a longer guide to the camera’s operation can be accessed from Sony’s esupport.sony.com website. There will also be assorted pamphlets listing available accessories, lenses, as well as warranty and registration

Picture Profiles are a great tool for advanced movie shooters. You can customize the picture quality, including color and gradation of your movies by defining the parameters included in each of seven different Picture Profiles.

These two menu items let you choose whether or not to apply noise reduction to exposures of longer than one second and how much noise reduction to apply (Normal or Low) when shooting at a high ISO level (at roughly ISO 1600 and above).

Don’t even think of doing this! The operating system won’t necessarily arrange the structure of the card the way the camera likes to see it (in computer terms, an incorrect file system may be installed).

If you’re shooting a player that you don’t expect to be surrounded by many other players, Lock-On AF and Center Lock-On AF can also be used if you’re able to select the subject you want to track at the start of each sequence.

In practice, you’ll want to monitor the red channel most closely, followed by the blue channel, and slightly decrease exposure to see if that helps.

the optional Quick Charger BC-TRW accessory discussed earlier, that may take much less time; it sells for $50 or less through major online photo retailers in the U.S.)

Scroll through the options in this item and watch the change in the preview image display that reflects the effect that each option can provide if you activate it; if you find one that looks interesting, press the center button or touch the shutter release button to confirm your choice and return to shooting mode.

Sony claims a 4.5 stop improvement from its in-body SteadyShot technology. That is, a photograph taken at 1/30th second should have the same sharpness (at least in terms of resistance to camera shake) as one shot at 1/750th second. I’ve found this to be true.