Self-Portraits With a Sony a7iii | Boston Family Photography
In November 2019, I made the huge decision to switch from a Canon system to a Sony mirrorless. After being a Canon user for 10 years, learning to navigate my new Sony a7iii bodies was a challenge. You don’t realize how much of your workflow is muscle memory until you try something new!
While I loved *mostly* everything about my new mirrorless set up, I felt sad about one thing: the ease of taking self-portraits. Canon had an easy-to-use phone app with touch focus which was clutch. Touch focus enabled me to get in position and then simply touch my phone screen to focus on myself.
Sony, at the time, didn’t have any sophisticated apps and I gave up for a while. After putting together our yearly family album and lamenting how infrequently I was in front of the camera, I vowed to figure it out!
How To Take Self-Portraits With a Sony a7iii
Nearly three months in, I have been taking a weekly self-portrait with or without my kids. I can confidently say I have gotten to a point where it feels very easy to do so. Here’s what I use:
- Sony a7iii + 35mm (usually)
- Sony’s incredible Eye Autofocus
How to Connect Your Camera to the App
Connecting to the ImagingEdge app is super simple. You can follow along in the images above. You’re going to go into your menu on your Sony a7iii and select “Ctrl w/Smartphone”, then “Connection” which will open a QR code that is unique to your camera.
In the App, you will select “Connect to a New Camera” and a QR code scanner opens up. Scan the QR code on your camera and you’re good to go!
**Troubleshooting note: if you’re having trouble connecting, try turning off your home Wi-fi as it can sometimes interfere with the connection.
But…How Do You Focus?
Here’s the beauty of Sony’s incredible Eye AF, you literally just LOOK at the camera. Yup, that’s right. The Sony eye AF is sophisticated enough that it will focus-lock on any human eye. If yours is not doing this, make sure you have Eye AF turned on in your menu settings, as well as “continuous focus”. Once the focus locks on you, you can then look down or wherever you want to. The focus won’t move unless it detects another eye somewhere else.
If you’re taking an image with multiple people, I recommend shooting at f2.5 or higher and just ensuring your subjects are on a fairly similar plane. That way no matter which subject’s eye the camera picks up, the other subjects will be in focus too.
Pressing the Trigger for the Sony a7iii
I use the burst mode on the app for “pressing” the trigger. Swiping to the left on the app shutter takes a burst of photos in quick succession. With little ones constantly moving/squirming/blinking, I love this feature. I am pretty much guaranteed to get a few usable frames out of a couple second burst.
Some people like to set up their settings on their camera to fire every few seconds but this is too slow for my family. By the time a couple frames were shot, my kids would be over it! Not to mention, using the quick swipe burst allows me to not have to touch my camera settings at all. Easy peasy!
What are you waiting for? If you’re a Sony a7iii user who hasn’t been in enough photos this year, please go get in the frame! Your family will thank you later.
