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Live view autofocus on Pentax cameras

Started 4 months ago | Discussions thread
JeremieB Senior Member • Posts: 2,041
Re: Live view autofocus on Pentax cameras

My understanding is that the K3III would have the best LV AF. The K70/KF should normally be the best as it shares something with MILCs (phase detect AF points on the sensor supposed to help CDAF in LV), but in the end not really - I'd say K3III is better.

You don't get zebras but red highlight alerts. You can't change the color.

On K3III you have 2 focus peaking modes: one that emphasizes contours, the other shows only contours. Both can be useful.

Even with K3III, AF in LV is rather slow. With K3III you have less risk of having it focusing all the way from close to infinity and back (which can take ages on K70). So it's delicate, and AF C of joggers or other moving things can be frustrating honestly. With patience and precision it's usable not much more. On static subjects it's ok.

You get face detection and AF tracking, but not both at the same time: it detects the faces correctly but won't AF-C on detected face(s).

Personally 99% of the time when I use LV, I use it in manual focusing with focus peaking (landscape, macro). Whenever fast AF matters, I use OVF.

 JeremieB's gear list:JeremieB's gear list
Pentax K-70 Pentax K-3 Mark III Pentax smc FA 50mm F1.4 Pentax smc DA 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL Pentax smc D-FA 100mm F2.8 Macro WR +9 more
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