I originally wrote part of this reply in response to some criticism the Sony 18-270mm zoom lens was receiving. In particular the “ramping” – which is experienced when zooming throughout the range of a zoom lens which does not feature a constant aperture throughout.

The Sony F3 offers an amazing feature buried in the menu that was meant for automatically controlling exposure levels and can be used to address lens ramping, amongst a series of other shooting conditions….

Within the CAMERA SET menu of the F3 is the TLCS feature (total level control system) which can be used to automatically adjust your exposure making your setup very flexible for ENG or run & gun shooting not to mention real handy for other types of live (or non-live) shooting where scene brightness might change continously (ie. in and out of car or house, or panning from hockey rink to crowd, etc..)

Basically the feature allows you to setup the F3 with a preset amount of gain (to boost) and shutter speed (to cut) to automatically adjust exposure within these parameters BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE – you can define the amount of time in seconds it takes to auto-adjust so that changes are GRADUAL and not done abruptly. I’ve personally been using this for time-lapse shots where exposure may change slightly over time and I’ve also used it for scene pans where contrast or brightness levels change throughout the scene. This is GREAT if you don’t want to manually ride the IRIS on the lens, and especially if you are using non-de-clicked manual lenses like I am.

For any “lens ramping issue” the TLCS feature would easily take care of most problems.

To configure it:

• Go to CAMERA SET -> TLCS Menu.
• Turn AGC to ON.
• Set your AGC Limit to the max. amount of gain you want the camera to introduce when necessary. ie. +3db.
• Set your A.SHT LIMIT (shutter limit) to the max. amount of light you want to cut remembering that 1/100 is double the amount of 1/48, and 1/200 is four times that of 1/48, etc.. etc..
• Lastly, set your SPEED to the amount IN SECONDS that you want the wonderful F3 to respond to light changes so they do not appear abrupt. (may required some testing and finessing)
• You can ignore the other settings in the menu, these ones are the main ones and DONT FORGET to turn it off when you don’t want to use it, man it will mess you up when you start adjusting your LENS IRIS and nothing happens!

One issue if you use A.SHT.LIMIT is that your shutter speed will change from your default, say 1/48 so you need to consider that based on what you are shooting.