RX10 V Setup: How I Get Sharp Bird Photos Every Time

Have you ever wondered what settings I actually trust on the RX10 Mark V for birds and wildlife photography? Because when the action happens, you don't have time to dig through the menus. You need quick access to the settings that matter. So today I'm going to show you exactly how I set up my RX10 Mark V for birds and wildlife Photography. What I change, what I leave alone, and a few things I definitely turn off. And since it's way too hot outside, come join me in the AC and let's dive through the RX10 Mark V menu. There's no appetizers, no dessert, just a whole lot of camera settings. Let's go hit that AC.

First up is is the My Menu, and that is a customized menu for shortcuts for you. And I'll show you an easy and quick way to set them. Main Menu, which you don't really have to change anything on there, that's just a quick way to get to places. And then our image quality, I highly recommend you shoot in RAW. I shoot in RAW except when I do videos. I'll do JPEG and RAW, but I did switch mine over to RAW and compressed RAW. That's what I shoot. That way I get the full 30 frames per second. And as far as JPEG quality, you're going to want extra fine, and that gives you a nice detail on the back of the camera. best detail you can get. And JPEG size, 20 millimeter— I'm sorry, 20 megapixels. Aspect ratio, so I prefer to shoot in 16:9, and the reason being is because I do a lot of videos. And then my video format is the XAVC-S-I 4K. All right, so let's We're not going to do that. Um, high ISO, if you shoot in JPEG, um, noise reduction, turn that off. And color space, Adobe RGB. And then we'll jump on over to media, and this is going to be my first shortcut. You hit the trash can button and it brings up Add to My Menu. You hit Add to My Menu and you put it where you want it. There we go, it is added to my menu now. And then we're gonna skip on over to File. We're gonna skip all of this. You can go in and do your copyright info, and that would be your name or however you name your studio or whatnot. Shooting modes, So this, we're going to go down and we're going to go to Register Custom Shoot Setting, and we're going to hit Register Custom Button Hold 1. And in this, I want my shooting mode to be at manual exposure, and I want my shutter speed to be at probably about 800. My drive mode, I still want it on continuous shooting, and I want to turn it down to 5 frames per second because this particular one, we're going to use it if something is sitting still on a branch. So you have the option to slow it down and still use the settings that you have or change your settings. And manual or exposure compensation, I just want it to, uh, stay with what I have on the camera. My ISO, same with that. Metering mode, we're going to stick with multi. And focus mode, I want it to be the continuous autofocus. And my focus area is going to be— I want it— this one, I want it to be small spot. So it's going to be like your traditional DSLR. That way if something is in between the branches, you can put it right on their eye and hit focus and it will grab the eye. And crossing, we're not going to worry about that. We'll just leave it— we will leave it to whatever we're set at in the camera. Same with tracking change. Autofocus on, yes. And we're going to register that. We're going to hit register. Okay, so that button is saved, and I'll show you where to put that button here in a few. And let's see, drive mode, we want continuous. You want 30 frames per second, and the rest we're not going to worry about. Shutter type, you're going to need to be in electronic shutter if you want the full 30 frames per second. You might get a little bit, um, Sometimes you might get some curved wings and stuff, but I haven't noticed a whole lot of that with this camera. And release without card, we're going to disable that because I don't want to take pictures if I don't have a card in there. And image stabilization, SteadyShot, we want that on. Zoom, we're not going to worry about that. And shooting display, I always have my shooting grid lines on. It just helps with placing your, your thirds, um, keeping your horizon straight. So I always have that on. And okay, now we're into exposure. You're going to want to go in, and I typically shoot in auto ISO, and I use my exposure compensation to adjust for the white birds. And the Blackbirds. Um, and then my ISO limit, I just have it at 100, which is native, and I let it go up to 12,800. It doesn't matter. And metering, we just keep it in multi. And then you're going to go down to AEL with shutter. And if you want to do back button focus, which I highly recommend, I would turn off your shutter, um, or focus with your shutter button. All right, let's head on down to the next. Uh, we don't need to mess with any of that flash stuff. Oh, white balance. Okay, so white balance. I like to shoot at a custom white balance, which I typically keep it at 5500. Kelvin, and most of the time that works out pretty good. At times you might have to change it, like if it's sunset or something, you might have to change it, but just, just keep an eye on it. If you're not comfortable doing that, then just put it in auto ISO. Zebras. I highly recommend zebras. I have my zebras on unless I go to snow country where I'm shooting white polar bears in white snow, then the whole thing is full of zebras and you can't see a darn thing. That's the only time I turn them off. So put it to zebras on and put it to 100+, and that'll give you a notification. You'll see the white stripes on the white, the white and black like a zebra, when you're about ready to blow out your highlights. And that's a really good thing to have on. And autofocus, you want it continuous. On autofocus continuous, you want to put it on release. You just, you want it to take the picture. And for crossing, you could leave it standard. I typically put mine at 4. And standard, I'd leave that at standard. Autofocus with shutter off and focus areas. Okay, so here you're going to want to go into focus area limit, and what I do is I go in here and I remove all of the focus areas I don't want to see when I push a custom button and it scrolls through them. So if you like using a particular focus button or you don't, or focus area, and you, or you don't know which one it is, play with them and decide which one you like and then remove all the others. Um, I don't typically use extra large. I'll use large, medium, And small in my rotating, and I don't use any of these custom ones. Although you can make the custom ones, I just use the ones that are already in the camera. They they work great. All right, let's see. Next is oh focus area color. I prefer red. I can see red better than I can white. It didi. Then we're going to skip on over to tab number 3, and you're going to go into your subject recognition autofocus on. You can turn that off if you want, but it won't track your animal with that. And then our target, mine is bird, and you can fine-tune these to, um, what you like. Oh, and if you're going through the menu and you don't know what something is, you can hit the little trash can button and it will bring up an explanation of what that is. So this particular one, it shifts at standard range considering the size, the subject size, a standard recommended setting. So we'll just leave it there and recog— Recognition sensitivity, I like it to be at 4. And then I just leave head or eye, head and body on, and we don't really have to worry about that. And then you can go through and you can adjust each of them. I would suggest doing it to your animals and your insects and your people if you shoot people, but I just mainly shoot animals and birds. And typically I either have it on focus for a bird or animal. And I will take off all these other ones so it only scrolls through animal, bird, and insects, cuz I don't need airplanes, cars, and trains. And this right here, um, you can actually save your presets to an SD card and put, put that somewhere safe And if for any reason you have to reset your camera, you can put that SD card back in there and you can hit load. So you save it first and then you load it later. So now we're going to get into the custom key dials. So here, yeah, just hit don't show that again. Um, so my, my button number 1 is, um, Autofocus on, and my movie button, I'm going to switch that. This is where we're gonna switch it up to registered button number 1. That is in tab number 3. Go down, hit, uh, custom hold button 1. And it should have all the settings in there that we did earlier. Just bump it on down till you hit register. And now that is now your birds that are sitting on a limb or a mammal, because a mammal you're not going to need 3,000 shutter speed. So that's what that is. All right, and number 3 which is your trash can. I set that as my subject, subject recognition. So I scroll through, so then I'll— that trash can button is now my animals, um, I scroll through. See here, insect, animal, and bird. And then we'll go back to the custom dial menu and we will— we're done with the back of the camera. Now we're going to go over to number 1 is your focus standard, which we're going to leave that alone. That is, if you hit that button, it takes you back to center focus, or you can move your focus point around with the little joystick. And then I typically do not set 2, 3, 4, or 5. I leave those as not set, and the reason being is that I, I just, I don't need those, and my hand always seems to hit those buttons if they're set. And then my ISO changes my drive mode will change, and I, I just, I leave those all not set. But you can set those to anything you want, which is nice. And then on the top of the camera, we got button number 1, which that one I'll just leave that as white balance. And then this one is focus area. So focus area is where it will toggle through the different focus spots by using the little round dial at the bottom. And let's go back into the menu. Go back to the dials. Okay, that's the top of the camera. That's good. Then you got focus hold, which is button number 1, which Should be fine. And then your dials, um, you've got the dial number 1, which is your shutter speed, and then you've got, um, dial number 2, which has a little lock button on it. You push that button up and down and you can lock your exposure compensation. And then button number 3 is actually going to be my ISO, and that's where I like to put my ISO so that the dial— as you turn the dial, it changes your ISO. So that's how I set up the back of my camera, my custom buttons. Let's see if there's anything else in here we need to take a look at. Um, you can also go in and set custom dials for all of your movie shooting. I don't really mess with that. The only thing that I change— the only thing I change is different settings for movie and stills. And the reason I do that is so that if I'm shooting movie and I have the settings set for movie and I go back to shooting pictures, well then, um, it's gonna go back to— it's gonna follow. So if you're at 1/800th of a shutter on a photo, when you switch to movie, you're going to be at 1/800th of a shutter for movies. So I like to preserve my movie settings, and then I also like to change the record with shutter button. That way you don't have to reach over for the movie button. You can just hit the shutter button. And all this stuff, I leave it alone. We already did the custom dials, touch operations, viewfinder. Oh, viewfinder, you're going to want to go in and set the monitor brightness. I typically set mine to sunny day, and that way you're able to see the back of the monitor a little better in the bright sunlight. And vertical display on, that means it'll switch from vertical to horizontal. I leave that on. And what else do I change? I turn off auto review because that conserves your battery. So if you have it on When you get done taking pictures, it's going to automatically come up. And power save, power save, I like to put that at 2 minutes. And then high temperature, I put mine at high. Um, you don't have to put it at high. And sound options I always turn my audio signals off because I do not like the sound. Don't have to worry about that. Don't have to worry about that. And we are back at my menu. But there is one thing I did forget in the blue menu. You need to go in, in the blue menu, you need to go to tab 7 and you need to turn off the display as a group. And if you don't have that off, then so each burst of your photos, they're going to put them in a little file for you. So you have to scroll through the files and then open up the file. I just like them all to be in there, and that's the way I like it. I don't like them to group them together in files. It just takes more time reviewing them. So that pretty much wraps it up.

And that is how I set up my Sony RX10 Mark V for birds and wildlife. If you want to see my real-world review of the Sony RX10 Mark V, check it out right here. And if you have a clicking problem, you belong here. Come and join us over at Feathers and F-Stops. And remember, Don't be a Karen, get that hair in. And if you found this video helpful, make sure you like, subscribe, and ring my bell so you get notified next time I post a video. Until then, keep on clicking.