8 things you might not know about your Sony Alpha DSLR … Part V

When using the Manual mode, the dial in front of the shutter button is used to change the shutter speed.  This seems to be exactly the same as the Shutter priority mode.  It may not be intuitive to a new user on how to change the aperture in M mode.

Aperture setting

Press down the +/- button and use the same dial (the one in front of the shutter release button).  This will change the aperture settings instead of the shutter settings.

Changing the default to aperture

Some of us probably like to change aperture settings more than the shutter setting, e.g. when trying to freeze a shot, we typically set the shutter speed to high.  Since we may change aperture settings more often, we may want to set the dial to change aperture by default and to depress the +/- for changing the shutter.

This can be done through pressing the menu button, the proceed to 3rd screen (navigating to the right), you will get …

You can switch the dial control to aperture here.  Voila!

To be continued … Part VI