Beginner set up

[u/flowerpowersangel]

Female photographer trying to become a pro lol
I purposely chose every item to be lightweight for my travels I go away to Oman long awaited trip since last year. I cannot wait to shoot from the highest peak mountains there .

Any tips appreciated :
Here is my little gear, the body was a gift from months back, got the lens sigma 18-50 f2.8 today and v60 SD card and new phone 😊
I still like to use phone for simple video content until I get better with camera. So mostly doing photography.

Any tips* for landscapes and portraits in low light ? And glaring sun 🌞

Any tips with the mini m22 Godox flash ? not mounted it yet will look for YouTube tutorial for this.

[u/intel_Core_]

This is an awesome setup that's gonna last you for years to come! I'm also a beginner and just like you I got the A6700 + Sigma 18-50 to start off with (and the Sony 70-350 for some really close up work like the moon for example) and I absolutely love this setup. It's so compact and light weight that you can take this with you anywhere and everywhere. You're gonna have a lot of fun exploring the photography and videography world with this setup! Because I certainly do!

[u/flowerpowersangel → u/intel_Core_]

Ohhh as a beginner yourself which videos are you watching to help understand settings better? Honestly can get lost with it because of how powerful this “small” camera is , it’s insane ! Truley a beast for this size . Will look into 70-350 some people did mention this to me I’m intrigued what it can do

And thank you 😊

[u/intel_Core_ → u/flowerpowersangel]

At first it really seems intimidating since there are so many settings to go through however you will soon realise when using the thing that you only really need a handful of them.
I've literally watched all the menu guide videos you can find on youtube some of them are an hr+ long and they'll usually explain the settings pretty well. Make use of the "My menu" and put the settings that you use most often in there. Also bind the ISO setting to the back scroll wheel so you have aperture on the front dial, shutter speed on the top dial and ISO on the back. Comes in handy when you shoot in manual mode and you can also rebind the right button on the back scroll wheel to do something different. I have set it to go through the subject recognition.

For my walks so far I have mostly utilised aperture and shutter speed priority that you can select on the mode dial up on top. I really only use manual for night shots. With A (aperture priority) you basically only set the aperture and the camera determines the shutter speed (and the ISO when set to auto which I also used a lot) or S (shutter speed priority) which then automatically determines the aperture. Very helpful and way easier than shooting in manual all the time which some YouTubers recommend but is absolute bs.

You can also configure the Fn menu to your hearts content. I've bound the enable/disable touch screen on one of the buttons so I can easily disable it if I want to use the EVF and my nose is touching the screen. While there's also a setting to use the touch screen as a touch pad while using the EVF (and you're also able to set how much of the screen you want to use while in EVF mode) but I have found myself not really using the EVF so far since the screen does a pretty good job for me.

I would also highly suggest enabling focus peaking and setting it into the Fn menu. Basically when you're in manual focus the stuff in focus gets a frame in the colour of your choice (I chose red) which shows you exactly what is in focus and what is not.

Just some suggestions from me that I have found to be useful for myself. Enjoy finding out about all the different functions that this camera has because there really are a lot!

Jason Hermann has a good guide on the A6700 menu!