After reading another post and having the same focus distance lock up, while the camera was on I released the lens slightly and rotate it back to locking on and the problem was solved. Seems to be related to the contact pins (yes all of my contacts are clean and the A1 is less than a month old)
Dreadymmeyer wrote:
After reading another post and having the same focus distance lock up, while the camera was on I released the lens slightly and rotate it back to locking on and the problem was solved. Seems to be related to the contact pins (yes all of my contacts are clean and the A1 is less than a month old)
Yeah, the rotational play in the lens mounts of Sony cameras seems to be far greater than anything I've experienced with other brands. 99% of the time when I get a non-responsive camera I just rotate the lens that fraction on the mount and it's fine again. The other 1% usually requires me to turn the camera off and on again.
I have also noted that the latest firmware update (1.31) seems to have introduced some weird behavior when it comes to AF, with occasional freezes. Apparently I'm not alone in experiencing this, so I eagerly await the new firmware to see if it fixes things.
wordfool wrote:
I've had a couple of instances with my A1 where it just would not focus (small flex spot in AF-C, 100-400 GM lens) on a closer subject despite that subject more than filling the focus point. Instead it remains stubbornly focused on something further back (perhaps the distance I last took a photo) despite me mashing the button. Imagine watching the blurred outline of a bird doing its thing right under the focus point yet never coming into focus despite mashing the button. Then imagine how frustrating it is to miss potentially great shots as a result!
I had assumed it was user error until I read someone on the FB group had experienced the exact same issue, so now I'm curious if this is perhaps a bug of some kind, perhaps related to the camera/lens combo, or maybe linked to some sort of focus priority setting I'm missing.
I don't think it's a low light issue because a) I've never experienced anything similar with my A9 that technically does not have as good low-light AF performance, and b) I can swing the focus point away to a bigger target at about the same distance in similar light to pre-focus before moving back to the subject, which will then snap into focus just fine.
It almost feels like instead of being in small flex spot mode (as set) the camera is either behaving like it's in expand small flex spot mode and the expansion points are locking onto something in the background and refusing to focus elsewhere, or the camera is waking up stuck at a particular focus distance and requiring a push (in the form of a big, easy target) to get the AF going again. It's definitely an intermittent problem, but I can experience it a couple of times if I'm out for 3-4 hours so it happens often enough to be annoying. ...Show more →
I has a few instances today witrh the A1+600GM in small flex spot AF mode, where the little square AF box suddenly, out of the blue, disappeared and I got the dancing little squares that belong to one of the zone focussing modes. It chose to focus somewhere as if in wide zone AF mode. In all instances it would show the spot af box again after playing with a few buttons and random focus somewhere. I never had this with the A1+ 200-600G lens, but don't suspect the 600GM, since I did a re-initialization on the A1 with the suspect f1.31 firmware when I got the 600GM, and since then it is acting up.
I've had this intermittent brain dead AF freeze thing happen with the a9, a7r4 and the a1 while using the 100-400, 200-600 and the 400 2.8.
As Arbitrage and others suggested, I try to quickly find a different subject to focus on and then recover to my intended subject.
Yes, it's really frustrating and I've missed some sellable images.
But, for the last four years that I've been using Sony, I've managed to capture so many peak action images that I just deal with this issue.
I haven't shot with any of the newer Canon or Nikon stuff to learn if they have similar issues? As Arbitrage stated, It appears to be the nature of the mirrorless beast. That doesn't mean I like it because I don't. I Just cope the best I can and move on.
