Moving to Sony from Nikon

[mercurius]

Hi all,
Just bought a Sony A7CII + Tamron 28-200 + Sony 50mm f2.5 after a long search and much vacillation. I was a Nikon D810 owner with the 24-120 kit lens, but with increasing age it got far too heavy to carry around particularly when travelling abroad. Having watched Jared Polin's set up video for this camera on YouTube, I've just spent this afternoon trying to set it up, but I can't see how to get the focussing right on it. At the moment when I try and focus on a subject I get what looks like a group of overlapping green boxes on screen and nothing that indicates where the focusing point is.

Any suggestions for good practical set up and usage tutorials?

 

[Richard A]

I'd suggest this guy's video:

Sony A7C II Beginners Guide

Focus Areas at 32:44.

BTW, welcome to the forum.

 

[mercurius]

I'd suggest this guy's video:

Sony A7C II Beginners Guide

Focus Areas at 32:44.

BTW, welcome to the forum.

Thank you for that Richard!

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

Welcome to the forum, and sounds like you put some good thought into your kit.

 

[AlphaWorld]

I was using a D810 with an assortment of Sigma primes a while back - it's a fine camera, and was followed by what may be the best DSLR ever made (the D850), but by the time the D850 came out I was using another brand.

There are two key elements to the new Sony autofocus, and your problems could be associated with one or the other or both.

First off is the concept of Focus Area - this lets you control what parts of the image the camera is looking at when considering things to focus on - can vary from the entire image (Wide) down to a tiny square (Small Spot). For all except Wide, you'll see a frame showing the focus area in the viewfinder so you know where the camera is "looking"

Second is Subject Recognition - when you turn this on, the camera looks for specific types of subject (you control which type/s). In general, it aims to focus on the eye of the subject. Note that this works with the Focus Area, but cleverly - if you have a small focus area, and subject recognition set to Human, and you put the focus area on a human's chest, the focus will still lock onto the human's eye, even if it's not inside the focus area. This takes a bit of getting used to, but it's super-powerful when you learn it. When the focus locks onto an eye, it will put a green box around the eye - that box will vary in size, depending on how big the eye is.

In the menus, the purple menu (AF/MF) contains the settings for both of Focus Area and Subject Recognition.

• The second sub-menu is Focus Area, where you can choose which focus area you will be using, and related settings (including the colour of the focus area frame - I usually use Red).
• The third sub-menu is Subject Recognition, where you can turn it on or off, and choose what subjects you want to look for

I mention all of this because the "bunch of green boxes" could be because you have Subject Recognition turned off, or because the camera can't find a suitable subject in the focus area.

 

[mercurius]

I was using a D810 with an assortment of Sigma primes a while back - it's a fine camera, and was followed by what may be the best DSLR ever made (the D850), but by the time the D850 came out I was using another brand.

There are two key elements to the new Sony autofocus, and your problems could be associated with one or the other or both.

First off is the concept of Focus Area - this lets you control what parts of the image the camera is looking at when considering things to focus on - can vary from the entire image (Wide) down to a tiny square (Small Spot). For all except Wide, you'll see a frame showing the focus area in the viewfinder so you know where the camera is "looking"

Second is Subject Recognition - when you turn this on, the camera looks for specific types of subject (you control which type/s). In general, it aims to focus on the eye of the subject. Note that this works with the Focus Area, but cleverly - if you have a small focus area, and subject recognition set to Human, and you put the focus area on a human's chest, the focus will still lock onto the human's eye, even if it's not inside the focus area. This takes a bit of getting used to, but it's super-powerful when you learn it. When the focus locks onto an eye, it will put a green box around the eye - that box will vary in size, depending on how big the eye is.

In the menus, the purple menu (AF/MF) contains the settings for both of Focus Area and Subject Recognition.

• The second sub-menu is Focus Area, where you can choose which focus area you will be using, and related settings (including the colour of the focus area frame - I usually use Red).
• The third sub-menu is Subject Recognition, where you can turn it on or off, and choose what subjects you want to look for

I mention all of this because the "bunch of green boxes" could be because you have Subject Recognition turned off, or because the camera can't find a suitable subject in the focus area.

Thanks Tony, that's really helpful. I see that currently I have the Focus Area set to Wide and for Subject Recognition I have it set to automatic. What do you set Subject recognition too when you're just taking general shots? At the moment I have been limited to taking pics around the house and garden and the subjects I have taken don't fit into any of the Subject Recognition categories on the camera.

 

[Richard A]

I have Subject Recognition turned off when I’m not using it.

 

[AlphaWorld]

Thanks Tony, that's really helpful. I see that currently I have the Focus Area set to Wide and for Subject Recognition I have it set to automatic. What do you set Subject recognition too when you're just taking general shots? At the moment I have been limited to taking pics around the house and garden and the subjects I have taken don't fit into any of the Subject Recognition categories on the camera.

I have been using Subject Recognition since the A7RV and then the A9III - they didn't have Auto. I have configured my "wildlife" custom mode to "Animal/Bird", which covers what I shoot in that mode. I have configured my "studio" custom mode to Human. But you can change the Subject type on the fly - I have added it into my Fn menu to make that easier. To be honest, I usually forget there is an Auto mode

I rarely turn it off, but had to recently when I was trying for a shot of something a person was holding out - I wanted perfect focus on the object (a piece of jewellery) with her face softly out of focus in the background - you can imagine the problem