SonyFX6 - Change direction of multifunction dial?

[andypeck]

Hi folks,
trying to see if there's a way to change the direction of the multifunction dial. My natural way to adjust the exposure on the waveform is to roll dial upwards so the exposure gets brighter and then roll downward to make it darker. By default it works the other way (down to get brighter and up for darker)

Its no biggie if its fixed to the existing structure but it would be nice to try this out. 

Can it be done?

THX

[Grant Robertson]

First of all, you haven't told us what camera you have.

Secondly, what you are referring to as the "Multifunction Dial" is actually referred to as the "Multifunction Wheel" in most of the Sony documentation that I have seen. That may sound overly pedantic, but this kind of miscommunication confuses people all the time. I remember it this way: You can see all of the wheel, just like a steering wheel, or the wheel of a car or bicycle. The "dials" are more like the dials on an old AM radio: You can only see one edge.

On my A7R2, there is no such setting. There is Custom Settings (gear), Page 7, Dial Setup, but that only switches which dial controls aperture or shutter speed.

However, perhaps you are simply thinking about it "backwards" (differently from the engineers who designed it). I think of the direction of the wheel like this: Clockwise makes the setting go "up." If you make the ISO go up, you get a brighter image. Or, you could think about what the top of the wheel is doing, instead of the right side of the wheel. For the wheel and both dials, "going" to the right increases the value of the setting. This works when you consider the top of the wheel and whichever edge you can touch of whichever dial you are adjusting. For me, this makes it more consistent in my mind. This even corresponds to which direction the appropriate marker moves in the on-screen display. When I move the front dial to the right (the edge of it that I can touch), the shutter speed numeric value (that we think about) goes up, and the marker in the on-screen display moves right. (Yes, I know, shutter speed and aperture are fractions and the actual value goes down as the denominator goes up. But literally no one thinks or talks about it that way. 1/125 of a second is faster than 1/60. f/1.4 is technically wider than f/22, but everyone thinks and talks about f/1.4 as a "lower f-stop." Don't think yourself into a hole trying to be too technical.)

Also, don't think about the dials and wheel "making the picture brighter or darker." With three controls, changing three settings, and those settings sometimes working in opposition, and with auto and program modes taking over sometimes, "up" may not always equal "brighter."  It's better to get a slightly better idea of what each major exposure setting does to the overall picture considering what mode you have the camera set to.