a68 Soft Focus Problem

[wineguy20]

I just purchased an a68 and am having some soft focus issues.

I have tried just about everything to correct this but with no success.

When focusing through the view finder everything looks very sharp. After taking the picture and the camera processes the picture, the preview image displayed is slightly soft. You can see it happen. As soon as the shutter cycles the image looks great and a split second later it goes soft. Macro looks great, portrait photos look good but anything taken at a distance of 30' or further, or taken at longer focal lengths I lose the sharpness.

I have tried all my different lenses, tried apertures from f2.0 to f40, shutter speeds up to 1/4000s ISO's from 100, manual focus, auto focus and tried different file sizes up to 24mp. Also extra fine jepg and RAW. AF Micro Adjust seems to do nothing and I have also done a factory reset to no avail.

I would assume that if the image looks sharp before you release the shutter that the picture would also be sharp. Even after download to the computer the images are still soft.

I have contacted Sony and am setup for a return to have it looked at. But before sending it I was hoping someone has either heard of this before or maybe have some other things to try.

Thanks  for any help.

[Dollanganger]

This sounds very strange what subjects are you shooting?

 

Can you upload some samples so we can see the problem?

[wineguy20]

Mostly landscape.I have lost of landscape opportunities right from the back yard and I'm missing out with this problem.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[Username]

What you are seeing is a moment of the viewing/focusing

image just before it's replaced by the recorded image. The 

v/f image is hyper sharpened and contrast boosted to best 

perform its intended purpose. If you could actually keep it 

from disappearing you'd get a better look at it and find that 

it's too harsh and noisy for most viewer's tastes. 

   

Fine tune your picture styles [that "std-neut-port-etc" stuff] 

to induce moderate increases of sharpness, contrast, and 

saturation. This will give you jpegs that look more like the

v/f image seems to look, in that brief glance before it goes 

away. Toadally unedited picture styles tend to look a little 

dull and soft. None of this applies to raw. Raw is always 

in need of editing. Thaz what raw is for :-)