SONY A77 MKii focus issues continue

[Zastavia]

I have now been shooting with the a77 mkii for a few weeks, giving it a good run. I Have carefully set up my lenses nicely for some slight back and forward focusing. My main two lenses are a Sigma 17-70 and the SONY DT 55-300, both which I love and are more than reasonably sharp for the money. All the way along, over these weeks, I have had constant trouble with the AF module on this camera: I am a well established SLT photographer having owned 3 models and have been shooting for many years before that. The problem with my a77 mkii is that the AF accuracy is anything but reliable...in fact, it has proved to be completely unreliable. When shooting moving subjects using AF tracking or continuous AF, it seems to perform well with a good range of photos in focus. However, in single AF mode, especially when shooting static subjects at any aperture in bright light with high shutter speeds, all too often the resulting photos, upon close inspection, are fuzzy. What is more worrying is, that there is no focal plane at all in the image, neither on, before or behind the subject...yes you read that right, NO focal plane. I recently attended a car show, something I love, however, only around 50-60% of my static car photos were sharp and in focus, the rest being extremely soft and fuzzy, and again, no plane of focus anywhere despite good light and shutter speed. I always use sensor stabilizer when shooting and have a careful composure of photo. Using different focus modes makes no difference. Only yesterday I shot a bunch of still photos of a friend in strong light, posing with a boomerang, and every resulting photo was unusable (around 10 of them). I have re-set the AF micro adjustment to see if this was the issue, but my lenses went back to being badly back/forward focused again, so I know that is not the issue. The biggest problem is with the DT 55-300 - when shooting at 55mm, regardless of aperture or shutter speed, the resulting photos are 90% of the time out of focus. In the main menu I even changed the shutter from 'balanced priority' to 'focus priority' to try to rectify this issue, but it hasn't helped at all. I have absolutely no confidence with this camera body at all, and it is ironically the most expensive camera I have ever invested in. I am due to take it to RIAT air show in a couple of weeks, so that will be a very good test for it again, but I just know I'm going to come away with a lot of missed opportunities. I have tried to think of and cover every problem and eventuality with this AF issue, but as it stands, I am bitterly disappointed in SONY's flagship camera and am considering going over to the A6000 or the a58. It both saddens and angers me to think that I sold my amazing a57 on for this. Any thoughts or ideas would greatly be appreciated prior to me sending this thing away to SONY for testing and evaluation...surely I can't be the only one to have this problem?

[Jarek]

One thing that comes to my mind is that you could try to turn off stabilisation and see if this helps or it it could be faulty. Do you use electronic first curtain? I noticed that using it helps sometimes with getting more sharp photos, probably due to less shutter vibrations.