Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Digital Cameras & Shooting Techniques => Topic started by: ski542002 on June 11, 2018, 11:03:27 am
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Hello: Overall, enjoying my new venture into the Sony system with my A7RIII, A7III and 6500. I find the different AF modes to be most challenging. Most challenging is the lack of accuracy using Eye AF. Using strobes, did a tight mid-chest portrait with my 24-70 Gm @ 2.8. (Lens set to 50mm). Eye AF, small spot focus with the green square clearly on the foreground eye. Subject was in fairly good focus although I did need to sharpen the eyes to achieve the perception of perfect focus. Shot the same subject, same camera settings with my 85 @ 1.8. This was a tighter headshot than the first scenario. I got a great 42mp image of a sharp nose! Needed to apply heavy sharpening on the subjects eyes to make him look somewhat acceptable. Thankfully, they’ll be small reproductions.
My issue is, in the old days I would have used manual focus and would have easily nailed all the shots. Using this cutting edge technology, and shooting slow & deliberate, I trusted the eye af and it failed miserably. When shooting wide open for esthetic reasons, I don’t want to have to constantly stop down to F8 for a headshot to get acceptable focus. Was shooting with the A7RIII. Don’t know if I’ll have the same issue with the A7III or 6500.
Maybe I have something set incorrectly in the camera? Any input would be appreciated!
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The first thing I'd do is turn off Eye AF, then use the joystick to move your focus point where you want it for a particular shot or set of shots. If you get proper results by manually placing the focus point, at least you'll know your lens isn't misbehaving.
-Dave-
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Sorry to hear you're having problems with the eye AF. I have used it quite a bit, even with moving toddlers and it's spot on for me. I have used it mostly with the 85 f/1.8 shooting at f/2 or f/2.8.
In his superb, highly recommended video on portrait settings for the A7RIII, Mark Galer, a Sony expert says he gets over 95% perfect focus. With no disrespect, I wonder if you're doing something incorrectly?
Good luck.
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Same here. Eye AF works very accuratly, even on the APSC model.
Go figure with electronics...
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Update for all contributors. And someone else mentioned Mark Galer which was the driving source for solving my problem. Apparently, I didn’t even know that, because of the way my cameras were setup, my eye focus wasn’t even enabled. Dumbass me. Thanks to Marks YouTube video, I enabled eye focus via the AEL button. It’s very liberating to be able to shoot an 85mm 1.8 wide open and count every eyelash in a scene! I used to shoot a lot of Leica (Canon before that), and I was never able to hit anything close to the 90% + in-focus imagery that I achieve now. These forums and YouTube are a godsend for anyone getting into the Sony system.
I appreciate everyone’s input.