
Once you've adjusted your shutter speed, you probably notice that your image got a little brighter or a little dimmer.
To fix that, you'll need to adjust the ISO and exposure settings to make up the difference.
Cranking down the ISO over here, using the scroll wheel will usually be enough to do the trick.
All right, so, that's how to shoot more natural-looking video on the Sony NEX-7 by dialing in the shutter speed.
Thanks to the folks at Camera Dojo for first publishing this tip.
For more how-tos, head over to howto.cnet.com.
I'm Donald Bell, go out and shoot some great videos.
