I've tested today my A7R3 with EYE AF in AF-C mode wide. I get mixed bag results (some are front focus, some are not so sharp, some of them are sharp on eyelashes, few of them are sharp on eyeball). I've tested it with FE 50 1.8 - I know it AF performance is'nt the best, so is the sharpness but don't have anything with wide aperture to test my camera . Camera was on tripod with mounted Sony FE 50 1.8, ibis off. ISO varries from 400 - 800, shutter speed from 1/80 - 1/125, all photos in 1.8 taken from 60-80 cm to model face:
Some of the shots at f1.8 seems slightly miss-focused but most of them are acceptable. It gets much better at f2.2, don't see any issue there. I think you might be overthinking it a bit. At close focus distance it is very hard to get perfect focus especially not in perfect lighting conditions. Sony EyeAF has not 100% keeper rate there and there is no other camera brand which can do that any better. Also Sony 50 1.8 does not exactly have Otus like optics. That's the best you can get for the money.
milkod2001 wrote:
Some of the shots at f1.8 seems slightly miss-focused but most of them are acceptable. It gets much better at f2.2, don't see any issue there. I think you might be overthinking it a bit. At close focus distance it is very hard to get perfect focus especially not in perfect lighting conditions. Sony EyeAF has not 100% keeper rate there and there is no other camera brand which can do that any better. Also Sony 50 1.8 does not exactly have Otus like optics. That's the best you can get for the money.
Yes, most of them are acceptable but not so sharp as they should be. When it locks af where it should, photos look great. But a lot of them looks little soft. I've read about problems of A7III eye af and some of the a7r3 - users have maybe 50% good, sharp photos as I do. Others that don't have issues have 90% of photos verry sharp at the eyes. @F 2.2 things get better (keeper rate rises) but FE 50 1.8 is known for it focus shift. While You change the aperture it focuses a little to the back. Maybe this is why I got better results.
Same problem here in my a7rii as I spotted in other thread. I think also the Sony 50 1.8 is not sharp at close distances (less than 3m or so). My canon 50 1.8 stm was quite better in a 75% of the frame, but borders and corners are much better on the Sony. But for portraits at close (relative) distances, the Canon had much better microcontrast and colors. But focusing outside the center was not accurate either most of the time, so...
Here's a few quick snaps from last night (my son's b-day) - all with zony 50/1.4 @ 1.4 on a7r3 with flash. All using EYE-AF, AF-C and seems to work fine (I'm probably not as picky).
numbertwo wrote:
Same problem here in my a7rii as I spotted in other thread. I think also the Sony 50 1.8 is not sharp at close distances (less than 3m or so). My canon 50 1.8 stm was quite better in a 75% of the frame, but borders and corners are much better on the Sony. But for portraits at close (relative) distances, the Canon had much better microcontrast and colors. But focusing outside the center was not accurate either most of the time, so...
It could be it, but... Sometimes I can achieve sharp photo a 50 1.8 near MFD or little more but most of the time it little frontfocues. As You can see on my example photos some of the shots has got really nice sharpness on the eyes, but sometimes that sharpness can be visible on the cheek of the model or on the ear.
As far as I remember, I had similar problems on a7r2, but I can not find old photos to confirm it. On Friday, I should have access to the Sigma 35 1.4 Art for the Sony FE mount. I'll check how that glass behaves with my camera. It should be much better.
ecarlino wrote:
What's the DoF at that subj distance/aperture?
Here's a few quick snaps from last night (my son's b-day) - all with zony 50/1.4 @ 1.4 on a7r3 with flash. All using EYE-AF, AF-C and seems to work fine (I'm probably not as picky).
damiroz wrote:
They are all sharp. I wonder every photo looked like this ?
when i am doing af-c eye-af, i usually shoot 2 to 3 shot bursts just in case (my flash can fire 3- 4 shot bursts, but no more, but even w/o flash, i don't want to be handling 5x to 10x the number of files - so i don't spray and pray, but i'm also realistic about the capabilities of any AF especially with tiny DoF). My experience is that 1 or 2 of every sequence is this perfect and 1 or 2 are either a smidge behind or completely off (b/c i or the subj moved) - the % being a function of how tiny the DoF is - let's be reasonable here.
i came to sony back in v1 b/c i was sick and tired of the fast but inaccurate AF on the nikon d800 (after having invested in AF fine tuning software and kits and set up every lens, etc).
i would suggest that you try several lenses and perhaps taking a step back and stopping down one or two notches just to compare and find out where the sweet spot for everything is. one of the reasons i have the lenses i have (ie zony 50/1.4 and batis 135/2.8) is that they're quite sharp and capable of spot on AF at relatively close distances wide open.
i've never used the 50/1.8 but heard nice things about it and it takes nice photos, but at 1/6 the price, i'm guessing it's not going to compare to the 50/1.4 in a few ways.
the Sigma 35/1.4 Art was my worst focusing lens on the d800, so it will be interesting to see how it performs on a Sony body.
Today I've tested the Sigma 35 1.4 art lens with a native Sony E mount.
I did 3 tests - 2 of them with flash bounced from the ceiling, and one without flash. The aperture was set to 1.4. Shots from verry close distance (head from up to bottom of the frame) to portrait with visible shouldsers and half of the chest. I do not shoot in burst. All the photos I've made was in AF-C single shot mode. So between each shot was 1-2 seconds difference of time in each session.
Results:
Session 1 with flash - 65 % of keepers
Session 2 with flash - 77 % of keepers
Session 3 without flash - 66% of keepers
Note that few of the shots focused on the eyelashes - I passed them to the wrong ones. 2-3 shots out of 35 was completly wrong focus (on the nose, eyebrows).
The results are much better than on my FE 50 1.8. I think that it is possible to be even better with lens from Sony.
