Auto focus (don't worry, not a rant)

Since there are so many threads complaining about the autofocus speed of the NEX cameras, I thought I'd share a few things I've found to speed it up.

The other day I noticed that even though peaking was turned on, it was not working at all. I then remembered that I'd set the Creative Style to Portrait and had pushed the contrast to -3. I left it like this because I liked it for video and I always shoot RAW, so I didn't think it'd cause any harm.

It dawned on me that while it won't affect the RAW images, it does affect the contrast detect autofocus. I set it back to Standard Creative Style and sure enough, autofocus was working like normal again and peaking was as well.

So I thought.. "why not set it to +3 to make autofocus work even better?" Sure enough, it does . I have to remember to change it back before shooting video, but I don't shoot much video so it's not a huge issue.

These other tweaks also helped (some or all already mentioned elsewhere, but making a list to have it all in one place):

1) Use Center focus. Not Spot, not multipoint.

2) Turn the AF illuminator off. It doesn't really help much and drops you off at some indeterminate point if it fails. Turning it off prevents you from actually pulling the trigger, since the camera won't let you without focus.

3) If you're focusing on horizontal line(s), turn your camera to portrait orientation first, grab focus, and then reorient the camera however you like. For vertical lines, rotate camera to landscape orientation first.

4) As mentioned above, set Contrast to +3 in the Creative Style if you shoot RAW.

With all of these things I am quite happy with the autofocus speed now. Even in low light and a wide aperture (at least with the SEL50F18) it's quite speedy and accurate.

-j