Ever wondered what the heck crop mode actually does on your Sony camera? Turns out, it can actually help you get more reach out of your full-frame lenses.
In this quick article, I’ll be going over what exactly crop mode is and how you can use it to its fullest potential.
Let’s dive in.
The Basics
So what is crop mode?
The basic concept of crop mode (aka Super 35) is incredibly simple.
You’re just cropping the sensor to use the typical APS-C size (1.5x crop).
What this means is that you’re achieving a tighter field of view out of your full frame lenses, but at the cost to image quality (megapixels).
How to enable crop mode?
To enable crop mode, you’ll have to dig into the menus a bit.
- Hit the menu button on the rear of the camera
- Go to the 1st tab and then page 1
- Open “APS-C/Super 35mm”
- Set it to manual and then to “on”
Why should you use crop mode?
“Longer” Focal Range
As I mentioned earlier, switching to crop mode reduces your megapixel count substantially (on the a7iii, you go down to 10.66mp from the standard 24mp).
However, it allows you to get the typical APS-C crop out of your full frame lenses.
Meaning if you, for example, have a 50mm, you can put the camera into crop mode and turn it into a 75mm (just with a reduced megapixel count).
Sharing on Social Media
The other big reason you may opt to switch to crop mode is if you’re exclusively sharing photos on social media.
As mentioned prior, crop mode drastically reduces your megapixel count which, while that may be an issue on larger, high-resolution screens, it’s really not a big deal on a tiny phone screen.
Reducing your megapixel count reduces your file sizes, which, again, can be optimal if you need to transfer a lot of photos to social media really quickly.
Conclusion
So, now you know what crop mode (Super 35mm) means.
It’s fairly niche, but there are plenty of interesting uses for it.
For myself, I tend to find myself using it in cases where, as I said above, I need more reach out of my full-frame lenses (especially in video).
By the way, if you’re looking to tackle more of your Sony a7iii’s settings, consider checking out my guides on taking sharp images and parts of the exposure triangle. Thanks for reading.