A7iii/riii - best way to control which face camera focuses on with eye/face detect?

phynesse said:

Hi all,

scenario: I use EyeAF (AF Wide, AF-C) along with face detect on. when people enter the frame, they are indicated with a squiare around the face. Here already, the camera chooses itself one face to focus on, should I decide to half-/press shutter button and highlights the square white. the other face square(s) are grey.

Two questions:

1. What are my options to get the camera to switch to another face?

Only way I ve found is to change from wide to flexible spot and use the joystick to move the spot into another face square and then press shutter. But that is cumbersome and i prefer wide. However, in wide the joystick does nothing. I would expect that joystick input would cycle through available faces, but it doesnt. Am I missing something?

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You'd think so, but nope. Sony really needs to give us a way to cycle through or otherwise select a particular face. It's pretty obvious that their engineers are not working photographers. Despite the excellent face tracking and the C-AF, I often find my Panasonics simpler and quicker to work with.

phynesse said:

2. what are the criteria the camera uses to select faces. sometimes it switches by itself, but it doesnt seem to do it based on proximity or placement... any insights?

yes, i know about registering priority faces, but this doesnt apply to my shooting scenarios.

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Yeah, like I'm really going to register scores of faces of panelists and presenters I don't get to see until the action starts. Good for a bride, groom and wedding party. Useless for a conference. And, what happens when 12 people onstage are all "priority"?

phynesse said:

Thanks!

Sebastian

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As an event photographer and a recent Sony a7III & a7RIII buyer, I'm well acquainted with this issue. Like you, after firmware update 3.0, I defaulted to wide-area AF with face/eye-detect on, as that's how I've used my Panasonics for years. I also use AF-C on the Sonys. As you note, the issue is how to select one face among many. I've found that if the desired face is not too small and there aren't too many faces in close proximity, I can put the desired face in the center of the frame to encourage the camera to choose it. Half-press to select it, and the camera then tracks it around the frame. As a second method, I've assigned a Recall Custom Hold to the multi-selector (joystick) button (press straight in) to switch temporarily to a small flexible spot in the center as long as the button is pressed. Position that over the desired face to force the camera to select it, half-press the shutter and the face is tracked around the frame. The one downside here is that I have no way to move the flexible spot - it stays in the center. So, it's a center-lock-half-press-recompose-shoot process, much like with my old DSLRs. Not ideal, but fortunately I don't have to resort to this often. Finally, as a third option, I touch the rear screen to set a fixed non-face-detect AF spot. This allows me to set an AF point off-center, and I use it mainly for non-people subjects when I want full control over exactly where the camera focuses. Sony's touch AF is really lousy compared to my Panasonics, but it does work if I touch firmly (sometime several times) and move my thumb very slowly.

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