Holger wrote:
Mark Galer in 200-600 final verdict with A1:
The takeaway advice that I can offer at this moment in time is that the reliability of Bird Eye AF will vary between different shooting situations but any doubts I had about the 200-600 performing well with the A1 have now been removed.
"These are three images from yesterday's shoot that shows an instance Bird Eye AF missed (one of only four frames from the 258 shots where it did not focus on the eye). Go to the last photo in the three to see the missed shot.
With the AF Focus Area set to Zone, it is primarily the Bird Eye AF that can dictate to the AF System to ignore the long grass in front of the face, that is closer to the lens, and go for the bird's eye instead when tracking is initiated. The purple Swamphen does not have a very distinctive eye (dark eye surrounded by dark feathers) so I suspect performance will vary depending upon the type of bird and also the contrast of the lighting. My first test with birds in flight had success with an Eagle but not a Black Kite (dark eye in shadow moving rapidly).
The takeaway advice that I can offer at this moment in time is that the reliability of Bird Eye AF will vary between different shooting situations but any doubts I had about the 200-600 performing well with the A1 have now been removed. The performance is consistent with the the success I had tracking rapidly moving dogs and martial arts. I daresay the Bird Eye-AF will get better over time and a future firmware upgrade may deliver even more reliability. Until that time arrives I am happy to take the support it currently offers ...and when it is not performing reliably I will simply disable Eye AF and go back to what I was doing with my A9 and A9II cameras."
I wonder if it will be useful to use the "old" Eye-AF method by assigning a custom button to Eye-AF. Then if you hit that button it looks over the entire frame instead of the new method of just looking within your selected AF Area?? I think I may have a button set to do that just in case.
Holger wrote:
How does TN know that? The sequences here and experience of many other tester showed that it works well. Even if he gets hardly any keepers, TN can't know whether it is a fail of BIF AF, or user error, or whatever, without a thorough analysis.
I am not aware of such an analysis, nor that he had the exact data from the camera indicating the actual mode used and focus point to make such a conclusion. So it is all speculation.
I don't know, too, how accurate the A7info software is. I have my doubts. I downloaded it and checked it with the A9. I didn't find the A7info software to give a reliable picture in many instances. The focus point was shown at various locations although the eye was sharp all the time. I am no convinced the software is fully reliable.
As Phan said, we only can rely on the end result and his experience (as is Dodds) is that it works very well....Show more →
You’re really on top of things aren’t you. Try using Sony Image Edge Viewer to check the focus points but no doubt you won’t think that software is reliable either. And TN thought that based on his personal use, and he may well have been using the same Sony software to check the focus points.
duncang wrote:
You’re really on top of things aren’t you. Try using Sony Image Edge Viewer to check the focus points but no doubt you won’t think that software is reliable either. And TN thought that based on his personal use, and he may well have been using the same Sony software to check the focus points.
I think I’ll trust Mark Galer’s conclusion. 248 shots and 4 were out of focus. Alex Pham has also reported good results an it looks like the 200-600 works well with the A1. That’s all they’re-assurance I need, based on my experience with Sony.
Laslo Varadi wrote:
I think I’ll trust Mark Galer’s conclusion. 248 shots and 4 were out of focus. Alex Pham has also reported good results an it looks like the 200-600 works well with the A1. That’s all they’re-assurance I need, based on my experience with Sony.
Those are Alex Pham’s good results. It’s not the 200-600 its the eye af that is hit and miss
arbitrage wrote:
I wonder if it will be useful to use the "old" Eye-AF method by assigning a custom button to Eye-AF. Then if you hit that button it looks over the entire frame instead of the new method of just looking within your selected AF Area?? I think I may have a button set to do that just in case.
I don't understand your comment. The instructions seem to say that the "new" Eye-AF it looks over the entire frame, not limited to the selected AF area.
Also, this seems to say that if it does not find an eye it does not AF at all. That does not sound good to me.
arbitrage wrote:
I wonder if it will be useful to use the "old" Eye-AF method by assigning a custom button to Eye-AF. Then if you hit that button it looks over the entire frame instead of the new method of just looking within your selected AF Area?? I think I may have a button set to do that just in case.
turn OFF "Face/Eye AF priority" then you can initial the eye AF custom button and it will be a 2 step process like R5.
arbitrage wrote:
I wonder if it will be useful to use the "old" Eye-AF method by assigning a custom button to Eye-AF. Then if you hit that button it looks over the entire frame instead of the new method of just looking within your selected AF Area?? I think I may have a button set to do that just in case.
That is what I do all the time. Useful at weddings when you don't have time to move the focus point (we are in flexible spot usually).
dclark wrote:
I don't understand your comment. The instructions seem to say that the "new" Eye-AF it looks over the entire frame, not limited to the selected AF area.
Also, this seems to say that if it does not find an eye it does not AF at all. That does not sound good to me.
I don't understand it that way. You have the same possibility with the older Sony bodies, too. I have done exactly that for all our cameras at weddings. Sometimes you don't have time to change the focus point, but know Eye-AF should work so just press the button and it searches all over the frame.
This is not a new function.
duncang wrote:
You’re really on top of things aren’t you. Try using Sony Image Edge Viewer to check the focus points but no doubt you won’t think that software is reliable either. And TN thought that based on his personal use, and he may well have been using the same Sony software to check the focus points.
4/248 not perfectly focussed but you say eye-AF is a hit and miss? Really?
I write software all the time (CFD codes for turbulence research involving particle tracking etc., something, very similar to eye-AF, but more complicated). So don't bore me.
One thing I noticed is if the A9ii does pick up on a birds eye the sharpness and detail really pops . I’ve noticed it with the odd smaller bird like Eurasian Robin . It’s why I’m really interested if this updated birds eye is an improvement. Flexible spot small still looks big on small birds head but the eye AF box is tiny
dclark wrote:
I don't understand your comment. The instructions seem to say that the "new" Eye-AF it looks over the entire frame, not limited to the selected AF area.
Also, this seems to say that if it does not find an eye it does not AF at all. That does not sound good to me.
Using Eye-AF on a Custom button is a way to go back to the "old" Eye-AF method where Eye-AF was activated and it searched the entire sensor for an eye with no control.
I can't remember when it changed to the new method but I believe it was either on the A7III/A7RIII from the get go or maybe just when the FW updates happened?? Regardless....doesn't matter.
Now the new way is that it only searches for eyes within the area of your selected AF mode...like within the Zone or within the Flex Spot. The new way is better. Technically you can also get the old way by using Wide via the new way (confused yet) because there it looks over the entire sensor anyways.
Yes, what I don't recall is if using the old way via an Eye-AF custom key does any other focusing if no eye is detected. If it doesn't then I agree the mode is sort of useless for what I'm shooting as I might as well just leave Wide AF on whatever custom button I was going to use for Eye-AF. The more I think about it the more doing that with Wide makes more sense.
When I posted that yesterday the thought that I had was if I was in a Flex Spot shooting something more stationary and then had to react to a BIF quickly I could just hammer the Eye-AF key and it would search the entire sensor for the bird's eye and maybe get the shot. But if you are correct and it only does Eye-AF and not any Wide focusing then that won't work for me. (I see it would work better for Holger's case as Human Eye-AF should be reliable enough to use it that way...not so much a BIF) I will just do what I do now and have Recall Custom Hold or Recall Registered AF Area be Wide (or Zone) and quickly get on the BIF that way where it will do AF and will do Eye if it finds one.
One last thing to note...it is valuable to keep a custom key (I currently use the left arrow) to Toggle (toggle only available on A9II via FW and now A1 (maybe A7SIII)) the Face/Eye Detection On/Off. Maybe the new system is much improved but the A9II system often gets confused with patterns and once it thinks something is an eye (which in this case it isn't) it will only focus on that. You sometimes need a quick toggle to turn off Face/Eye detect temporarily. Anyways, hopefully the A1 is much improved and false positives will be minimized or even eliminated.
duncang wrote:
Hardly surprising Tony N seemed to think it was a bit average - 5 frames out of 20 where it finds the eye. One frame on the eye, then next on the feet - interesting.
You don't seem to understand what you are looking at. The EXIF focus positions do not show where the camera focused. They are positions where the camera previously focused at some time before this, but after the previous image. Obviously things moved around in the meantime. Similarly the indicator telling you about the eye focus is incomplete (you only have one indication for 4 calculations) and also quite obviously time shifted.
Daran wrote:
You don't seem to understand what you are looking at. The EXIF focus positions do not show where the camera focused. They are positions where the camera previously focused at some time before this, but after the previous image. Obviously things moved around in the meantime. Similarly the indicator telling you about the eye focus is incomplete (you only have one indication for 4 calculations) and also quite obviously time shifted.
Are you sure? I was under impression that it simply shows which AF points were selected *when* the photo was taken (I think it only makes sense this way). Any documentation on this?
For me, that's the whole point of a fast camera that it's able to process AF fast enough...
duncang wrote:
You’re really on top of things aren’t you. Try using Sony Image Edge Viewer to check the focus points but no doubt you won’t think that software is reliable either. And TN thought that based on his personal use, and he may well have been using the same Sony software to check the focus points.
Come on! Tony the walking human error who doesn’t even know how to properly operate a Sony camera who hurt his hand using a peak design camera. Let not show the stupidity of a click bait YouTube by bring him up.
j4nu wrote:
Are you sure? I was under impression that it simply shows which AF points were selected *when* the photo was taken (I think it only makes sense this way). Any documentation on this?
For me, that's the whole point of a fast camera that it's able to process AF fast enough...
Well, it does for some pretty sloppy definition of "when". If you try to analyze this stuff, sloppy doesn't get you anywhere.
The A7R4 behaves similar, but with a several times higher latency. Which happens to make it easier to analyse. There the AF points are regarding a point of time that is much closer to the previous then the current shot (and at only 10Hz). Obviously the A1 is quicker, but which point of time those focus points are referring to is something I can't check till I get mine.
I still think these AF display programs are fairly useless for understanding how good or bad an AF system is.
I find that going through a given sequence at 1:1 and determining the hit rate like I did for Alex's GBH sequence is a better way. That sequence had the AF point display no where near the head in most of the shots and yet the hit rate was still pretty good on the head.
As for external programs, there can still be some bugs regarding A1 support due to its young age.
I remember reading a comment here, that when zooming in on the camera, A1 no longer zooms in on the selected AF point when eyeAF is enabled. Not sure if I understood that right, as it seems quite strange...
) because there it looks over the entire sensor anyways.