Lillo wrote:
Is it normal that I've bought this lens in the first days of January and I didn't notice the Eye-AF issue?
I received my lens from B&H on a 12th. Software on a lens is still v.01. I very seldom use eye-AF, but curiosity got best of me. To check eye-AF with shallow DOF I did "selfie" head shot. For the record I never in my life did a head shot with anything less than 85mm and as I expected my "selfie" was an ugliest picture I ever taken. As you can see in my eyeball I stretched my hands out with a camera about 0.5m from my face. Since I wasn't trying for the masterpiece I set on my A7R2 exp 1/250 f2 ISO auto and didn't care about lights. ISO ended up 4000, but grain is not too bad. I'm not a pro, but to me eye-AF focus works good enough. Sorry to break a news to some here, but you are not going to see this lens for $900 any time soon. Plenty of hobbyists don't mind to pay full price for a great lens and don't care about pixel picking.
You are using a 7R2. Have we tracked whether all occurances of missfocus might be related to Mark III bodies? Far sketch, i know...
samosh wrote:
I received my lens from B&H on a 12th. Software on a lens is still v.01. I very seldom use eye-AF, but curiosity got best of me. To check eye-AF with shallow DOF I did "selfie" head shot. For the record I never in my life did a head shot with anything less than 85mm and as I expected my "selfie" was an ugliest picture I ever taken. As you can see in my eyeball I stretched my hands out with a camera about 0.5m from my face. Since I wasn't trying for the masterpiece I set on my A7R2 exp 1/250 f2 ISO auto and didn't care about lights. ISO ended up 4000, but grain is not too bad. I'm not a pro, but to me eye-AF focus works good enough. Sorry to break a news to some here, but you are not going to see this lens for $900 any time soon. Plenty of hobbyists don't mind to pay full price for a great lens and don't care about pixel picking.
Bokehddicted wrote:
You are using a 7R2. Have we tracked whether all occurances of missfocus might be related to Mark III bodies? Far sketch, i know...
On the III bodies with firmware 2.0 you can set Aperture Drive in AF to either Standard or Silent Priority. This setting affects AF-S only as far as I know.
My suspicion is that all of these Eye AF issues are actually just AF issues, and they have to do with focal plane shifting due to spherical abberations, and something unique may be happening during Eye AF.
For example the aperture which closes down automatically when focusing relatively closely, opens wide for eye AF when drive is set to Standard. When closing back down for exposure, some of the abberations are removed and the plane shifts.
Just a theory. Maybe someone with the lens and a III series body could test with Standard vs Silent Priority and see what happens.
I received my lens from B&H on a 12th. Software on a lens is still v.01. I very seldom use eye-AF, but curiosity got best of me. To check eye-AF with shallow DOF I did "selfie" head shot. For the record I never in my life did a head shot with anything less than 85mm and as I expected my "selfie" was an ugliest picture I ever taken. As you can see in my eyeball I stretched my hands out with a camera about 0.5m from my face. Since I wasn't trying for the masterpiece I set on my A7R2 exp 1/250 f2 ISO auto and didn't care about lights. ISO ended up 4000, but grain is not too bad. I'm not a pro, but to me eye-AF focus works good enough. Sorry to break a news to some here, but you are not going to see this lens for $900 any time soon. Plenty of hobbyists don't mind to pay full price for a great lens and don't care about pixel picking.
Sorry, I don't have a dog in this fight. I took my first and last head shot with 40mm lens out of curiosity. All I know that if and when Zeiss comes up with update, I'm not going to do it because it works great for me as is and I'm not going to take a chance that update will fix something I don't care about and break something else.
Fred Miranda wrote:
Perhaps the upcoming Sony Eye-AF algorithm will include a fix for the Batis 40!
Honestly, it's taking too long for Zeiss to come up with a solution. Perhaps it's not as easy as it seems.
There are reports that Zeiss has been waiting for Sony to sign off on their fix for compatibility. I don't know if the reports are accurate, but they do make some sense given the major firmware changes around Eye-AF that Sony is about to implement for its three (four with the 6400) flagship cameras..
samosh wrote:
Sorry, I don't have a dog in this fight. I took my first and last head shot with 40mm lens out of curiosity. All I know that if and when Zeiss comes up with update, I'm not going to do it because it works great for me as is and I'm not going to take a chance that update will fix something I don't care about and break something else.
Actually, you entered your dog in the fight when you posted the results of your "test' which, contrary to your assertion, illustrates the existence of the Eye AF problem since the eyebrows are noticeably sharper than the upper and lower eyelashes.
Good. As I said I'm not a pro and sharpness looks good to me and I don't pixel pick. But if you are pro and need to shoot head shots and head and shoulders with 40mm lens, then you just saved yourself $1300 by rejecting Batis 40mm for the problem that I just confirmed with my picture.
Yeah, I didn’t come here to bash anyone, only out of an ongoing curiosity about this lens and it’s well-established problems, but the eye does not appear to be in focus.
genji wrote:
Actually, you entered your dog in the fight when you posted the results of your "test' which, contrary to your assertion, illustrates the existence of the Eye AF problem since the eyebrows are noticeably sharper than the upper and lower eyelashes.
samosh wrote:
Good. As I said I'm not a pro and sharpness looks good to me and I don't pixel pick. But if you are pro and need to shoot head shots and head and shoulders with 40mm lens, then you just saved yourself $1300 by rejecting Batis 40mm for the problem that I just confirmed with my picture.
Eye-AF on the 40mm Batis would be useful for much more than head shots. The 40mm focal length is excellent for environmental portraits, photographs of small groups, as at weddings or family gatherings, pictures of children playing. In these situations and many others, the accuracy of eye-AF on the Batis might be important to many photograhers. It is not just for head shots.
I found that Eye-AF for half-body or full body environmental shots to be quite reliable. I can comfortably say that I managed to nail the focus for more than 95% of the shots of my wife during our recent trip. Bear in mind that I always maintain focusing distance to be at least 1 meter or above, and lens focus setting is on 0.4m-infinity. I didn't do any headshots though. I think the eye-af will start having issues at very short distances. YMMV.
chiron wrote:
Eye-AF on the 40mm Batis would be useful for much more than head shots. The 40mm focal length is excellent for environmental portraits, photographs of small groups, as at weddings or family gatherings, pictures of children playing. In these situations and many others, the accuracy of eye-AF on the Batis might be important to many photograhers. It is not just for head shots.
Eye-AF on the 40mm Batis would be useful for much more than head shots. The 40mm focal length is excellent for environmental portraits, photographs of small groups, as at weddings or family gatherings, pictures of children playing. In these situations and many others, the accuracy of eye-AF on the Batis might be important to many photograhers. It is not just for head shots.
Agree 100%. This focal length is perfect for situations you mentioned. One of the reasons I bought it. But I'm not worrying if this lens does not have greatest eye-AF accuracy because from 10ft our at f2 you get 2ft of DOF.
samosh wrote:
Agree 100%. This focal length is perfect for situations you mentioned. One of the reasons I bought it. But I'm not worrying if this lens does not have greatest eye-AF accuracy because from 10ft our at f2 you get 2ft of DOF.
If Eye AF is important to you then right now it's probably best to use a different lens.
It's entirely possible for you to work around the issue but why would you want more things to worry about? What concerns me the most is as no one has established exactly what is causing the problem we cannot truly know how it's going to handle when Sony updates the AF on current models (which is imminent) let alone future ones.
Do you guys think the 40mm CF could make my Sony Zeiss 50mm 1.4 Planar obsolete? Is the pop, contrast, colors and sharpness comparable? I know we talk about a f2 vs. 1.4 but I question the look of both glasses. I hope the problem with the Eye-AF will be history after the major updates in spring. My plan is to replace a 35mm and 50mm with this 40mm since an outstanding AF 35mm is not available and the 40mm would be too close to the 50mm Planar which is in reality approx. 48mm. What do you think, can this plan work?
chiron wrote:
Eye-AF on the 40mm Batis would be useful for much more than head shots. The 40mm focal length is excellent for environmental portraits, photographs of small groups, as at weddings or family gatherings, pictures of children playing. In these situations and many others, the accuracy of eye-AF on the Batis might be important to many photograhers. It is not just for head shots.
I'm not picking on you or anything.....
But surely at those distances, at f/2 (or smaller for groups) the amount of DOF with face detect (or even standard focusing) would be plenty for a sharp face/eyes no??
Mirror wrote:
Do you guys think the 40mm CF could make my Sony Zeiss 50mm 1.4 Planar obsolete? Is the pop, contrast, colors and sharpness comparable? I know we talk about a f2 vs. 1.4 but I question the look of both glasses. I hope the problem with the Eye-AF will be history after the major updates in spring. My plan is to replace a 35mm and 50mm with this 40mm since an outstanding AF 35mm is not available and the 40mm would be too close to the 50mm Planar which is in reality approx. 48mm. What do you think, can this plan work?...Show more →
"since an outstanding AF 35mm is not available" It is , it's hiding inside the 24GM if you have an Rii or Riii
LeeRatters wrote:
I'm not picking on you or anything.....
But surely at those distances, at f/2 (or smaller for groups) the amount of DOF with face detect (or even standard focusing) would be plenty for a sharp face/eyes no??
I would say that the defective eye-AF would frequently diminish the quality of the photographs in the settings I described. Not for every photograph, but for many. YMMV. Eye-AF is more important for some people than for others.
Also, this is an actual defect in the lens's firmware--it is not something that other lenses also do. Zeiss needs to fix it.
chiron wrote:
I would say that the defective eye-AF would frequently diminish the quality of the photographs in the settings I described. Not for every photograph, but for many. YMMV. Eye-AF is more important for some people than for others.
Also, this is an actual defect in the lens's firmware--it is not something that other lenses also do. Zeiss needs to fix it.
Yes, I'm not denying it is a defect that needs to be fixed. I just wasn't sure if Eye-AF was needed or would even work at longer distances for things like group shots etc that's all. How big in the frame does the eye have to be to be detected?
