I elected to upgrade from Sony A1 to the A1 ii and am seeing some significant focusing challenges in the little time I've spent with it so far. Less than 10% of photos appear to be in focus when photographing small birds in subject mode birds with seemingly no improvement when subject mode is changed to birds/animals/people.

Scenario: Sony A1 ii, 200-600 G lens @ 600mm, F6.3, shutter speed on male cardinal (in-focus mostly) at 1/250 ISO 125 and female cardinal (nothing in focus) at 1/1600 ISO 100; AF-C set with eye supposedly in focus in both shots. Lens has AF on, OSS on, Mode 1. I've tried switching out lenses using 100-400 with and without 1.4X converter and used handheld and used tripod. Photos are at a distance of 20-25 yards. The photos below are within a couple yards of one another. There is seemingly no improvement in AF performance despite the combinations of lens, tripod and focus zones attempted. Birds are stationary. Many of the photos will have everything in the frame seemingly out of focus and some may have the head in focus and rest of body out of focus and immediate area around bird slightly out of focus at F9-F11.

I considered that I was cropping too much and had pixel peeping / expectations problem, but some photos are wildly out of focus when supposedly focusing on eye or body. Neither photo below is cropped.

Ideas are welcome!

If you have a new lens call Sony support, and if it is a focusing issue with the sensor then it should be covered. Also you can look at the photo in the camera and see where the focus point landed. If you used a single point focus and it landed on other than the eye or specific point you aimed at then it may be landing on other than your intended target. Just a thought.

Edited January 22, 2025Jan 22 by quigsby

Thanks Quigsby. Just figured it out tonight... new software that Sony released last week seems to have wholly fixed it. Now getting good shots consistently.