Focus issues on A7iii + Tamron 28-75 f2.8

[HakonBerg]

Hi

 

I am sorry if this has been discussed to death before.

About a year a go I went from Canon full frame to A7iii + Tamron 28-75.  Long story short: I was so disappointed with the performance of the camera - in almost every way - that I went into a deep photo depression which led me to abandon photography for a long time...:-)  I have just recently picked it up again.

My camera has firmware 3.01, lens has "version 3". I see there is a 3.10 available, but the release notes talks about flash being the main improvement, which I don't use.

The main issue is that focus is only working (almost satisfactorily) in well lit outdoor settings, when focusing on hard surfaces, between say 1m and less than infinity.  Trying to focus on anything relatively close ends up either with hunting hunting hunting.-.. or, after a focus lock, a picture in which i can find pretty much nothing in focus. Likewise, trying to focus on infinity in less than full daylight never focus locks. Trying to focus on something "not hard" - close up of a vegetable, say--  ends up ... generally ends up focus locking but i can not find any part of the picture being in focus. I fgenerally take pics of "small things, relatively close", although not macro per se.

I use the simplest/old school of all focus modi: flexible spot (I fooled myself for a couple of weeks initially by thinking that Sonyspeak's "centre focus" means centre...apparently it doesn't) , I half-press at what i want to be in focus, reframe and shoot.  I am not interested in focus tracking, eye focus etc.

I took the camera/lens back to the store, they checked it, found everything to be "as expected". They did not offer me to test with another lens... at which point the alarm bells started ringing in my head...

I also find that 4 digit ISO settings generally produce pictures that are so noisy they are complete unusable (waaay worse than, say, my relatively old tech phone camera).

With my old Canon 5d II + L-lens I got great results nearly all the time... teh reason I upgraded was that I overdosed on Sony ads++ claining that the dynamic range/noise performance is sooo much better.... alas....

Anyone else have same experiences with this camera/lens combo?

 

br

Håkon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

On 10/9/2020 at 3:55 PM, HakonBerg said:

Sonyspeak's "centre focus" means centre...apparently it doesn't

I think it does... but if you wanted to use that sort of focus/recompose technique you'd have to use AF-S, or else it would do focus/recompose/refocus.

There are vast numbers of videos, articles, etc, on Sony focus, all of which will tell you how wonderful it is, which might annoy you, but which will have the hints how to get the best out of their focus system. Every generation of which is always the best, the fastest, the most powerful, and, of course, so much better than the previous generation, which was also all those things. Frankly though, although I can mock the marketing (I'm waiting for it to be so fast it focuses on your subject when you only think about it) it mostly suits me. But I never had a full-frame DSLR. And my model is lower down the Sony chain than yours.

It hurts that you were put off your art, though. I'm sorry.

[HakonBerg]

3 hours ago, Thad E Ginathom said:

I think it does... but if you wanted to use that sort of focus/recompose technique you'd have to use AF-S, or else it would do focus/recompose/refocus.

There are vast numbers of videos, articles, etc, on Sony focus, all of which will tell you how wonderful it is, which might annoy you, but which will have the hints how to get the best out of their focus system. Every generation of which is always the best, the fastest, the most powerful, and, of course, so much better than the previous generation, which was also all those things. Frankly though, although I can mock the marketing (I'm waiting for it to be so fast it focuses on your subject when you only think about it) it mostly suits me. But I never had a full-frame DSLR. And my model is lower down the Sony chain than yours.

It hurts that you were put off your art, though. I'm sorry.

 

Thank you for responding. I agree: marketing runs the world, and in this case it means a camera with 100 focus modi - of which you need only the most basic - will appear more alluring than a camera with 50 modi - of which you also wanted just the most basic one. I will never understand why it can be looked upon as an advantage to have 768 or whatever focus spots and let the camera make a 'random' selection (closest point to the camera, or an eye or... ) of which one to use for focus?  Seriously...why would anyone want this?? What am I missing? ? This seems to me as marketing driven nonsense. I assume most ppl who buy an expensive camera want to control exactly what is in focus?

I make my living writing software for internet routers: I know from personal experience that what sells is ISDN (improvements subscribers dont need :-))

And you are right: all the tutorial videos etc DO annoy me ? as they inevitably show off the 99 useless functions. The basic function of: "please focus on what is in the center and don't bother me again" seems way too uncool to - pun intended - focus on.

I tried again on my A7iii: "Centre focus" apparently means that the camera draws a fairly large green & centered square and focuses *at something it decides for itself* within that square. So in a sense Centre does mean centre...but not quite: "Flexible spot" allows you more control in that the green square is much smaller, not quite the zero-dimensional "point" you would like it to be, but closer. The disadvantage of flexible spot is that it is - duh - flexible, which means you can adjust it its placement (read: and knock it about randomly by accidentally touching the joystick... which i have done a lot of times. I don't know if you can disable this function, so that the flexible spot stays unflexibly in the centre?)  (I had the same kind of issue with the iso button: I ruined a whole day of shooting by accidentally touching the iso button, thereby setting it to a random 5 digit iso figure... creating a day's worth of unusable noisy mess ? )

I only now discovered the function "Focus Magnifier" which may be helpful, I will see it it helps on my vegetable photos when daylight comes tomorrow. It only seems to work well with the screen, not the EVF, though.... in the EVF I see no indication of where it is trying to focus. 

With your lower down the chain Sony: can you focus on the full moon?

 

 

 

 

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

21 hours ago, HakonBerg said:

I will never understand why it can be looked upon as an advantage to have 768 or whatever focus spots and let the camera make a 'random' selection (closest point to the camera, or an eye or... ) of which one to use for focus?  Seriously...why would anyone want this?? What am I missing?

Possibly... eye-autofocus, for starters, if your subject is not always in the same place.

21 hours ago, HakonBerg said:

With your lower down the chain Sony: can you focus on the full moon?

I don't know. So far, I have only tried moonshots a couple of times, and have not yet even come close to the right exposure, let alone focus.

I mostly photograph South-indian classical musicians. There will be three or four people on a stage. For the most part, the focus system works for me. There are times when it doesn't, and I have to take a different approach. I have an a6500. The touch screen, for those choose-a-spot times is sometimes great and sometimes... not. And I have to watch out that I have not shifted the focus without realising.

It seems that your previous camera suited you well. Lots of people take truly wonderful pictures using these cameras, and with a range of lenses including native autofocus and fully manual legacy.

You've gone for a camera with somewhat different toolsets. Looks like you have to choose now: work with it, or divorce, and return to a camera that you feel works with you. Your choice. Either way is better than not taking photographs :)