70-350 off focus?

Unfortunately, I have my 70-350 (mounted on A6700) slid down from an open backpack compartment to the floor (about 40-50cm). Ever since I suspect it started missing focusing. I took it a few days ago for some outdoor shooting. It appears that in many cases, the focus point was set correctly (as can be shown by Sony VIewer), but the actual focus area is slightly closer or further than the object. I am not sure if it actually malfunctions or just has a hard time focusing due to low light and a challenging background.


The focus seems to be on the grass while the focus point is set to the head










Here the entire bord was focused on but again it seems that only the grass came out sharp








here it seems that the vegetation closer than the object came out in focus







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flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/148574373@N05/

Sorry to hear about the accident.

Do you have the release priority set as AF or Release in these options?

MENU → (Focus) → [AF/MF] → [Priority Set in AF-S]

MENU → (Focus) → [AF/MF] → [Priority Set in AF-C]

Its possible that if your release priority is set to release, it might not have locked focus on the subject when you press the shutter.

Try changing to AF if its not already set to that option and try.

Good luck.

First, do a test with solid support, good speed and in good light with good contrast on the subject. Try different apertures & focal lengths and distance.

If that works, you can try increasingly more difficult focusing situations - low light, low contrast.

If you find that it doesn't focus as well as it used to before, send it in.

My 200-600G started having intermittent focusing issues a year or so ago. I sent it in to Protech who are sony authorized in the US. Expensive, but the lens works perfectly now.

tarapada focus said:

Sorry to hear about the accident.

Do you have the release priority set as AF or Release in these options?

MENU → (Focus) → [AF/MF] → [Priority Set in AF-S]

MENU → (Focus) → [AF/MF] → [Priority Set in AF-C]

Its possible that if your release priority is set to release, it might not have locked focus on the subject when you press the shutter.

Try changing to AF if its not already set to that option and try.

Good luck.

Click to expand...

AF was set as a priority for both AF-S and AF-C. In the screenshots I posted, it appears that the AF had no trouble locking on the object.

Newbie Phewbie said:

First, do a test with solid support, good speed and in good light with good contrast on the subject. Try different apertures & focal lengths and distance.

If that works, you can try increasingly more difficult focusing situations - low light, low contrast.

If you find that it doesn't focus as well as it used to before, send it in.

My 200-600G started having intermittent focusing issues a year or so ago. I sent it in to Protech who are sony authorized in the US. Expensive, but the lens works perfectly now.

Click to expand...

I tried back at home setting batteries at a different distance from the lens, focusing every time on another one, and there didn't seem to be any issues. I wonder if it has something to do with the focal lens (indoors I used 70mm, outdoors varying focal length) or focus mode (indoors AF-S, outdoors AF-C).























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flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/148574373@N05/

While the others have great suggestions, I thought I'd add a couple of observations. Using my A6500, I found that wide-area focus points often focused on the foreground vegetation rather than the subject -- I switched to a center-focus mode, which worked well. My other suggestion is to step-down the aperture a bit, as the focal plane is very narrow. (As a bonus, it's slightly sharper stepped down a notch.)

GaryW said:

While the others have great suggestions, I thought I'd add a couple of observations. Using my A6500, I found that wide-area focus points often focused on the foreground vegetation rather than the subject -- I switched to a center-focus mode, which worked well. My other suggestion is to step-down the aperture a bit, as the focal plane is very narrow. (As a bonus, it's slightly sharper stepped down a notch.)

Click to expand...

I believe your suggestion is relevant when the focus is locked on the wrong object. In that case, it makes sense to narrow the focus area. As far as I am concerned this is not the case I am having, as the focus locking seems to be fine, but the actual focus is not on the object

GaryW said:

While the others have great suggestions, I thought I'd add a couple of observations. Using my A6500, I found that wide-area focus points often focused on the foreground vegetation rather than the subject -- I switched to a center-focus mode, which worked well. My other suggestion is to step-down the aperture a bit, as the focal plane is very narrow. (As a bonus, it's slightly sharper stepped down a notch.)

Click to expand...

Stopping down wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference to these images. The birds are way out of focus.

David Rez said:

tarapada focus said:

Sorry to hear about the accident.

Do you have the release priority set as AF or Release in these options?

MENU → (Focus) → [AF/MF] → [Priority Set in AF-S]

MENU → (Focus) → [AF/MF] → [Priority Set in AF-C]

Its possible that if your release priority is set to release, it might not have locked focus on the subject when you press the shutter.

Try changing to AF if its not already set to that option and try.

Good luck.

Click to expand...

AF was set as a priority for both AF-S and AF-C. In the screenshots I posted, it appears that the AF had no trouble locking on the object.

Newbie Phewbie said:

First, do a test with solid support, good speed and in good light with good contrast on the subject. Try different apertures & focal lengths and distance.

If that works, you can try increasingly more difficult focusing situations - low light, low contrast.

If you find that it doesn't focus as well as it used to before, send it in.

My 200-600G started having intermittent focusing issues a year or so ago. I sent it in to Protech who are sony authorized in the US. Expensive, but the lens works perfectly now.

Click to expand...

I tried back at home setting batteries at a different distance from the lens, focusing every time on another one, and there didn't seem to be any issues. I wonder if it has something to do with the focal lens (indoors I used 70mm, outdoors varying focal length) or focus mode (indoors AF-S, outdoors AF-C).

Click to expand...

Testing the focus at 70mm isn't going to help here. You need to test the lens at 350mm. Preferably outside in good daylight so you aren't shooting at high ISOs. If the light is not good, put the camera on a tripod so you can shoot 100 ISO. A brick wall is as good as anything to test the AF. If the camera/lens can't focus on the wall using AF you'll soon find out. If it can't, use manual focus to ascertain that the lens itself is still pin-sharp after dropping it.

Hi,

from the shown examples I wouldn't take the risk to tell apart what might be a drop-related damage and what might be a simple misfocus that can easily happen under the shown/given circumstances. What you need for checking is testing under well controlled conditions in a situation where AF wouldn't fail to set correct focus. Good light (daylight), lens set to full zoom, aperture full open, low ISO, ideally with tripod: what you want to test is the AF so it's a pretty clever approach to exclude as many other influences as possible.

You should bear in mind that grass foreground and background, twigs, leaf but also water bodies can trigger an AF lock off the subject - the more likely BTW the smaller the subject in the frame. So testing AF under such challenging circumstances pretty likely doesn't tell the true story about the AF performance. The result only tells us that the AF was fooled and didn't lock on the spot where it should have (even more if there can be found areas in the frame which ARE in focus).

From a pure technical POV today's AF-systems work at sensor plane; there isn't anymore a separate AF unit which might get misalinged optically (AF-sensor vs. plane of the image taking sensor) by a drop like in A-mount times.

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Cheers,
Michael Fritzen

Check if the focus motor is working as intended, or if it has slowed down after the fall. The way to do this is to focus alternatively on a near and far object and see if it takes longer now (of course, this is subjective).

The best course of action is to get the lens examined professionally if you're repeatedly missing focus.

Hi all,

I returned to the same place to do some more tests on the 70-350 test and compare it with the Tamron 150-500 test that I usually use for wildlife shooting. At this time, I managed to arrive earlier so I had more light, in addition to having shot with hight contrast objects.

It seems that this time I had no photos with the discrepancy between where the focus was aimed and where the actual focus was. There were some cases when the AF didn't track the object appropriately. Perhaps it was due to still far from great daylight lightning conditions, and probably the 70-350 focus is not as good as i remembered it, especially compared to 150-500.

Here are some screenshots of the focus frame of images shot with the 70-350


seems like quite good focus, despite somehow challenging background




Almost perfect eye focus




Few second later, quite odd mess up,




And once again perfect eye focus




Total mess up, yet the focus is indeed where the focus frame is




Quite good focus




and again. a few seconds later and a total mess up




and again, but on the other side of the object




Here, it seems like quite a good focus. despite the background

Just for reference - two shots with the 150-500 where it seems it handled more challenging focus tasks with better results (although it also had quite a few misses)









Any thoughts? Does it still make sense to have the 70-350 tested or it seems to be normally working, given that it is not high end telephoto lens?



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flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/148574373@N05/

Sony support (hopefully their 2 line) may have some thoughts/experience on what it might be, probably worth pinging them.

David Rez said:

Any thoughts? Does it still make sense to have the 70-350 tested or it seems to be normally working, given that it is not high end telephoto lens?

Click to expand...

The Canon R7 has very similar symptoms, so does Nikon ("My focus box is HERE but the sharpest parts of the image are over THERE!?").

Canon R7 user Duade Paton vented his frustration in a series of YouTube videos. The most informative one has comments from Canon Japan. The entire video should be watched, but the meatiest parts start at 2:35 (Canon comments) and at 8:11 (field testing).

BTW, PNG format doesn't support EXIF metadata natively, the JPEG format does. Images with EXIF data make it easier for us to analyze photo problems. None of your uploaded photos have EXIF data.

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Lance H

Thank you,

The photos I posts are actulally screenshots from Sony image viewer as it is the only software I have that shows were the focus point was set