CPWarner wrote:
Out of curiosity, how many people that have had this eye sensor glitch wear glasses? I wear reading glasses, and the one time I had a bad problem with this on my A7Riv, I was wearing my glasses. Granted, this is extremely limited data, but I thought I might ask. In my case, I had been reviewing some images on the rear screen (which for me requires glasses) and saw some action I wanted to catch. Never got a shot off as viewfinder never came on. It was the same scenario referred to here a couple times, strong light from behind me. When I took my glasses off, everything worked ok again. Normally, I don’t look through he viewfinder with my reading glasses on. Anyway, I am curious if part of the issue is glasses. ...Show more →
My wife wears glasses and didn't have this issue.
We now use Sony for years with many bodies in parallel, often outside in harsh light but had this issues not that I am aware of. I found sensitivity esp. in the A73 too high an used a semitransparent sticker to reduce it. But not once did it happen in the field (A9ii, A9, A7riv). So what conditions are people experiencing this mostly? Is this only affecting specific bodies? We have each 2 in use at weddings and informal weddings outside are often in the bright sun light.
All our couple shooting are outside when the sun settles but is still there. Is it happening there, too? Why didn't I experience this nor do I know people having this issue (and we know many Sony shooters, give workshops and coachings etc.)?
Holger wrote:
My wife wears glasses and didn't have this issue.
We now use Sony for years with many bodies in parallel, often outside in harsh light but had this issues not that I am aware of. I found sensitivity esp. in the A73 too high an used a semitransparent sticker to reduce it. But not once did it happen in the field (A9ii, A9, A7riv). So what conditions are people experiencing this mostly? Is this only affecting specific bodies? We have each 2 in use at weddings and informal weddings outside are often in the bright sun light.
All our couple shooting are outside when the sun settles but is still there. Is it happening there, too? Why didn't I experience this nor do I know people having this issue (and we know many Sony shooters, give workshops and coachings etc.)?...Show more →
I don't wear glasses. I have experienced this on A9II, A7RIV and now A1. A9II and A7RIV were infrequent. A1 was way too often.
I was in bright sun with sun behind me. I wasn't noticing this in my first hour of golden hour morning shooting. It took harsher light to make it happen. My jacket was medium grey without any reflectors on it.
arbitrage wrote:
I don't wear glasses. I have experienced this on A9II, A7RIV and now A1. A9II and A7RIV were infrequent. A1 was way too often.
I was in bright sun with sun behind me. I wasn't noticing this in my first hour of golden hour morning shooting. It took harsher light to make it happen. My jacket was medium grey without any reflectors on it.
I guess you often can't position yourself favorably, e.g. when in a boat etc. I probably have more possibilities to change angle and direction. Maybe that helps and explains it. I read about this many times of course but have not been plagued by it so far, even though I am in contact with harsh light around noon regularly. I think I try to deliberately force it the next time to see whether this happens for me, too.
Holger wrote:
My wife wears glasses and didn't have this issue.
We now use Sony for years with many bodies in parallel, often outside in harsh light but had this issues not that I am aware of. I found sensitivity esp. in the A73 too high an used a semitransparent sticker to reduce it. But not once did it happen in the field (A9ii, A9, A7riv). So what conditions are people experiencing this mostly? Is this only affecting specific bodies? We have each 2 in use at weddings and informal weddings outside are often in the bright sun light.
All our couple shooting are outside when the sun settles but is still there. Is it happening there, too? Why didn't I experience this nor do I know people having this issue (and we know many Sony shooters, give workshops and coachings etc.)?...Show more →
I don't have the A1 yet but this has happened to my A7RIV (with that deep third party EVF cap on) at least a dozen times recently. I thought the EVF sensor was dirty but it was not, I turned off the camera or even popped the battery out and re-inserted it. I missed some BIF shots. I can't recall the lighting condition but I don't think the sun was on my back when this happened.
Douglas Liu wrote:
I don't have the A1 yet but this has happened to my A7RIV (with that deep third party EVF cap on) at least a dozen times recently. I thought the EVF sensor was dirty but it was not, I turned off the camera or even popped the battery out and re-inserted it. I missed some BIF shots. I can't recall the lighting condition but I don't think the sun was on my back when this happened.
That is weird. My wife uses the cameras daily for jobs, mostly outside. Never happened. She doesn't wear reflective clothing, though, I read it triggers the phenomenon sometimes.
So most of this morning was light overcast. I had no issues with the EVF waking. Then around 10AM the sun broke through and I had one instance when the sun was coming in over my right shoulder. I had to put my thumb over the EVF sensor to get it to activate. I quit for the morning shortly after that.
I had this issue too with my A9ii especially with sun behind me , I ordered one of those larger eye cups for the EVF , its helped in my case but still does it occasionally
Is there any chance that reflected light from rear LCD is causing the issue? Instead of tape what about a small length of very small tubing like the plastic shield on small diameter wire were placed just below the sensor? I have not handled an A1 so I don't know if there is adequate room to do this in lieu of taping over the sensor??
Just curious, what if the rear LCD was covered would it make for the fix that way one might know that stray light is emitting from the LCD screen Just trying to think outside the box here...........since I don't know any better
Other thought as odd as it may be, who shoots left eye and who shoots right eye and does it happen with either??
speedmaster20d wrote:
Thanks all cleaning is not applicable here
I called Sony pro and to my pleasant surprise the advisor was quite knowledgeable and explained that the behavior very well. He had observed it himself. It is likely to coming from a 2nd proximity sensor that is fitted behind the main LCD. The idea is to prevent the shadow of your body activating the EVF when shooting at hip level. When shooting with the 600 f/4 hand held the user is likely to put the camera and lens facing down periodically which would activate the rear LCD proximity sensor and shot off the EVF. When picking up the camera with the sun behind you the EVF sensor is saturated so the camera relies to proximity sensor to activate EVF but this sensor is not very accurate and may not work all the time. This happens even if you set display to EVF only. (EVF will still turn off when you lower the camera)
The solution is to use a piece of tape to cover the eye sensor. The EVF will never turn off and the proximity sensor will not engage.
Not the most elegant solution but it should avoid missing the shot. Battery usage will increase and you have to remember to take the tape off at the end of the shoot
I had this problem at home today with the A1 sun behind me and it happened a few times just a black screen so no chance of taking a shot ,reading above i put some blu tack over the sensor this keeps the EVF on so rather than have the camera in sleep mode i turned it off so as not to drain the battery.
What i have found is that you soon get use to turning the camera on then off say when your waiting for a bird etc the good thing is the EVF does come on a lot quicker so that's a bonus very happy with that.
The downside is you can't view the LCD until you take the blu tack off I think i can live with that for the faster start up time .
Lensmaster wrote:
I had this problem at home today with the A1 sun behind me and it happened a few times just a black screen so no chance of taking a shot ,reading above i put some blu tack over the sensor this keeps the EVF on so rather than have the camera in sleep mode i turned it off so as not to drain the battery.
What i have found is that you soon get use to turning the camera on then off say when your waiting for a bird etc the good thing is the EVF does come on a lot quicker so that's a bonus very happy with that.
The downside is you can't view the LCD until you take the blu tack off I think i can live with that for the faster start up time .
If you do Manual EVF/LCD switching via a Custom Key then you should be able to hit that button and switch into LCD even if the tack is activating the EVF sensor.
I think Sony EVF's sensors are really crap, I have exactly the opposite problem: on my A7RIII there is no way that the LCD activates 90% of the times when I take my eye off the EVF, and now I'm beginning to see the same behavior even in my A9 (although not so often).
Definitely something that they have to sort out in future models.
I do not wear glasses. I experienced the same problems with my a9-s, my a9 ii-s, and my a7r iv. I spoke to Mark Weir at SONY a while back many times to no effect. I can assure everyone that the problem is much worse with the a1. This morning with spoonbills flying right at me in sweet light and blue water backgrounds the a1 failed most of the time. I am going back tomorrow with tape on the sensor.
arbitrage wrote:
If you do Manual EVF/LCD switching via a Custom Key then you should be able to hit that button and switch into LCD even if the tack is activating the EVF sensor.
That help with A9ii and R4 since the proximity sensor on top and tuck inside.
With A1, i still get it even with LCD activate via custom button. just FYI.
My A9 has developed a different glitch. I take a burst of photos, then when I want to look at them on the LCD, it either won't display or displays briefly but then if you look carefully you'll see it's actually displaying in the EVF. I then get into this loop where I can't get anything to show on the LCD even menu button press won't help, it just goes straight to the EVF. I'm not sure if the sensor which detects whether you are looking through the EVF is glitching and not recognizing that my eye is away from the EVF or if it''s the LCD.
Anybody else had this? It's seems to be getting progressively worse and doing it more frequently.
A lot of times these glitches are caused by dust or moisture on the EVF proximity sensor. Just pop the eye cup off, wipe it with your thumb, and see if it fixes the issue.
StanOPhoto wrote:
A lot of times these glitches are caused by dust or moisture on the EVF proximity sensor. Just pop the eye cup off, wipe it with your thumb, and see if it fixes the issue.
no it does not, it's a brand new camera no dust anywhere [yet].
StanOPhoto wrote:
A lot of times these glitches are caused by dust or moisture on the EVF proximity sensor. Just pop the eye cup off, wipe it with your thumb, and see if it fixes the issue.
If you are referring to Pixel Perfect's post above yours then yes I agree his problems sounds more like something that could be from dust or moisture. I had some dust or smudge on my EVF of my A9 that was draining batteries like crazy keeping the EVF on all the time unbeknownst to me as I walked around with the camera down at my side.
However, the main topic of this thread is not a dust or moisture issue at all. That is for sure.
Artakha wrote:
I have this problem with my A7iii pretty constantly, I just have C2 mapped to switch between EVF and screen usage. And no I don't wear glasses.
I also had this issue with A7iii but when I cleaned the EVF and sensor area very, very thoroughly it went back to working perfectly (like new).
Just trying to think outside the box here...........since I don't know any better 
