The Sony A73/A7R3/A7S3/A9 Thread

Raymond Lin · 2 May 2018 at 12:52

What’s front and rear focus points?

Combat squirrel · 2 May 2018 at 13:23

Raymond Lin said:
What’s front and rear focus points?

Sorry buttons - the front focus button is the usual half press of the shutter - on the 5D3 I can use this to tell it to focus using the centre AF point only

The rear back button focus button on the 5D3 I can tell the camera to select a different AF point of my choice.

I used this on the 5D3 to quickly choose which AF point I wanted - id press the different button depending if I wanted to focus in the middle or (for me) the upper part of the frame - the 5D3 automatically switched 'top' depending on if i was landscape/portrait orientation.

Can this be done on the A7iii ? It was a handy feature because it saved me having to move AF points manually quite often - as a portrait photographer its useful to have an AF point near the eye, usually in the upper area of the frame - I still want to have this even with eye AF detect - Im not used to Eye AF yet and need some practice - also eye AF doesn't seem to work on every lens I have.

Raymond Lin · 2 May 2018 at 15:04

Combat squirrel said:
Sorry buttons - the front focus button is the usual half press of the shutter - on the 5D3 I can use this to tell it to focus using the centre AF point only

The rear back button focus button on the 5D3 I can tell the camera to select a different AF point of my choice.

I used this on the 5D3 to quickly choose which AF point I wanted - id press the different button depending if I wanted to focus in the middle or (for me) the upper part of the frame - the 5D3 automatically switched 'top' depending on if i was landscape/portrait orientation.

Can this be done on the A7iii ? It was a handy feature because it saved me having to move AF points manually quite often - as a portrait photographer its useful to have an AF point near the eye, usually in the upper area of the frame - I still want to have this even with eye AF detect - Im not used to Eye AF yet and need some practice - also eye AF doesn't seem to work on every lens I have.

Yes, kind of.

So you pick you Standard focus, that will always be your front shutter button, the regular one.

Go to Custom Buttons, what I have done is assign C2 as a AF toggle (I forgot what it’s called exactly). But you have to actually assign AF focus point to this toggle for this to work. When you press C2 once it’ll flip to the focus point (and setting) you have set this to memory. If you hit C2 again it will toggle back to what you set as a standard. Basically it is a flip switch back and forth, aka toggle.

The rear buttons like AEL, it is my eye focus AF, like back button focus. This way I don’t need to shoot back button focus. I have AF-ON too.

So in practice I would leave it in Wide focus (everything, all 693 points). C2 to toggle to single point, I have the camera to have this point to slightly off centre to the right, and a little up.

AF-ON as back focus.

AEL as Eye AF.

If you then set the thumb wheel to move the focus point L/R (left/Right). Then you can move that quickly if you hit C2 and turn the wheel a bit without looking at the screen.

Combat squirrel · 3 May 2018 at 12:00

Raymond Lin said:
Yes, kind of.

So you pick you Standard focus, that will always be your front shutter button, the regular one.

Go to Custom Buttons, what I have done is assign C2 as a AF toggle (I forgot what it’s called exactly). But you have to actually assign AF focus point to this toggle for this to work. When you press C2 once it’ll flip to the focus point (and setting) you have set this to memory. If you hit C2 again it will toggle back to what you set as a standard. Basically it is a flip switch back and forth, aka toggle.

The rear buttons like AEL, it is my eye focus AF, like back button focus. This way I don’t need to shoot back button focus. I have AF-ON too.

So in practice I would leave it in Wide focus (everything, all 693 points). C2 to toggle to single point, I have the camera to have this point to slightly off centre to the right, and a little up.

AF-ON as back focus.

AEL as Eye AF.

If you then set the thumb wheel to move the focus point L/R (left/Right). Then you can move that quickly if you hit C2 and turn the wheel a bit without looking at the screen.

Thanks Raymond!! V useful info!

Combat squirrel · 3 May 2018 at 15:25

Ok actually this is crazy how advanced this camera is, my brain hurts!! sort of nearly got it working how i want but its still not quite right and i cant figure out what some settings are , well, i have a good idea, its just balancing it all nicely ! lol

shaf · 3 May 2018 at 19:08

Very interested in this camera.

Only had my d750 for a few years and love it. But the focus points and area on this make it very tempting.

I have a tamron 24-70mm and nikon 85mm 1.8 which will not work properly with an adapter so will have to purchase equivalent Sony lenses.

Raymond Lin · 3 May 2018 at 20:07

Combat squirrel said:
Ok actually this is crazy how advanced this camera is, my brain hurts!! sort of nearly got it working how i want but its still not quite right and i cant figure out what some settings are , well, i have a good idea, its just balancing it all nicely ! lol

Take your time to customise the buttons, it’ll help no end. I’m still not 100% set on what each does. You can customise the icons on the Fn buttons too.

Combat squirrel · 4 May 2018 at 10:23

Raymond Lin said:
Take your time to customise the buttons, it’ll help no end. I’m still not 100% set on what each does. You can customise the icons on the Fn buttons too.

Yep defo - had a couple of hours with it yesterday using the settings i have now, got pretty used to it - even with a canon lens attached the focusing and tracking was amazing - its actually getting much better and sharper results than my 5d3!! - iv microadjusted the focus on that as well and its as good as it will get - yet, still this Sony is making my 'pretty reasonable 85mm lens' become an outstanding one.

Obviously using the sensor that records the image to also focus makes it as spot on as it can be.

Combat squirrel · 4 May 2018 at 10:49

Also I'm shooting a wedding today (star wars may 4th wedding haha - grooms a star wars fan), so I'll defo be using it for some shots there !

sHo0sH · 5 May 2018 at 20:57

Mind = Blown - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xZ8SYVwIzE

Raymond Lin · 5 May 2018 at 21:51

Sounds great in theory but would slow me down in practice.

Janesy B · 5 May 2018 at 23:06

Good for family or a partner, not really practical for anything else.

Rojin · 6 May 2018 at 16:05

ethan said:
I'll see what the XT3 will bring. Hopefully the focusing will be better (for portraits) or approaching that of the A7iii which would cater for my needs. I'm happy with the XT2 for everything else.

Lol, this made me laugh: The X-T3 is obsolete. I'm pre-ordering the X-T999 that takes pictures of events before they've even happened.

What trouble are you having with the X-T2 for portraits? It's what I like about mirrorless, it just doesn't miss. The X-T2 does have an eye/face detect mode, but it's not something I have ever used. I enabled it once, and it seemed to do what it says but I just use the old fashioned method and don't have any trouble hitting simple portrait shots.

Rojin · 6 May 2018 at 16:11

Raymond Lin said:
These days it isn’t the image quality that you’ll see improvement, it’s the workflow and time saving.

If you are manual focus then dual pixels or eye af won’t matter, if you use auto focus then a new body will help.

If you always focus and recompose then you don’t need to do that anymore.

Also 4K will yield a better image. I guess most people don’t know different and don’t have 4K tv but eventually people will like most have a HD tv now.

Read an article the other about a wedding tog who has moved to the Fuji GFX 50 to give him that "edge" over the competition. The results did look very nice, but the cost?!

Raymond Lin · 6 May 2018 at 17:41

Rojin said:
Read an article the other about a wedding tog who has moved to the Fuji GFX 50 to give him that "edge" over the competition. The results did look very nice, but the cost?!

Rules of deminishing returns. 35mm is the sweet spot for me, and a lot of people, in IQ, cost, etc.

Rojin · 6 May 2018 at 19:09

Raymond Lin said:
Rules of deminishing returns. 35mm is the sweet spot for me, and a lot of people, in IQ, cost, etc.

At the cost involved, definitely!

ethan · 7 May 2018 at 14:45

Rojin said:
What trouble are you having with the X-T2 for portraits? It's what I like about mirrorless, it just doesn't miss. The X-T2 does have an eye/face detect mode, but it's not something I have ever used. I enabled it once, and it seemed to do what it says but I just use the old fashioned method and don't have any trouble hitting simple portrait shots.

Much to my eternal shame Rojin I hadn't even checked to see if it was switched on. This plus letting gear acquisition syndrome get the better of me. Thanks for the reminder

sHo0sH · 8 May 2018 at 09:59

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP5hGBKs8Dg

This looks like it is going to be pretty promising

Raymond Lin · 8 May 2018 at 19:45

Been trying it over the weekend.

The AF on the A73 still tend to lean on the side of the subject closest, if I am shooting something in a scene and nothing is with a face. On a wide spread of focus points, it will go for something closets I find. And unless it can see eyes, it won't necessarily register a face so it'll hunt, or trying to decide rather. Other than that though, it normally does pick something rather than focus onto something in infinity.

The AF toggle is a little annoying, if I toggle to the pre-registered focus point then move it, it changes it the setting and if I try to toggle it back you get a message.

Anyway.

I am getting hang of the colours from the RAWs.

Combat squirrel · 9 May 2018 at 11:24

Nice Raymond!

I shot a wedding with mine - took some getting used to and I used my 5D3 as well to make sure I was tooled up.

Also done some shots since, and discovered the following:

1) Lenses with the Sigma adapter is surprisingly slow - I knew it would be - but just not *that* much slower than a native lens which is a shame, I expected it to be say 40-50% slower but its easily twice as slow or more.

2) With native lenses as above its lightning - fastest focusing camera I ever used.

3) Does indeed lock on closest - the face ID feature was fantastic with bride at no.1 groom no.2, mother of bride 3 (important at this wedding), head bridesmaid 4 etc

4) Obviously the dynamic range was amazing

5) It lasted 90% of the day fantastically but when it got to the late night party I had to switch back to Canon - the lack of IR focusing from the flash gun is a huge let down with mirror-less - I'm primarily a wedding and events/light nights/shows shooter - at least with converted lenses it struggled in the low light and the LED assist light was not much use at more than a couple of meters away - it also blinded people - Ill have to keep canon for this or see how the sony does with high end sony lenses (ill hire and try)

6) Battery life pretty nice - got to the end of the wedding with about 9% left and a 30 min charge while I was eating - I have the battery grip now and more bats on the way so that wont be an issue

7) TTL flash performance was........OK, defo defo not as good as canons ETTL - took more effort and management and was hit and miss in day light - it got better as the light reduced, but at the same time the camera got worse and worse at focusing - we NEED IR / flash assist focusing in low/no light !!!!

My 2p so far anyway - love to know your thoughts Raymond

A couple of shots where I was playing with the high dynamic range:

Also a random one of the couples cat because they wanted some shots of her, cute!! Hard to tell from a small image but the detail the a7iii picks up is amazing.