Re: A1 - Focusing on Eyes vs. Eyelashes at f1.2 or f1.4?
jigesh wrote:
I had a9ii, a7r4 and now A1 and 35mm f1.4GM. Never seen a case (in my shooting) where eye-lashes were sharp in focus but eye (pupil) was not in any of these 3 cameras. I think all these 3 cameras focused equally fine on the human eye; perhaps A1 tracks a bit/sticks better. No personal experience with f1.2 lenses though.
Although not at f1.4/f1.2, you may find content at time-stamp 16m relevant in the following video:
Well, his example has close to no eye lashes-lashes, so I'd say it would be pretty hard to demonstrate the issue this way . Mark does say though that he would question one's technique if one uses such a shallow depth of field for portraits. I'd say that's a pretty condescending approach to the issue. It's more of an "artistic choice" for me .
I take quite a few pictures of my kids this way, e.g. when they are focused (ha-ha) on a something, ideally a screen of some sorts, when you can then see the reflection in the eye if focused correctly. The reflection unfortunately cannot be seen on the eye-lashes .
Still, this is a pretty specific usecase and I simply acknowledge that eyeAF was not designed to cater for it (i.e. this does not affect "normal" portrait shooting IMHO, but on the other hand was visible a bit in some of the A1 promo shots...). Most of the time it works alright, I just take a couple of shots and one of them will be "close enough". I think it's also the same mechanism that can make the focus sometimes miss a bit when for example using eyeAF on a bird that's twitching between branches (the branches being in front of the bird).
To conclude with something more meaningful than my random musings, @GabrielPhoto touches on this subject in one of his latest videos (on A7RIV though AFAIR).
Nov 01, 2021 at 07:13 PM
Previous versions of j4nu's message #15754850 « A1 - Focusing on Eyes vs. Eyelashes at f1.2 or f1.4? »
. Mark does say though that he would question one's technique if one uses such a shallow depth of field for portraits. I'd say that's a pretty condescending approach to the issue. It's more of an "artistic choice" for me 
(on A7RIV though AFAIR).