Hi, I have just bought an A7 MkII, so far so good, however today I took it into the studio to try it out. Using two speedlights in softboxes, I took a light meter reading, I wanted iso 100, shutter speed 1/125 and an aperture of F8. adjusted the lights to give me F8.

Set up the camera with these settings, pitch black through the view finder or on the screen (which I don't use, have turned it off) Press the shutter half way to get a focus, the focus beam fires and I get a lock, take the picture and the exposure is correct.

So the problem is, when I half press the shutter button and the focus beam fires, there is a one thousand to one chance that I will be pointing exactly where I want to (nearest eye to the camera), re composing whilst the focus beam is on is not an option !

Please give me a clue. With the good old fashioned DSLR this was easy, as you saw what was there, not what the Oled sees with all the settings in place...

I know I can dig out the big studio lights with modeling lights on them, but that kind of defeats the purpose of getting the camera, smaller.

Only other option I can think of is switch to Aperture Priority, set an aperture to give me a decent view, focus, switch back to Manual, hope the camera hasn't moved whilst I do this, take the picture...

I feel like I am missing something here, Jason Lanier goes in old Hotel's, caves abandoned warehjouses and shoots with speedlights, is he lying ? being paid by Sony to do all this stuff ?

I await helpful answers in anticipation, I can't think of any way round it...

Thnx,  Normski