Flash questions with A7R3

[worldaccordingtojim]

I’m a natural light photographer, that recently picked up a studio strobe. I am getting ready to add two more, but I am have two issues and have been searching with no luck.

1. My A7r3 seems to loose all the advanced focus features when I plug in the PC Sync cable. The eye AF and most focus modes seem to go away. Is this normal, would a wireless trigger bring those back? Or TTL?
2. When I remove the ambient light, raise the shutter speed to say 1/200 and f8, my camera has a hard time focusing. But there is plenty of light in the room, if I remove the flash and set the exposure for the ambient light it focus with no issues. But I thought it was common to take out the ambient light when using flash. It’s almost like my camera is not smart enough to switch exposure to focus then take the picture, or should it be able to? Is this a setting? Or common?

Using Sony A7r3 with the latest firmware.

 

[eprom]

Hello,

unfortunately, I nearly have the same experience. Yesterday I had a shoot indoors with mixed lighting ambient an flash. Camera was set to ISO 100 1/160 f1.4, sometimes 2.8, sometimes I went up to ISO 400, nothing exotic. The ambient light conditions where not that good. Flash was triggered wireless. I had major issues with AF, Eye-AF couldn´t be activated 95% of the time. I was so desperate that I checked my camera settings for eye-af frequently because outdoors it works perfect and I thought there must be something wrong. That was a big disappointment.

eye-af seems to need much light.

 

Best, Peter