Would you be able to send me the 1.20 update? Thank you very much in advance!
Thang wrote:
i have win version of FW 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 on my computer.
A FM member recently sent me the 1.2 which i have not installed on my A1 yet. I am still running 1.1 and happy with it. Let me know if you would like a copy.
JeyB wrote:
Isn't it cute? These Sony engineers are playing with all of us.
SONY LISTEN: we want retrofitable FW updates, among other bleeding things clearly expressed in this post.
I want fw1.20 back ! fw1.31 has been a PIA for BIF with my 200-600 . They don't seem to be rushing releasing anything else and apparently they've had no complaints about fw1.31 which is odd
wordfool wrote:
I was considering a full reset but I might not bother now after reading about your experience. I am certainly not looking forward to the start of bird migration season with the new firmware.
Right now I'm chasing a new kitten around the house with my A1 and I'm seeing exactly the sort of behavior you described with your lion (a big kitty!). Kitten will be stationary on some piece of furniture filling about a third to a half of the frame, and the camera will seemingly try to focus on every part of the furniture but ignore the kitten (continuous AF, tracking on or off). And sometimes when the big green square is right over the kitten's head, eye AF will simply fail to see the two bight yellow eyes beneath it. It only happens occasionally, but when it does I often miss the shot (kittens don't stay still for long) and I wonder why I spent so much on a flagship camera.
Although the kitten is a recent addition, I don't recall every seeing this sort of behavior prior to v1.31. ...Show more →
That's really interesting! It seems like the new firmware is interested in backgrounds more than subjects in some instances. Fortunately, not most of the time.
This is a fix that worked for one A1 owner: He updated to FW 1.3.1, thought the AF wasn’t as good, backed up his settings, restored camera to defaults, reinstalled his settings and found that the AF issues were fixed. It is definitely worth a try.
For future firmware updates,, I will copy my settings to a card, then reset camera to defaults, apply update, reset again and then test. I also wish that Sony would allow updates via flash card, like Canon used to do (and maybe still does) rather than tethered to a computer.
dallvr wrote:
This is a fix that worked for one A1 owner: He updated to FW 1.3.1, thought the AF wasn’t as good, backed up his settings, restored camera to defaults, reinstalled his settings and found that the AF issues were fixed. It is definitely worth a try.
For future firmware updates,, I will copy my settings to a card, then reset camera to defaults, apply update, reset again and then test. I also wish that Sony would allow updates via flash card, like Canon used to do (and maybe still does) rather than tethered to a computer.
THat reminds me of the A7rIV AF issue (with the 200600)....
Same solution
I wouldn't put too much stock in a factory reset fixing any perceived AF regressions, assuming they do exist. If the actual AF logic has changed in the software, wiping the settings will have no effect. That said, there's no harm in trying it. In my case it made absolutely no difference.
I have a second A1 body now running 1.10 and plan to compare it to the one on 1.31. Just need to find the time to perform the comparison in a consistent manner.
dallvr wrote:
This is a fix that worked for one A1 owner: He updated to FW 1.3.1, thought the AF wasn’t as good, backed up his settings, restored camera to defaults, reinstalled his settings and found that the AF issues were fixed. It is definitely worth a try.
Hmm. He reported missing the tracking indication before BEAF found the eye. That certainly doesn't sound normal and probably would give most experienced shooters pause, if it were common. So I rather don't think that is the universal fix that some hope to find.
Personally I could not say whether there was any degradation due to the 1.31 firmware. There might have been a slight change, but there also was rather a lot of poor weather conditions coming in after the upgrade (which was mid last September).
Daran wrote:
Hmm. He reported missing the tracking indication before BEAF found the eye. That certainly doesn't sound normal and probably would give most experienced shooters pause, if it were common. So I rather don't think that is the universal fix that some hope to find.
Personally I could not say whether there was any degradation due to the 1.31 firmware. There might have been a slight change, but there also was rather a lot of poor weather conditions coming in after the upgrade (which was mid last September).
Yes, that's true. I have experienced instances of bad focus after FW 1.3.1, but did not see missed tracking indications. However, as I go through my latest photos, I am finding that FW 1.3.1 is particularly bad with cats. I have several instances over 2-3 days from my last trip where I have a big cat, large in the frame, and the camera focused on grass.
dallvr wrote:
Yes, that's true. I have experienced instances of bad focus after FW 1.3.1, but did not see missed tracking indications. However, as I go through my latest photos, I am finding that FW 1.3.1 is particularly bad with cats. I have several instances over 2-3 days from my last trip where I have a big cat, large in the frame, and the camera focused on grass.
Well, again the problem is that that is an unrepeatable one off situation. I had a similar experience (rare close encounter with a kite coming down right in front of me), where the hit rate was rather less than what I was used to. That was with FW 1.30. Turned out I had forgot to disable IS...
A (german?) youtuber attempted to get a repeatable AF test setup by dropping a bird like target along a long line. IMHO had almost as many issues as trying with real birds. Changes in light quality and amount, changes in speed, changes in human tracking ability all matter. E.g. any cameras AF tracking is likely to improve in my hands after I get my hands on some more coffee.
I have been out for a few times with the A1+600GM, and I have to agree that bird Eye-EF is a bit of a mess with firmware 3.1, throwing focus off when kicking in several times.
With Eye-AF disabled, it seems to do fine, but then I am without bird eye detection.
Just to get the picture clear: is it specifically Eye-AF that is giving people trouble with the latest 3.1 firmware?
ChrisMak wrote:
I have been out for a few times with the A1+600GM, and I have to agree that bird Eye-EF is a bit of a mess with firmware 3.1, throwing focus off when kicking in several times.
With Eye-AF disabled, it seems to do fine, but then I am without bird eye detection.
Just to get the picture clear: is it specifically Eye-AF that is giving people trouble with the latest 3.1 firmware?
For me yes with 200-600, mainly bird eye AF so I've been using it with it turned off . It still seems to grab backgrounds more than it used to. If I'm honest I don't think they'll sort it , it'll be more like the issues with the A7Riv swept underneath the carpet and release a new camera . If only Sony allowed to downgrade FW
dallvr wrote:
Your observation about the AF consistency dropping since the firmware update to 1.3.1 in September is the first and only post I have seen that matches my experience. I have been on two safaris since that update. Both my longtime photography guide and I noticed that we had more difficulty with A1 focus after the update than we ever had since we acquired our A1s (3 A1 bodies altogether) in early to mid-2021. Most of the time, focus operated well, but there were instances when the camera would simply not focus in situations where focus should have been easy and instantaneous. (my most recent example, a lion standing on a tree limb, and taking up a large part of the frame; tree in focus, camera would not focus on lion!) In most cases the camera locked focus on grass or other vegetation rather than on the eye of the subject. On my latest trip, there were probably one to two instances each day of the cameras not focusing properly.
I phoned Sony Pro Support after my first safari, and they told me that others had reported the problem, but that it was resolved by resetting the camera completely and then restoring all of the customizations and settings from scratch. For my last trip, I restored settings from those I had saved to a CFExpress A card, but still got missed focus.
If you have found any solution to this degradation of A1 focus, please let me know by answering this post or in a PM....Show more →
I've tried resetting, full initialising reloading settings from SD card , initialising and redoing every setting from scratch . Still not as consistent as it used to be IMHO . For static slower moving its not as bad but do have issues for faster moving subjects like BIF , just not performing as good as it used to for me . Even perched birds eye AF sometimes jumps to rear end of bird , also branches nowhere near the birds head so I'm turning bird eye AF off a lot now for everything .
multibit wrote:
I've tried resetting, full initialising reloading settings from SD card , initialising and redoing every setting from scratch . Still not as consistent as it used to be IMHO . For static slower moving its not as bad but do have issues for faster moving subjects like BIF , just not performing as good as it used to for me . Even perched birds eye AF sometimes jumps to rear end of bird , also branches nowhere near the birds head so I'm turning bird eye AF off a lot now for everything .
I also did a factory reset, it made no difference at all for me, if anything, it made it worse.
Thang wrote:
i have win version of FW 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 on my computer.
A FM member recently sent me the 1.2 which i have not installed on my A1 yet. I am still running 1.1 and happy with it. Let me know if you would like a copy.
I have a dumb question, how do I revert the FW from 1.31 back to 1.2 in the camera if I get the 1.2 file?
It's not possible to downgrade.
Edit: that makes me wonder, where the version check is done. If it's in the installer (pc/mac), there might be a way around it...
Pretty sure that check is being done on the software running on the pc/mac.....at least that's what I would expect. But even if you circumvent that, you don't know if the camera will block it.....or whether something "bad" will happen and you have a brick.
j4nu wrote:
It's not possible to downgrade.
Edit: that makes me wonder, where the version check is done. If it's in the installer (pc/mac), there might be a way around it...
Sure, we don't know what would happen but it's a start at least ...
As an alternate approach, someone with A7IV could try if it's possible to load earlier firmware via card (I think 1.05 is the one where card update was made available and the latest version is 1.20).
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