A6700: AF settings for street life

For some types of photos I prefer to use Back Button Focus and for other types I prefer the default Shutter Button Focus.

Unfortunately, I cannot find how to save the menu selection AF w/Shutter in one of the 3 camera memory locations on the mode dial. When I save settings to one of the camera memory locations it remembers other settings, but it does not remember the setting for AF w/Shutter. Probably there is a setting buried in the menu I have not yet found to make it save that. Anyone know how to do it? Thank you.

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...

I thought I would update this thread about the original subject. After trying all of the AF settings I finally decided that my hopes for the super-duper AF were not met for my use case so I have just been using zone focus for the last couple of months. Oh well. I thought there was a chance the A6700 AF would work well in this particular use case, but not so much. Note, I am not saying that the A6700 video AF, tracking AF, are not wonderful. Everyone says they are, although I have never used any of that so I don't personally know. I have no reason to doubt it is wonderful for those cases.

The problem with my use case is that the initial focus target acquisition and AF is just good, but not great, I think. I am sure if I was doing tracking with machine gun shots or video that once it locked on it would hold on, but that is not the type of photography I do.

Since 2012 I have been using various m4/3 cameras, Olympus and Panasonic, but mostly Olympus for this type of shooting. For years I have been using the E-M10 II, PEN-F, and E-M1 II. Olympus is widely accepted to have the worst face detect AF of probably any company (although the new OM-1 II is claimed to be a bit better). And yet, I have found over time that even my lowly E-M10 II gets more hits in this situation than my A6700. But the E-M10 II still misses fairly often. So for this particular case I would rank them this way:

1. E-M1 II
2. PEN-F, E-M10 II (essentially equal, I think)
3. A6700

Over a couple of months I just noticed I was getting more misses with my A6700 than those Olympus cameras. But even the E-M1 II does not very reliably do it so for it also I would sometimes switch to zone focus, but not always. With my A6700 I pretty much always use zone focus for this situation.

It is okay though because there are other great points about the A6700 and it is the one I use about 90% of the time now. Just disappointed that this one case which I had hoped it would do better than the Olympus cameras it actually does slightly worse.

And I will repeat, that for video and tracking AF I have no reason at all to doubt the high praise it often gets. My use case is different though.

Later I will post about my favorite things about the A6700. I have never seen a single person mention them here before so, I suppose, what I care about is not the same as everyone else.

When it misses, is there an apparent reason (is it not focused or focused on the wrong thing)? With the first, AF-C/AF-S priority would potentially matter; if the second, did you play around with the recognition submenus? I'm still trying to optimize some of those for birds/bugs.

After thousand of pictures over a few trips, the term "misfocus" practically does not exist for me with the 6700. Perhaps the use of recent Sony lenses helps a bit here. The only case where I see camera focus on something else is when camera AI picks on human body parts near the frame periphery which parts I do not even notice when taking the picture. It is why I use zone focus when there is a crowd. This is particularly important in concerts as camera would focus on the back of the heads below the stage level.

Human recognition is very advanced on the 6700 as it can recognize human body parts that barely make it into the frame.

gkstar said:

After thousand of pictures over a few trips, the term "misfocus" practically does not exist for me with the 6700. Perhaps the use of recent Sony lenses helps a bit here. The only case where I see camera focus on something else is when camera AI picks on human body parts near the frame periphery which parts I do not even notice when taking the picture. It is why I use zone focus when there is a crowd. This is particularly important in concerts as camera would focus on the back of the heads below the stage level.

Human recognition is very advanced on the 6700 as it can recognize human body parts that barely make it into the frame.

Click to expand...

Indeed the focus system used on the A7RV and A6700 are astoundingly fast and accurate. I use it all the time for birds in flight and for people shots and events. Haven't missed a shot yet that's not in perfect focus. Sad to say even superior to my Z9 in that regard.

gkstar said:

After thousand of pictures over a few trips, the term "misfocus" practically does not exist for me with the 6700. Perhaps the use of recent Sony lenses helps a bit here. The only case where I see camera focus on something else is when camera AI picks on human body parts near the frame periphery which parts I do not even notice when taking the picture. It is why I use zone focus when there is a crowd. This is particularly important in concerts as camera would focus on the back of the heads below the stage level.

Human recognition is very advanced on the 6700 as it can recognize human body parts that barely make it into the frame.

Click to expand...

im picking up a new a6700 in the next week or 2. my a74 af has been faultless. for the poster to say that his em12 has better AF than the a6700 is just not fact at all, ive owned the em12 and it wasnt even as good as my a7r2 the a7iv and a6700 are on another planet.

A74Me said:

gkstar said:

After thousand of pictures over a few trips, the term "misfocus" practically does not exist for me with the 6700. Perhaps the use of recent Sony lenses helps a bit here. The only case where I see camera focus on something else is when camera AI picks on human body parts near the frame periphery which parts I do not even notice when taking the picture. It is why I use zone focus when there is a crowd. This is particularly important in concerts as camera would focus on the back of the heads below the stage level.

Human recognition is very advanced on the 6700 as it can recognize human body parts that barely make it into the frame.

Click to expand...

im picking up a new a6700 in the next week or 2. my a74 af has been faultless. for the poster to say that his em12 has better AF than the a6700 is just not fact at all, ive owned the em12 and it wasnt even as good as my a7r2 the a7iv and a6700 are on another planet.

Click to expand...

Yeah I've owned a OM1 before and frankly their subject tracking is wanting. Not even in the same zip code as the new generation Sony's let alone previous ones. Not sure what motivation would be behind suggesting anything else after real world use of all the cameras out there. Having owned the Canon, Nikon(currently), Olympus, Panasonic top offerings over the last 5 years I won't hesitate to say Sony's got the top tracking out there.

gkstar said:

After thousand of pictures over a few trips, the term "misfocus" practically does not exist for me with the 6700. Perhaps the use of recent Sony lenses helps a bit here. The only case where I see camera focus on something else is when camera AI picks on human body parts near the frame periphery which parts I do not even notice when taking the picture. It is why I use zone focus when there is a crowd. This is particularly important in concerts as camera would focus on the back of the heads below the stage level.

Click to expand...

This has been a big problem with my settings over the years. I like a wide area setting, as it's going to make use of all of those AF pixels and find SOMEthing to focus on! But sometimes it tends to focus on whatever is closest, so I have to consider using center focus sometimes. It also is what I had to do in the old days anyway (center, half-press, recompose), so I'm kind of used to that.

I also have the "touch to focus" setting turned on (my A6500), although, I can't say that I really make use of that. When focus is a concern, a lot of time it's not a static situation.

gkstar said:

Human recognition is very advanced on the 6700 as it can recognize human body parts that barely make it into the frame.

Click to expand...

Sounds impressive, but it's hard for me to think of when you'd actually want it to do that! "Yup, got that disembodied hand over on the side completely in focus!" :-D

GaryW said:

gkstar said:

After thousand of pictures over a few trips, the term "misfocus" practically does not exist for me with the 6700. Perhaps the use of recent Sony lenses helps a bit here. The only case where I see camera focus on something else is when camera AI picks on human body parts near the frame periphery which parts I do not even notice when taking the picture. It is why I use zone focus when there is a crowd. This is particularly important in concerts as camera would focus on the back of the heads below the stage level.

Click to expand...

This has been a big problem with my settings over the years. I like a wide area setting, as it's going to make use of all of those AF pixels and find SOMEthing to focus on! But sometimes it tends to focus on whatever is closest, so I have to consider using center focus sometimes. It also is what I had to do in the old days anyway (center, half-press, recompose), so I'm kind of used to that.

I also have the "touch to focus" setting turned on (my A6500), although, I can't say that I really make use of that. When focus is a concern, a lot of time it's not a static situation.

GaryW said:

Human recognition is very advanced on the 6700 as it can recognize human body parts that barely make it into the frame.

Click to expand...

Sounds impressive, but it's hard for me to think of when you'd actually want it to do that! "Yup, got that disembodied hand over on the side completely in focus!" :-D

Click to expand...

LOL, may be for crime scenes. I wish I could tell the camera to take it easier with AI (for humans) near the edge of the frame.

Henry Richardson said:

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:

• ...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

If your lens is the 16-50 pz (selp1650), Sony released a firmware update last year that was supposed to improve AF performance, so make sure your lens is on version 02.

Use AFC with tracking. Really, just try it

You can set the OM-1 and OM-1Mkii to behave the same way as the Sony if you want…by default it behaves the way you expect it to.

You can set tracking on the OM-1, but it's nowhere near as good as a Sony a6600.

I was talking specifically about the Custom Memory behavior.

I will not get into a comparison of tracking on this forum, but owning and using the OM-1, the OM-1Mkii and the Sony A6700, I would have to say it is close run thing…and depends on whether you are using the AI recognition and eye focus/eye tracking on each camera correctly.

Dave981 said:

Henry Richardson said:

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:

• ...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

If your lens is the 16-50 pz (selp1650), Sony released a firmware update last year that was supposed to improve AF performance, so make sure your lens is on version 02.

Click to expand...

Yes, I have 02 firmware in the 16-50mm lens. I have the 18-135mm too.

I also have the Olympus 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 electronic zoom pancake kit lens for the Olympus E-M10 II.

When you use zone focusing for street, over what ranges do you vary aperture, shutter speed, focusing distance and ISO?

Another way of saying this is to ask what settings parameter space you use.

For example I usually use

• Mode manual,
• Lens FL 20-30mm,
• Aperture f/8-f/ll,
• Shutter 1/250 or faster,
• ISO Auto or ISO 800, depending on light

http://www.flickr.com/photos/flint-hill