Chris's Photo Recipes

Set this up once, then forget about it

Ten minutes on the sofa now saves you digging through menus in a field later. Everything here stays put until you deliberately change it.

1. ISO AUTO Min. SS → Fast or Faster. The most useful setting on the camera, and nobody finds it by accident. It tells the camera to prefer a quick shutter over a low ISO. Quick shutter means sharp photo. This one setting prevents most blurry pictures before they happen.
2. ISO Range Limit → 100 – 6400. Lets the camera brighten a dark scene by itself, but stops it going so far that photos turn grainy.
3. Focus Mode → Continuous AF. The camera keeps adjusting focus for as long as you hold the button. Leave it here permanently — it's perfectly good for still subjects too, and it's required for the tracking modes.
4. Subj Recog in AF → On, Recognition Target → Auto. The RX10 V has a dedicated chip for this. It recognises Human, Animal, Bird, Insect, Car/Train and Airplane, and will find and hold them on its own. Leave it on Auto for general use.
5. Put Recognition Target on a custom button. Use Custom Key/Dial Set. to assign it to C1. Then you can flick from Auto to Bird in a second, without opening a menu — which is the difference between getting the shot and watching it fly off.
6. Assign Cnt Sht Spd Bst w/ Hold to another custom button. Hold it mid-burst and the camera jumps to 30 frames a second. Lets you potter along at a sensible speed and go to full rate only for the two seconds that matter.
7. The joystick (multi-selector) moves the focus box. New on this model and far quicker than poking the touchscreen. Nudge it to put the box on your subject.
8. Learn the AF-ON button. Hold it and the camera focuses continuously without you touching the shutter. For anything that moves, this is how to work: hold AF-ON, follow the subject, press the shutter when it looks right.
9. SteadyShot → On. Turn it off only on a tripod — Sony specifically warn against leaving it on there.
10. File Format → JPEG, Image Quality → Fine or Extra Fine. Finished photos straight out of the camera, ready to send to anyone. You can add RAW later if you ever fancy editing them.
11. Creative Look → ST. Natural colour. The out-of-camera colour and skin tones on this model are noticeably better than the old RX10 IV, so there's nothing to fix.
12. Install Sony's Creators' App on your phone and pair it once. After that, photos come over by Wi-Fi with no cable and no card reader.

Where everything is

The guide keeps naming buttons, so here they are. You only really need numbers 6, 7 and 14 to 16 — those are the ones that change how the camera focuses.

1. Viewfinder. Put your eye to it and the screen switches over by itself. Steadier than holding the camera at arm's length — use it at long zoom.
2. Diopter dial. Turn it until the viewfinder display looks sharp to your eyes. Do this once. If the viewfinder has ever looked slightly soft, this is why.
3. MENU. Everything in the one-off setup list lives in here.
4. Monitor. Touch-sensitive, and it tilts — pull it out to shoot low down or overhead.
5. MOVIE. Starts and stops video, whatever else the camera is set to.
6. AF-ON. Hold it to focus continuously without touching the shutter. The most useful button on the camera for anything that moves.
7. Multi-selector. The little joystick. Moves the focus box around the frame.
8. Fn. Brings up a grid of the settings you change most, without the full menu.
9. Control wheel. Turns to change values; the edges press as four direction buttons.
10. C3. A custom button you can assign anything to. In playback it's the delete button.
11. Front lens ring. Can be set to zoom or to focus — see Lens Ring Setup.
12. Aperture ring. Turns to set the f-number directly. Nice: no menu, no dial-hunting.
13. Rear lens ring. The other configurable ring.
14. Focus mode switch. AF or MF. Flick it to MF for the moon, or for a bird autofocus won't settle on.
15. Focus hold button. Holds focus exactly where it is while you hold it down — useful when something keeps crossing in front of your subject.
16. Focus range limiter. Set to ∞–3m for anything distant and the lens stops hunting through its close range.

The recipes

Each card stands on its own. The strip is what to set; underneath is why it works, and the one thing that usually goes wrong.

The one bit of theory: you have two shutters

This trips people up, and it's the reason a recipe can look right and still not work. Shutter Type in the menu has two settings and they are genuinely different cameras.

In short: Electronic outdoors for action, Mechanical for everything else. If you set 30 frames a second and the camera refuses, this is why — Hi+ and Hi simply aren't offered on the mechanical shutter.

Three things worth knowing

What aperture you actually get as you zoom

The lens is brightest at the wide end and dims as you zoom in. This matters indoors and at dusk: zooming in costs you light.

Sony quote f/2.4 at the wide end and f/4.0 at the telephoto end; the two middle rows are approximate, and the screen always shows you the real number.

Slowest shutter speed you can hand-hold

The further you zoom, the more your own small movements get magnified. Below these numbers photos go soft however steady you feel.

SteadyShot buys you a stop or two on a still subject, so you can creep below the left-hand column when nothing is happening. It does nothing whatsoever for a subject that is itself moving — that's what the right-hand column is for.

How far you can push ISO

The sensor is a 1.0-type — bigger than a phone's, smaller than an SLR's. That's the honest trade for carrying 24–600mm in a single lens that never comes off.

If the photo came out wrong

Blurry, and I was zoomed right in

Shutter speed was too slow. Switch to S and set 1/1000. This is the cause about nine times in ten.

The person is a dark shape against a bright sky

The camera exposed for the sky, not the face. Turn Exposure Comp. to +1. There's no flash built into this camera, so the other answer is to move them — turn them so the light is on their face rather than behind them.

Grainy and speckled

ISO climbed high because the light was poor. Zoom back towards 24mm to get f/2.4, or move closer to a window or a lamp.

Nothing looks properly sharp anywhere

You were probably at f/11 or f/16. Go back to f/5.6.

Faint bands or stripes across an indoor photo

Electronic shutter reacting to LED or fluorescent lighting. Set Shutter Type → Mechanical Shutter.

The camera won't let me pick 30 frames a second

You're on the mechanical shutter, which doesn't offer Hi+ or Hi. Set Shutter Type → Electronic Shutter first.

Focus hunted while I was zooming

Known limitation, not a fault. Zoom, let go, then hold AF-ON and shoot.

The sky is white and featureless

Overexposed. Exposure Comp. to −0.7 and the clouds come back.

Focus landed on the branch, not the bird

Wide focus grabbed the nearest thing. Switch to Spot: S and put the box on the bird with the joystick.

It keeps focusing on something close when I'm shooting far away

Set the focus range limiter switch to ∞–3m.

The camera never draws a box around a distant bird

It hasn't recognised it. Usually the bird is too small in the frame, too far out of focus to begin with, or lost against busy foliage. Get the lens roughly focused first, frame the whole bird, and see small birds in the distance.

Focus keeps jumping off the bird onto the branches

Set AF Subj. Shift Sensitivity to 1 (Locked on).

It fired but the bird is out of focus

Set Priority Set in AF-C to AF and the camera won't release the shutter until it has actually focused.