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A6700: AF settings for street life

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Henry Richardson

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Yesterday I bought a new Sony A6700 + 16-50mm + 64gb Sandisk Extreme Pro SD card for a total of US$1388 at a walk-in camera store. I charged the battery over night and then this morning I started going through the menu and the online manual:

https://helpguide.sony.net/ilc/2320/v1/en/

Although years ago I used the Sony A700 and A100 and I still occasionally use my RX100, I am not familiar with more recent Sony cameras and menus. I got the basics set up enough to go out for a walkabout in the city today to try it out though.

I am particularly interested in the A6700 AF system because I have heard it is excellent. I am curious how well it works for street life photography. Naturally, I am still learning about this A6700 AF system, but as a starting point I used the defaults out of the box:
  • AF-A
  • Wide focus area
  • Recognition Target Human
  • Subject Recog in AF
My main interest is street life photography (although I do other stuff too) and I have a selection of photos on my photo website:

https://bakubo.myportfolio.com/

Sometimes things happen very fast and I need to just react. I am hoping that the very advanced Sony AF system will help in getting more shots of people in focus in those sudden situations. I just take single shots, no machine gunning.

Do people here have recommendations for AF settings for my use case?

I am hoping to get very fast response, recognition, and accurate focus. I have been doing this sort of photography for a few decades and with my less advanced AF cameras I have used over the years I get a lot in focus, but things sometimes happen so fast and I get the focus point in the wrong place, etc. that having a camera with very fast human subject detection and AF sure would be nice. :-)
 
Last edited:
Henry Richardson said:
Yesterday I bought a new Sony A6700 + 16-50mm + 64gb Sandisk Extreme Pro SD card for a total of US$1388 at a walk-in camera store. I charged the battery over night and then this morning I started going through the menu and the online manual:

https://helpguide.sony.net/ilc/2320/v1/en/

Although years ago I used the Sony A700 and A100 and I still occasionally use my RX100, I am not familiar with more recent Sony cameras and menus. I got the basics set up enough to go out for a walkabout in the city today to try it out though.

I am particularly interested in the A6700 AF system because I have heard it is excellent. I am curious how well it works for street life photography. Naturally, I am still learning about this A6700 AF system, but as a starting point I used the defaults out of the box:
  • AF-A
  • Wide focus area
  • Recognition Target Human
  • Subject Recog in AF
My main interest is street life photography (although I do other stuff too) and I have a selection of photos on my photo website:

https://bakubo.myportfolio.com/

Sometimes things happen very fast and I need to just react. I am hoping that the very advanced Sony AF system will help in getting more shots of people in focus in those sudden situations. I just take single shots, no machine gunning.

Do people here have recommendations for AF settings for my use case?

I am hoping to get very fast response, recognition, and accurate focus. I have been doing this sort of photography for a few decades and with my less advanced AF cameras I have used over the years I get a lot in focus, but things sometimes happen so fast and I get the focus point in the wrong place, etc. that having a camera with very fast human subject detection and AF sure would be nice. :-)
Click to expand...
First of all definitely NOT AF-A but rather AF-C

Second I'm found the ZONE to be best for what you're attempting. Give it a try and I think you'll agree. Otherwise obviously the subject recognition to Human in the ON position of course.
 
I have noticed that my A6700 + 16-50mm remembers the focal length of the electronic zoom was when I turn the camera off and when I turn it back on it goes back to that focal length, for example 26mm. I prefer it to always be set to 16mm when I turn the camera on. There is no focal length marking on the barrel to let me know what it is set to so therefore I prefer it to always be at 16mm when I turn the camera on -- in other words I always know where it is set for when I need to react quickly.

I have a pancake Olympus 14-42mm electronic zoom lens for my m4/3 Olympus bodies and in the camera menu you can select whether you want the lens to reset to 14mm when turned on or remember where it was when the camera was turned off.

I have not yet found something like that in the very extensive, long, deep Sony menu, but maybe it is hiding in there somewhere. Is there a way?
 
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ProDude said:
First of all definitely NOT AF-A but rather AF-C

Second I'm found the ZONE to be best for what you're attempting. Give it a try and I think you'll agree. Otherwise obviously the subject recognition to Human in the ON position of course.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the tips. I will give them a try.
 
I have had my A6700 for 8 days. The first few days I did not make use of the 3 memory settings on the mode dial, but about 4 days ago I assigned some stuff to them. In my earlier cameras I use the memory settings on the mode dial (Olympus, Panasonic, etc.) a lot.

Well, since setting the A6700 memory settings I have noticed something strange in that sometimes using the memory settings the camera will not bet set to what it should be. It would not happen all the time and while out using the camera I could not detect a pattern. Very frustrating because I never knew when it would screw up so I had to carefully check all the settings to see if the memory had truly been recalled and the camera was set up properly.

Today I decided I wanted to try to see if there was some pattern to the problem so I sat down on the sofa to play with the camera and see if I could get it to happen. I finally was able to determine what situation would cause the firmware bug to strike. Here is what I learned:
  • I discovered that if while the camera is turned off I turn the mode dial to a memory setting and turn on the camera then it will work properly. Works correctly.
  • I discovered that if while the camera is turned on I turn the mode dial to a memory setting then it will work properly. Works correctly.
  • I discovered that if while the camera is turned off I keep the mode dial on the same memory setting that it was on when I turned the camera off AND earlier before turning off the camera I had adjusted EC, aperture, etc. while using that memory setting then when I turn the camera back on the memory will not be recalled and instead the EC, aperture, etc. will be what it was when I turned off the camera instead of the recalled memory values. Bug! Works incorrectly.
I have firmware 1.02.

Does anyone else get this behavior?
 
I don't think that's a bug but an intended feature even if you don't like it. I mean:
  • The camera memorizes whatever changes you do in your current PASM dial position. It doesn't matter what it is and in which position of PASM you are. So if I've set JPG only (or whatever) the camera will stay in JPG only eternally, no matter how many times I turn it off and on.
  • Memory settings are only recalled when you actually go to that PASM dial position. Therefore it's just when I arrive at 1, that whatever has been stored in 1 is recalled.
You are calling "off/on doesn't restore my memory" a bug. But quite a lot of people might call "off/on has moved my last settings" a bug. More over, I do feel in that second group myself. I feel the way the camera behaves is much "safer" and predictable.

If you want to actually recall memory 1, if you don't remember if you did changes to memory 1 settings or whatever, just quickly move from 1 to 2 and back to 1 and you are sure you'll get your stored memory 1 settings. But a quick off/on cycle moving you back to RAWs (or whatever) would drive most of the people nuts.
 
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ARSPR said:
I don't think that's a bug but an intended feature even if you don't like it. I mean:
  • The camera memorizes whatever changes you do in your current PASM dial position. It doesn't matter what it is and in which position of PASM you are. So if I've set JPG only (or whatever) the camera will stay in JPG only eternally, no matter how many times I turn it off and on.
  • Memory settings are only recalled when you actually go to that PASM dial position. Therefore it's just when I arrive at 1, that whatever has been stored in 1 is recalled.
You are calling "off/on doesn't restore my memory" a bug. But quite a lot of people might call "off/on has moved my last settings" a bug. More over, I do feel in that second group myself. I feel the way the camera behaves is much "safer" and predictable.
Click to expand...
Of course, I can't say whether this weird behavior is intentional by Sony, but I will say that I have owned many cameras with memory settings on the mode dial from Olympus, Panasonic, and Canon. None of them do what Sony does in this situation. The memory settings set the camera to a known state on all of them. Only this A6700 does not do that. It makes the memory setting meaningless in the case I wrote about because in that case it is no different than not using a memory setting. I still maintain that this is a bug.
 
Henry Richardson said:
ARSPR said:
I don't think that's a bug but an intended feature even if you don't like it. I mean:
  • The camera memorizes whatever changes you do in your current PASM dial position. It doesn't matter what it is and in which position of PASM you are. So if I've set JPG only (or whatever) the camera will stay in JPG only eternally, no matter how many times I turn it off and on.
  • Memory settings are only recalled when you actually go to that PASM dial position. Therefore it's just when I arrive at 1, that whatever has been stored in 1 is recalled.
You are calling "off/on doesn't restore my memory" a bug. But quite a lot of people might call "off/on has moved my last settings" a bug. More over, I do feel in that second group myself. I feel the way the camera behaves is much "safer" and predictable.
Click to expand...
Of course, I can't say whether this weird behavior is intentional by Sony, but I will say that I have owned many cameras with memory settings on the mode dial from Olympus, Panasonic, and Canon. None of them do what Sony does in this situation. The memory settings set the camera to a known state on all of them. Only this A6700 does not do that. It makes the memory setting meaningless in the case I wrote about because in that case it is no different than not using a memory setting. I still maintain that this is a bug.
Click to expand...
Ricoh GRIII lets you configure this behaviour. As you cant please everyone unless you allow it to be configured.
 
I disagree with you but it's really no important. I do prefer the current behaviour where if you modify something it stays modified in any position of the PASM dial, even in memory banks, surviving even off/on cycles.

But as I said my preference or yours are really not important. This is the way this camera behaves and Sony is probably not going to change it.

Therefore get used to it and use the "leave and return to the memory bank" workaround if you want to always recall the stored memory bank parameters after an off/on cycle. Learn how the camera works and adapt your workflow to it.

(BTW. With the current behaviour there's that workaround which is not so complex at all. With your desired behaviour, there would be no possible workaround if I preferred this persistence. Therefore this is even another reason to make the current behaviour "better" than your preferred one, even if other brands don't follow it).
 
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Henry Richardson said:
ARSPR said:
I don't think that's a bug but an intended feature even if you don't like it. I mean:
  • The camera memorizes whatever changes you do in your current PASM dial position. It doesn't matter what it is and in which position of PASM you are. So if I've set JPG only (or whatever) the camera will stay in JPG only eternally, no matter how many times I turn it off and on.
  • Memory settings are only recalled when you actually go to that PASM dial position. Therefore it's just when I arrive at 1, that whatever has been stored in 1 is recalled.
You are calling "off/on doesn't restore my memory" a bug. But quite a lot of people might call "off/on has moved my last settings" a bug. More over, I do feel in that second group myself. I feel the way the camera behaves is much "safer" and predictable.
Click to expand...
Of course, I can't say whether this weird behavior is intentional by Sony, but I will say that I have owned many cameras with memory settings on the mode dial from Olympus, Panasonic, and Canon. None of them do what Sony does in this situation. The memory settings set the camera to a known state on all of them. Only this A6700 does not do that. It makes the memory setting meaningless in the case I wrote about because in that case it is no different than not using a memory setting. I still maintain that this is a bug.
Click to expand...
No, it's intentional. I think all Sony cameras have done this for many years.
 
ProDude said:
First of all definitely NOT AF-A but rather AF-C
Click to expand...
I have been taking the A6700 out every day for a bit walking around the city. Not all shots, naturally, require sudden, quick reaction and hopefully good, reliable AF. But, over the last few days a few have. I have tried AF-A, AF-C, and AF-S. Not controlled tests, just using them. As I said, sometimes things just appear and the moment passes in 1 or 2 seconds. Sometimes good, even light. Sometimes a human subject in shadow with bright parts of the image. And other challenging light. Anyone who has done a lot of street life photography knows about this. I have not reached any firm conclusions about the A6700 AF because I am still trying different things and there are lots of settings and combinations of settings.

May I ask why you say definitely not AF-A? And why AF-C? I am just asking to try to understand your thinking. I shoot single frames, not continuous, and while the subject and I may be moving a bit (walking, for example) I rarely am trying to shoot someone running or moving and changing distance quickly. In the past on other cameras I would just use AF-S. But, if AF-C would actually be better on the A6700 for my sometimes quick, sudden single shots then I am certainly open to using it.

I see that AF-A will only change from AF-S to AF-C on the second shot of a machine gun sequence. I only take single shots. Maybe I should explore taking 2-3 quick shots in machine gun mode though. Never done that.

Here is what the A6700 manual says:

63f188d91e694864b547c9e21409fae4.jpg.png

Member said:
Second I'm found the ZONE to be best for what you're attempting. Give it a try and I think you'll agree. Otherwise obviously the subject recognition to Human in the ON position of course.
Click to expand...
 
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AF-C + Tracking. Period. Forget about everything else even when you just need AF-S. Therefore even AF-A is a non-feature.

My 2 month old camera is there and I haven't changed AF Mode a single time since my early brand new tests.

In other brands, AF-C is not as reliable as AF-S. If the camera tries to keep focus on whatever, quite some times it actually misses focus because it "wobbles" around it or it goes to the background if it is easier to focus on it or whatever.

But you'll see how this camera has a nearly perfect hit rate. It will perfectly compensate whatever happens (the target moves, you move, you reframe, you and your target are perfectly still, whatever). Therefore just forget about AF, believe in your camera, and you'll be happier.

For sure you'll get some misses, but every single camera misses sometimes even in AF-S.
 
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Digital Nigel said:
Henry Richardson said:
ARSPR said:
I don't think that's a bug but an intended feature even if you don't like it. I mean:
  • The camera memorizes whatever changes you do in your current PASM dial position. It doesn't matter what it is and in which position of PASM you are. So if I've set JPG only (or whatever) the camera will stay in JPG only eternally, no matter how many times I turn it off and on.
  • Memory settings are only recalled when you actually go to that PASM dial position. Therefore it's just when I arrive at 1, that whatever has been stored in 1 is recalled.
You are calling "off/on doesn't restore my memory" a bug. But quite a lot of people might call "off/on has moved my last settings" a bug. More over, I do feel in that second group myself. I feel the way the camera behaves is much "safer" and predictable.
Click to expand...
Of course, I can't say whether this weird behavior is intentional by Sony, but I will say that I have owned many cameras with memory settings on the mode dial from Olympus, Panasonic, and Canon. None of them do what Sony does in this situation. The memory settings set the camera to a known state on all of them. Only this A6700 does not do that. It makes the memory setting meaningless in the case I wrote about because in that case it is no different than not using a memory setting. I still maintain that this is a bug.
Click to expand...
No, it's intentional. I think all Sony cameras have done this for many years.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think so as well... that was of the things that drove me to despair with my RX100III, especially if I hadn't used it for a while (even just a few hours) and then switched it on for a quick shot... and dang, wrong settings. It was almost always one of two things: wrong ISO or wrong exposure compensation. Wrong ISO was especially bad because the image at first looks OK when reviewed. With EC off I often realised very quickly that something was amiss.

So I'm with Henry on that one: I'd also prefer, on switching on the thing, having it reload the current memory settings and start with a known, clean slate. OTOH I'm sure there are many people who'd dislike this so an option to switch it on or off would be the way forward.

I also think the memory/recall options in Sony cameras are basic at best but that's another story.
 
ARSPR said:
AF-C + Tracking. Period. Forget about everything else even when you just need AF-S. Therefore even AF-A is a non-feature.
Click to expand...
I'm afraid I don't agree. Unless I actually want to track something, AF-A with a zone area in the upper centre of the frame remains a good default setting.
ARSPR said:
My 2 month old camera is there and I haven't changed AF Mode a single time since my early brand new tests.

In other brands, AF-C is not as reliable as AF-S. If the camera tries to keep focus on whatever, quite some times it actually misses focus because it "wobbles" around it or it goes to the background if it is easier to focus on it or whatever.
Click to expand...
AF-C is never as accurate as AF-S. PDAF is much faster, but CDAF is more accurate. That's why cameras have both.
ARSPR said:
But you'll see how this camera has a nearly perfect hit rate. It will perfectly compensate whatever happens (the target moves, you move, you reframe, you and your target are perfectly still, whatever). Therefore just forget about AF, believe in your camera, and you'll be happier.

For sure you'll get some misses, but every single camera misses sometimes even in AF-S.
Click to expand...
 
Digital Nigel said:
ARSPR said:
AF-C + Tracking. Period. Forget about everything else even when you just need AF-S. Therefore even AF-A is a non-feature.
Click to expand...
I'm afraid I don't agree. Unless I actually want to track something, AF-A with a zone area in the upper centre of the frame remains a good default setting.
Digital Nigel said:
My 2 month old camera is there and I haven't changed AF Mode a single time since my early brand new tests.

In other brands, AF-C is not as reliable as AF-S. If the camera tries to keep focus on whatever, quite some times it actually misses focus because it "wobbles" around it or it goes to the background if it is easier to focus on it or whatever.
Click to expand...
AF-C is never as accurate as AF-S. PDAF is much faster, but CDAF is more accurate. That's why cameras have both.
Digital Nigel said:
But you'll see how this camera has a nearly perfect hit rate. It will perfectly compensate whatever happens (the target moves, you move, you reframe, you and your target are perfectly still, whatever). Therefore just forget about AF, believe in your camera, and you'll be happier.

For sure you'll get some misses, but every single camera misses sometimes even in AF-S.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Well if you say so it's probably true, but with my zoom lenses (G 16-55 and 70-350) AF-C precision is more than enough. I don't see either slightly front or backfocused pictures but only clear misses sometimes. Therefore the risk of something changing after a focus lock in AF-S is much higher than that eventual less AF-C precision.

OTOH I do not think CDAF is normally used even in AF-S. I don't have enough experience yet but CDAF means focus hunting, (but maybe in Panasonic with their focus from defocus algorithms). I've shot very little in AF-S, but I didn't see any kind of focus hunting. More over my previous Samsung NX1 clearly reverted to CDAF in low contrast and low light situations and focus hunting was very obvious.

EDITED. Right after finishing that post I've just grabbed my camera and I've made some quick tests of extremely low light and low contrast situations in my house... And yes I can assure you even in AF-C the camera will try to CDAF (with its obvious focus hunting). Therefore, why is AF-S going to be more precise than AF-C?

(Remember that you have a Priority Set setting in the very first AF menu for either AF-S and AF-C. I've set both in AF and, yes, I've sometimes noticed small delays in continuous bursts not because the buffer is full but because the camera is trying to correctly keep focus, I suppose. Maybe your experience with AF-S being more precise than AF-C is because of this setting?).
 
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Henry Richardson said:
My main interest is street life photography (although I do other stuff too) and I have a selection of photos on my photo website:

https://bakubo.myportfolio.com/

Sometimes things happen very fast and I need to just react. I am hoping that the very advanced Sony AF system will help in getting more shots of people in focus in those sudden situations. I just take single shots, no machine gunning.

Do people here have recommendations for AF settings for my use case?

I am hoping to get very fast response, recognition, and accurate focus. I have been doing this sort of photography for a few decades and with my less advanced AF cameras I have used over the years I get a lot in focus, but things sometimes happen so fast and I get the focus point in the wrong place, etc. that having a camera with very fast human subject detection and AF sure would be nice. :-)
Click to expand...
Although a super quick, no-time-to-make-careful-adjustments situation is not every photo, they do happen sometimes. You turn a corner and suddenly see something happening right now, you are walking along on a city sidewalk with people all around you and the people in front of you which partially block your view of people approaching suddenly move away and you see something, or you are walking, hear laughter, turn around and right behind you something appears, your view will be blocked by someone walking into the frame in 1 second, and so on. Even 1-2 seconds delay is too late.

I have been doing this for many years. Yes, I know about manual zone focus, hyperfocal distance, and various uses of AF too -- which all have their own downsides too. This is about, I hope, making use of the supposedly super-duper Sony A6700 AF to try to improve my chances in these tough situations.

We all know, for example, that bird photographers, bird in flight photographers, etc. could use a manual focus, single focal length lens on a 8x10 view camera, but it would be much more difficult. :-) Newer tech makes the hit rate for getting moving birds, birds behind brush, etc. in focus more often. Not perfect, but much, much better. They and many people on these forums applaud that stuff. Same for sports, great video AF, and so on. All of these situations are somewhat different. My street life photography is also different than the birds and sports situations. Anyway, I am still experimenting with the A6700 AF trying to find something that is better than the simpler, lower tech, more primitive AF of my Olympus E-M10 II and PEN-F and that will allow a higher percentage of in focus shots for the situations that I am talking about.

Here are a few examples of situations such as the ones I mentioned above that I was lucky to be able to both react in time and the camera was able to do a reasonable job too. I do not care whether you like them or dislike them. :-) I post them just to give examples so you can see what I am talking about. Sometimes things happen so fast I only am able to bring the camera partially up and just fire off the shutter hoping that I have not missed the fleeting moment. Hoping that the AF will do a reasonable job. Sometimes yes, often no.

Japan:

d9b36258a468401b9a6cf278817388c6.jpg


Thailand:

1ab05c4cab6843799369f7bdd57cae40.jpg


Japan:

View attachment 3589304

7ad0c8fa13eb4dbc954df26b1c57c4c0.jpg


Hawaii:

a56314b2a3d14637a22aaee14f5e2e7f.jpg


Japan:

c3601d59d27a4b5389e2f04fc80bbe1f.jpg


Turkey:

7c984869835841d6afbbfecc883b4afc.jpg


Malaysia:

5f59e1c43df14062ba1f96a478d9a12f.jpg


83f3352b276840e7abe9b23144826b4e.jpg


Thailand:

8026d545275d4a8aa5a843c48d347d46.jpg


Japan:

5c01cc02fda1415e93cd3a24f2ea94bc.jpg


Hawaii:

3969ee0a50424065b602d8e16d2afb6b.jpg


bbf9f0a3b238410a92d71a0587f6081e.jpg
 

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Henry Richardson said:
Henry Richardson said:
My main interest is street life photography (although I do other stuff too) and I have a selection of photos on my photo website:

https://bakubo.myportfolio.com/

Sometimes things happen very fast and I need to just react. I am hoping that the very advanced Sony AF system will help in getting more shots of people in focus in those sudden situations. I just take single shots, no machine gunning.

Do people here have recommendations for AF settings for my use case?

I am hoping to get very fast response, recognition, and accurate focus. I have been doing this sort of photography for a few decades and with my less advanced AF cameras I have used over the years I get a lot in focus, but things sometimes happen so fast and I get the focus point in the wrong place, etc. that having a camera with very fast human subject detection and AF sure would be nice. :-)
Click to expand...
Although a super quick, no-time-to-make-careful-adjustments situation is not every photo, they do happen sometimes. You turn a corner and suddenly see something happening right now, you are walking along on a city sidewalk with people all around you and the people in front of you which partially block your view of people approaching suddenly move away and you see something, or you are walking, hear laughter, turn around and right behind you something appears, your view will be blocked by someone walking into the frame in 1 second, and so on. Even 1-2 seconds delay is too late.

I have been doing this for many years. Yes, I know about manual zone focus, hyperfocal distance, and various uses of AF too -- which all have their own downsides too. This is about, I hope, making use of the supposedly super-duper Sony A6700 AF to try to improve my chances in these tough situations.

We all know, for example, that bird photographers, bird in flight photographers, etc. could use a manual focus, single focal length lens on a 8x10 view camera, but it would be much more difficult. :-) Newer tech makes the hit rate for getting moving birds, birds behind brush, etc. in focus more often. Not perfect, but much, much better. They and many people on these forums applaud that stuff. Same for sports, great video AF, and so on. All of these situations are somewhat different. My street life photography is also different than the birds and sports situations. Anyway, I am still experimenting with the A6700 AF trying to find something that is better than the simpler, lower tech, more primitive AF of my Olympus E-M10 II and PEN-F and that will allow a higher percentage of in focus shots for the situations that I am talking about.

Here are a few examples of situations such as the ones I mentioned above that I was lucky to be able to both react in time and the camera was able to do a reasonable job too. I do not care whether you like them or dislike them. :-) I post them just to give examples so you can see what I am talking about. Sometimes things happen so fast I only am able to bring the camera partially up and just fire off the shutter hoping that I have not missed the fleeting moment. Hoping that the AF will do a reasonable job. Sometimes yes, often no.

Japan:

d9b36258a468401b9a6cf278817388c6.jpg


Thailand:

1ab05c4cab6843799369f7bdd57cae40.jpg


Japan:

View attachment 3589304

7ad0c8fa13eb4dbc954df26b1c57c4c0.jpg


Hawaii:

a56314b2a3d14637a22aaee14f5e2e7f.jpg


Japan:

c3601d59d27a4b5389e2f04fc80bbe1f.jpg


Turkey:

7c984869835841d6afbbfecc883b4afc.jpg


Malaysia:

5f59e1c43df14062ba1f96a478d9a12f.jpg


83f3352b276840e7abe9b23144826b4e.jpg


Thailand:

8026d545275d4a8aa5a843c48d347d46.jpg


Japan:

5c01cc02fda1415e93cd3a24f2ea94bc.jpg


Hawaii:

3969ee0a50424065b602d8e16d2afb6b.jpg


bbf9f0a3b238410a92d71a0587f6081e.jpg
Click to expand...
Very nice pictures.

I'm no expert but my bet would be (and pretty obvious nevertheless): AF-C with Continuous Drive at Highest speed (your bursts are going to be extremely short in any case), Human recognition, AF zone in Wide Tracking (you have to fully rely on your camera selecting the right target, no time to select one yourself). And I don't know what to tell you about AF Priority (probably AF better than balanced or shutter release, nevertheless?) or AF tracking persistence (or even the Human fine tuning values). You'll have to experiment yourself.
 
ARSPR said:
Digital Nigel said:
ARSPR said:
AF-C + Tracking. Period. Forget about everything else even when you just need AF-S. Therefore even AF-A is a non-feature.
Click to expand...
I'm afraid I don't agree. Unless I actually want to track something, AF-A with a zone area in the upper centre of the frame remains a good default setting.
ARSPR said:
My 2 month old camera is there and I haven't changed AF Mode a single time since my early brand new tests.

In other brands, AF-C is not as reliable as AF-S. If the camera tries to keep focus on whatever, quite some times it actually misses focus because it "wobbles" around it or it goes to the background if it is easier to focus on it or whatever.
Click to expand...
AF-C is never as accurate as AF-S. PDAF is much faster, but CDAF is more accurate. That's why cameras have both.
ARSPR said:
But you'll see how this camera has a nearly perfect hit rate. It will perfectly compensate whatever happens (the target moves, you move, you reframe, you and your target are perfectly still, whatever). Therefore just forget about AF, believe in your camera, and you'll be happier.

For sure you'll get some misses, but every single camera misses sometimes even in AF-S.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Well if you say so it's probably true, but with my zoom lenses (G 16-55 and 70-350) AF-C precision is more than enough. I don't see either slightly front or backfocused pictures but only clear misses sometimes. Therefore the risk of something changing after a focus lock in AF-S is much higher than that eventual less AF-C precision.

OTOH I do not think CDAF is normally used even in AF-S. I don't have enough experience yet but CDAF means focus hunting, (but maybe in Panasonic with their focus from defocus algorithms). I've shot very little in AF-S, but I didn't see any kind of focus hunting. More over my previous Samsung NX1 clearly reverted to CDAF in low contrast and low light situations and focus hunting was very obvious.

EDITED. Right after finishing that post I've just grabbed my camera and I've made some quick tests of extremely low light and low contrast situations in my house... And yes I can assure you even in AF-C the camera will try to CDAF (with its obvious focus hunting). Therefore, why is AF-S going to be more precise than AF-C?

(Remember that you have a Priority Set setting in the very first AF menu for either AF-S and AF-C. I've set both in AF and, yes, I've sometimes noticed small delays in continuous bursts not because the buffer is full but because the camera is trying to correctly keep focus, I suppose. Maybe your experience with AF-S being more precise than AF-C is because of this setting?).
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I happened to read this:

www.the-digital-picture.com

Sony Alpha 6700 Review

Is the Sony Alpha 6700 right for you? Learn all you need to know in The-Digital-Picture.com's review!
www.the-digital-picture.com www.the-digital-picture.com

The a6700's phase-detection AF point count is 759, and the low light AF capability is to EV -3 (quite dark, though not as dark as supported by some other MILCs).

Does the a6700 always defocus and refocus in single shot mode (AF-S)? Yes, but with a high-performing lens, focusing is fast.
 
ARSPR said:
Very nice pictures.
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Thank you.
ARSPR said:
I'm no expert but my bet would be (and pretty obvious nevertheless): AF-C with Continuous Drive at Highest speed (your bursts are going to be extremely short in any case), Human recognition, AF zone in Wide Tracking (you have to fully rely on your camera selecting the right target, no time to select one yourself). And I don't know what to tell you about AF Priority (probably AF better than balanced or shutter release, nevertheless?) or AF tracking persistence (or even the Human fine tuning values). You'll have to experiment yourself.
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Thank you for the suggestions. I am still experimenting and trying different things. There are so many settings and combinations of settings that it takes time to hone in which ones will work best for each particular type of photography and situation that different people do. That is one of the reasons I highly value having 3 or 4 memory settings on the mode dial. On my Olympus cameras I have 4 and I set them up with different settings so that usually without even looking I can quickly change as I am bringing the camera up and I know exactly how the camera will be set.
 
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Henry Richardson said:
ARSPR said:
I don't think that's a bug but an intended feature even if you don't like it. I mean:
  • The camera memorizes whatever changes you do in your current PASM dial position. It doesn't matter what it is and in which position of PASM you are. So if I've set JPG only (or whatever) the camera will stay in JPG only eternally, no matter how many times I turn it off and on.
  • Memory settings are only recalled when you actually go to that PASM dial position. Therefore it's just when I arrive at 1, that whatever has been stored in 1 is recalled.
You are calling "off/on doesn't restore my memory" a bug. But quite a lot of people might call "off/on has moved my last settings" a bug. More over, I do feel in that second group myself. I feel the way the camera behaves is much "safer" and predictable.
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Of course, I can't say whether this weird behavior is intentional by Sony, but I will say that I have owned many cameras with memory settings on the mode dial from Olympus, Panasonic, and Canon. None of them do what Sony does in this situation. The memory settings set the camera to a known state on all of them. Only this A6700 does not do that. It makes the memory setting meaningless in the case I wrote about because in that case it is no different than not using a memory setting. I still maintain that this is a bug.
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I have to admit, I'd love it, if my Olympus camera would work like that. I switch it on and off quite often in a given situation and all the time have to change the parameter back from the memory setting to what I want.
 
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