How to "Quick Switch" Between Stills and Video with the Sony a1 and a7SIII

Ever since I have been shooting Sony, the ability to simply push the red button and shoot video has been a major appeal.

The thing is that often the shutter speed for stills is quite different from video (if you follow the 180 degree shutter rule).

And now that I am shooting the a1 and a7sIII I am shooting all S-Log 3 with video so then having to change shutter AND the profile (because I don't want to shoot Log with stills) -- well it's just more things to change.

In the past with previous Sony cameras, I set the 1, 2 and 3 buttons to 24p, 60p and 120p respectively but that wasn't perfect.

When the Sony a7IV came out I was intrigued by one feature which may seem a very minor improvement to some, but it really was an eye-opener.

The sub dial below the mode dial on the a7IV allows you to quickly switch between Stills, Video and S & Q mode with the previous settings saved.

That is genius, I thought and I want that on my a7sIII and a1.

I called my friend El-Deane Naude at Sony and expressed my frustration that a similar feature wasn't available on my a1 and a7sIII.

"It IS" he proclaimed.

Really? How did I miss it?????

In order to have separate settings for your Movie settings and your manual stills settings so that it remembers the last thing set all you have to do is this:

Menu -> Setup (Suitcase/Gold) -> 3 Operation Customize -> Different Set for Still/Mv

Then I check all the boxes for Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO, Exposure Comp., Metering Mode, White Balance and Picture Profile and then scroll down to OK.

There you go -- now you can dial in different settings for your camera for stills or video! When you now set your camera to the Video setting (film strip on top dial) and set your frame rate, bit rate, profile, shutter, aperture and ISO or whatever you want of those 8 variables and your camera is now ready for video.

Switch to manual (M on the mode dial) and it will remember the settings that were there before.

This way if you want to shoot 1/50th with your 24p video all you have to do is move the switch from M to Movie and go...whatever you used previously will be remembered and used.

Want to shoot stills at 1/1000th of a second (or whatever speed), then simply switch back to the M and you're good to go.

Now, the camera is an even better hybrid camera allowing me to dial in my preferred movie AND stills settings for maximum performance.

I hope you found this helpful!

ENJOY!

Paul