Sony RX100 VII Setup: Menu Settings to Change First

To set up a Sony RX100 VII, set the date and time, format your card in the camera, then change a short list of menu settings: RAW & JPEG, a Flexible Spot focus area, 4K video at 30p, ISO on the control wheel, manual exposure for movies and touch pad focusing for the viewfinder. None of these are hard, and together they help you stop leaning on auto and start making the camera do what you want.

Before you change any settings

Set the date, time and time zone

The first screen you meet asks for the date, time and time zone, and those details are stamped onto every picture you take. Jerad Hill, who writes the Ditch Auto setup guides, warns that skipping this can leave your photos jumbled when you upload them to services like Google Photos. Take the extra minute and get it right now, so future you can find last summer's pictures in the right place.

Format the card inside the camera

Hill recommends formatting your SD card in the RX100 VII itself, not in another camera and not on your computer. Think of formatting like wiping a whiteboard clean before a new lesson. Copy anything you want to keep off the card first, because formatting erases it.

One card detail to know: the RX100 VII has a UHS-I slot, not the faster UHS-II kind. Digital Camera World points out that this means a pricier UHS-II card will not speed things up in this camera. A good UHS-I card is the sensible match.

What you are working with

It helps to know what the camera can do before you start flipping switches. Here are the main specs from published reviews.

Feature	Sony RX100 VII	Source
Sensor	20.1MP 1.0-inch stacked CMOS
Lens	24-200mm equivalent, f/2.8-4.5
Autofocus points	357 phase-detect, 425 contrast-detect
Continuous shooting	Up to 20fps, blackout-free, with AF/AE
Single Burst shooting	About 90, 60 or 30fps
Shutter speeds (P, A, S, M)	30 seconds to 1/32000
4K video	Up to 30p, full-pixel readout, XAVC S up to 100 Mb/s
Full HD video	Up to 120fps
High frame rate mode	Up to 960fps
Rear screen	3-inch, 921-dot touchscreen, tilts 180° up and 90° down
Audio	Microphone jack, no headphone jack
Card slot	One slot, UHS-I

The menu uses the same layout as recent Sony Alpha cameras, organized into icons and pages. If the tabs feel confusing at first, the Sony camera menu setup guide walks through how they are arranged. That confusion is normal, and it fades after a few sessions with the camera.

Photo settings to change first

File Format: RAW & JPEG

The camera can save pictures as JPEG and as RAW files in Sony's ARW format. Here is a simple way to picture it: a RAW file is a bag of fresh ingredients, and a JPEG is a meal that is already cooked. You can still season the meal, but the ingredients give you far more choices.

Jerad Hill's guide sets File Format to RAW & JPEG first. His reasons: the RAW file gives room to recover exposure and correct color, the JPEG transfers to a phone much faster, and the JPEG is a backup if a RAW file gets corrupted, which matters because the RX100 VII has only one card slot.

The camera offers three JPEG quality settings, and Extra Fine is the highest. If you are saving JPEGs anyway, pick Extra Fine.

Get off the green auto mode

Hill's list starts with putting the camera in manual mode. In iAuto, the slowest shutter speed is 4 seconds, while Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Manual all reach 30 seconds. Photography Blog calls that 30-second limit good news for night photography.

If full manual feels like too much today, start with Aperture Priority (A on the dial). Your aperture works like the pupil of your eye: a wide pupil lets in lots of light, a small one lets in less. You choose that, and the camera picks the rest. The shutter speed is like a door opening and closing: open for a long time and moving things blur, open for a blink and they freeze. ISO is like a volume knob for brightness: turn it up and the picture gets brighter, but also grainier.

ISO Auto minimum shutter speed

This one is a quiet fix for blurry photos. The camera includes an ISO Auto Minimum Shutter Speed setting. According to Wimarys' RX100 VII guide, when you use ISO AUTO in Program or Aperture Priority, this setting decides at what shutter speed the ISO starts climbing, in steps of Faster, Fast, Standard, Slow and Slower. Choosing Faster or Fast helps prevent blur when shooting action or sports, at the cost of more noise, and the ISO still will not pass the upper limit you set.

If your pictures of kids or pets keep coming out smeared, try Fast. A little grain is much easier to live with than a blurry face.

Focus Area: Flexible Spot (M)

Hill sets the Focus Area to Flexible Spot, medium size. With it, you can tap the screen to put the focus point where you want, or move it with the control wheel and press the center to lock it in. This means you decide what is sharp, instead of the camera guessing.

The RX100 VII also has Real-time Tracking and Real-time Eye AF for both humans and animals. Photography Blog describes Real-time Eye AF as using AI-based object recognition to find eyes. Flexible Spot is a great place to learn, and tracking is a tool you can try once you feel steady.

Wimarys notes it can help for selfies but can make the camera latch onto the wrong subject in continuous focus, and recommends turning it off if you shoot more action than selfies.

Creative Style, grid and Auto Review

Hill's list includes the Neutral Creative Style, a rule of thirds grid and a 2-second Auto Review. The grid is like drawing a tic-tac-toe board over your screen, and it helps you place your subject with intention instead of always dead center.

Auto Review shows each photo for a moment after you take it, and you can get back to shooting by half-pressing the shutter. Hill notes it does not interrupt you when you hold the shutter for continuous shooting. You will find it in MENU > Camera Settings2 > Auto Review.

Buttons and touch controls

Put ISO on the right side of the control wheel

Out of the box, pressing right on the control wheel opens Flash Mode. To change it, go to MENU > Camera Settings2 > Custom Key, select the Right Button and change it to ISO. Hill makes this change so the camera matches Sony's a7 cameras. He also notes the trash button is mapped to ISO by default, so you have two ways to reach it after this change.

ISO is one of the three settings you will adjust most, so giving it a quick button is a kind thing to do for your future self.

Turn the screen into a touch pad for the viewfinder

When you look through the pop-up viewfinder, the rear screen turns off, but you can still drag your thumb across it to move the focus point, like a laptop trackpad. By default the setting is Touch Panel only. In the Setup menu, change Touch Panel/Pad to Touch Panel+Pad. Hill then uses Relative Position and the right half of the screen in Touch Pad Settings so he can move focus with his right thumb.

Video settings to change first

4K at 30p 100M

Hill sets the movie File Format to XAVC S 4K and the record setting to 30p 100M. The frame rate works like a flipbook: 30p means 30 pictures every second. Hill's reason for 30p is that it gives a little room to slow footage down if you edit on a 24p timeline.

For real slow motion, you need to switch to HD, which goes up to 120p. The dedicated High Frame Rate mode goes even further, up to 960fps. Start with 4K at 30p, and switch to HD when you have a moment you want to stretch out.

Manual Exposure for movies

Video has its own exposure mode, separate from photos. Turn the mode dial to movie, press MENU, find Exposure Mode under the Movie panel, and change it from the default Program Auto to Manual Exposure. This lets you set shutter speed, aperture and ISO for video independently from your photo settings.

Two helpers make manual video easier: Zebra and Peaking. Zebra draws stripes over the brightest spots, like a warning sign that says "this part may turn pure white." Peaking paints the sharp edges in a color you choose, with red, yellow, blue and white available.

Picture profiles, stabilization and sound

The camera offers HLG, S-Log2 and S-Log3 for people who want more room when editing. These take extra work in editing software, so it is fine to leave them off while you learn exposure.

For handheld clips, the camera has 4K Active SteadyShot, which combines electronic and optical stabilization; PetaPixel reported Sony's claim of an 8x improvement over its Standard SteadyShot.

The RX100 VII added a microphone jack, but there is no headphone jack. Since you can't listen while recording, watch the on-screen meter instead; the camera has Audio Rec Level and Audio Level Display settings.

Small extras worth a minute

• Hill sets audio signals to shutter only.
• You can add copyright info to your files.
• Set File Name lets you choose a three-character prefix, found in MENU > Setup > File/Folder Settings > Set File Name. Your initials work well.
• If you pair the camera with your phone for location data, Wimarys warns not to pair from your phone's Bluetooth screen; do the pairing through the camera and the PlayMemories Mobile app instead.

Know the buffer before you hold down the shutter

The fast shooting is a big part of this camera. It shoots 20fps with continuous AF/AE and no blackout, and Single Burst mode reaches 90fps with focus and exposure locked at the first frame. Single Burst also has slower 60fps and 30fps options.

There are limits. Photography Blog notes there is no pre-buffering, so your timing has to be right, and the camera records only 7 RAW shots at the 90fps speed. Digital Camera World found that once the buffer fills, you can't zoom into pictures in playback or change settings until it clears, which took around a minute.

If you hit that wall, it is not a mistake on your part, it is just how this camera works. For everyday moments, the Continuous Mid setting at about 10fps or Low at about 5fps is gentler on the buffer. Save the top speeds for the few seconds that really need them.

The Sony ZV-1 setup guide covers a close relative that uses the same 20.1MP stacked sensor. Once these settings are in place, go take a hundred pictures of ordinary things. That is how the menus start to feel like home.