F828-bug ? Focus problems, your opinion pls !

About three weeks ago, I bought two DSC F828.
One for me, one for a friend of mine.
Serial-# : 17115xx

It seems to me, that these cameras have the same bug, please be so kind and let me know your opinion.

1. Switch the MODEDIAL into SCN-MODE
2. Push the MENU-BUTTON and select TWILIGHT MODE

Now try to focus on any object, the autofocus does NOT work properly.
Manual focussing in this mode is no problem,
but the autofocus does not work.

What´s up with yours ?

Joerg

Joerg-Engel said:

About three weeks ago, I bought two DSC F828.
One for me, one for a friend of mine.
Serial-# : 17115xx==================

Click to expand...

==== have you bought them in Europe/where
--
Ernet/ Tenre at work

Hi Joerg-Engel,

My 828 has the same bug. It might be a "feature"

Bert

Joerg-Engel said:

About three weeks ago, I bought two DSC F828.
One for me, one for a friend of mine.
Serial-# : 17115xx

It seems to me, that these cameras have the same bug, please be so
kind and let me know your opinion.

1. Switch the MODEDIAL into SCN-MODE
2. Push the MENU-BUTTON and select TWILIGHT MODE

Now try to focus on any object, the autofocus does NOT work properly.
Manual focussing in this mode is no problem,
but the autofocus does not work.

What´s up with yours ?

Joerg

Click to expand...

Thanks Bert for checking it out.

I don´t think that it´s a feature, I think it´s a real bug.
Autofocus in TWILIGHT-MODE worked precisely with my 707
and my 717, so why should SONY ignore this function with the 828 ?

What about your serial-#, please ?

Thanks a lot,

Joerg

Hi, I also got mine at 31th of december. My serial is #1716......

I have tried your bug but mine is working fine in twilight mode (both)

Geert-Jan

Joerg-Engel said:

About three weeks ago, I bought two DSC F828.
One for me, one for a friend of mine.
Serial-# : 17115xx

It seems to me, that these cameras have the same bug, please be so
kind and let me know your opinion.

1. Switch the MODEDIAL into SCN-MODE
2. Push the MENU-BUTTON and select TWILIGHT MODE

Now try to focus on any object, the autofocus does NOT work properly.
Manual focussing in this mode is no problem,
but the autofocus does not work.

What´s up with yours ?

Joerg

Click to expand...

Received mine on Friday from France

Serial is 1714...

Shows same problem.

Gary

Joerg-Engel said:

About three weeks ago, I bought two DSC F828.
One for me, one for a friend of mine.
Serial-# : 17115xx

It seems to me, that these cameras have the same bug, please be so
kind and let me know your opinion.

1. Switch the MODEDIAL into SCN-MODE
2. Push the MENU-BUTTON and select TWILIGHT MODE

Now try to focus on any object, the autofocus does NOT work properly.
Manual focussing in this mode is no problem,
but the autofocus does not work.

What´s up with yours ?

Joerg

Click to expand...

Sorry I was wrong
After some trying, it has difficulties with focusing in twilight mode.
Not for far away points but only problems with objects with lower distance.

valos said:

I have tried your bug but mine is working fine in twilight mode (both)

Geert-Jan

Joerg-Engel said:

About three weeks ago, I bought two DSC F828.
One for me, one for a friend of mine.
Serial-# : 17115xx

It seems to me, that these cameras have the same bug, please be so
kind and let me know your opinion.

1. Switch the MODEDIAL into SCN-MODE
2. Push the MENU-BUTTON and select TWILIGHT MODE

Now try to focus on any object, the autofocus does NOT work properly.
Manual focussing in this mode is no problem,
but the autofocus does not work.

What´s up with yours ?

Joerg

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Thanks for your "re"-try, Geert-Jan.

Concerning objects with lower distance to the camera, the
autofocus starts pumping for a short time and than "gives up"
with an unsharp image on the LCD screen.

Acceptable ?

Joerg

If you are taking a scn or twilight, the idea is to focus to inifinity and make the stop down the iris.

Does that make sense ?

Thanks for your comment, waterskier.

I assume, you experienced the same bug with your 828.

While taking a pic in TWILIGHT MODE, the autofocus starts
working, but doesn´t focus the object.
That means, the camera wants to focus but can´t manage it.
My 707 and 717 also autofocus in TWILIGHT MODE,
it wasn´t any kind of problem.

Because of that I don´t think, the idea is to focus to
inifinity and make the stop down the iris.

Joerg

waterskier said:

If you are taking a scn or twilight, the idea is to focus to
inifinity and make the stop down the iris.

Does that make sense ?

Click to expand...

Joerg-Engel,

I looked in the manual and found that Twilight is for distant scenes under low light conditions and Twilight Portrait is for taking shots with people in the foreground using flash with a scene in the background. So I'm thinking this is by design.

Sincerely,
John Wharton

Hi John,

I verified your explanation in the manual.
You´re ABSOLUTELY right.

Thanks for your help, I really thought it was a bug.

Joerg

John Wharton said:

Joerg-Engel,

I looked in the manual and found that Twilight is for distant
scenes under low light conditions and Twilight Portrait is for
taking shots with people in the foreground using flash with a scene
in the background. So I'm thinking this is by design.

Sincerely,
John Wharton

Click to expand...

But your thinking was not strange because my other Sony (DSC-S70) does the same thing as your other Sony. It's focuses alright.
But the explanation is indeed right (in the manual).

Geert-Jan

Joerg-Engel said:

I verified your explanation in the manual.
You´re ABSOLUTELY right.

Thanks for your help, I really thought it was a bug.

Joerg

John Wharton said:

Joerg-Engel,

I looked in the manual and found that Twilight is for distant
scenes under low light conditions and Twilight Portrait is for
taking shots with people in the foreground using flash with a scene
in the background. So I'm thinking this is by design.

Sincerely,
John Wharton

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

As someone suggested, must be for Evening Landscape.
--
Jim

Joerg-Engel said:

I assume, you experienced the same bug with your 828.

While taking a pic in TWILIGHT MODE, the autofocus starts
working, but doesn´t focus the object.
That means, the camera wants to focus but can´t manage it.
My 707 and 717 also autofocus in TWILIGHT MODE,
it wasn´t any kind of problem.

Because of that I don´t think, the idea is to focus to
inifinity and make the stop down the iris.

Joerg

waterskier said:

If you are taking a scn or twilight, the idea is to focus to
inifinity and make the stop down the iris.

Does that make sense ?

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

The manual says :

"Under dark lighting conditions you can shoot a distant night view"

and then ..

"You cannot use the the following functions in Twilight mode: Macro mode shotting...."

But it doesn't say whether the model will focus to infinity nor at least how many feet away.. :-(

--
Eric... a mature amateur

Hi Joerg,

My cams serial: 17168* . Bought it 4th of jan in a Sony store in Amsterdam. And indeed, far objects are focussed, narrow not.

Bert.

Joerg-Engel said:

Thanks Bert for checking it out.

I don´t think that it´s a feature, I think it´s a real bug.
Autofocus in TWILIGHT-MODE worked precisely with my 707
and my 717, so why should SONY ignore this function with the 828 ?

What about your serial-#, please ?

Thanks a lot,

Joerg

Click to expand...

Joerg-Engel said:

Thanks for your comment, waterskier.

I assume, you experienced the same bug with your 828.

While taking a pic in TWILIGHT MODE, the autofocus starts
working, but doesn´t focus the object.
That means, the camera wants to focus but can´t manage it.
My 707 and 717 also autofocus in TWILIGHT MODE,
it wasn´t any kind of problem.

Because of that I don´t think, the idea is to focus to
inifinity and make the stop down the iris.

Click to expand...

No, I don't own an 828. I was generalizing. When you take a landscape shot you typically want to focus to infinity and stop it down so that more of the picture is in focus. This is a typical program mode for P&S cameras. When I shot underwater with my P&S, I set it to ISO 200 and landscape mode.

Sports mode is typically high ISO for faster shutter speeds, and portrait modes are typically at the largest apeture you can get to put the background out of focus.

Most programs are variations of Sport, Landscape and Portrait programs so I assumed that the scene or twilight mode was similar to a landscape mode.

Twilight might require a tripod and us really long shutter speeds. I usually drive my P&S camera manually at twilight, use a tripod and vary the shutter speeds in the 1/2 - 2 second range.

It's interesting that the F717 manual specifically mentions that the hologram focus assist is inhibited in Twilight mode (while being presumably active in Twilight Portrait), but there's no clear statement about it in the F828 manual. There's no reason to expect the F828 to distinguish any differently between these two modes.

It would make sense for the AF ( without laser assist) to still be active in Twilight mode in order to allow the camera to auto-focus on subjects ranging from, e.g., illuminated shop windows through to distant lights and sunsets. In the absence of such bright targets it's understandable that AF would fail.

Sony has got itself into a bit of a bind with terminology here. I've also seen it refer to the Twilight Portrait class of operation as "Illumination Snap" (U10 manual). It's known in other camps as "slow sync" or something similar, but the problem is that the F717 is permanently in slow sync configuration in most of the automatic and semi-automatic shooting modes, so I guess they had to come up with some other fancy term to use in the SCN suite of presets. Not sure how the F828 behaves in this regard, but this state of affairs has been known to trip up a lot of users through them not realising the slow shutter speeds that can still eventuate, adding ambient light and motion blur to interior shots, when flash is expected to be the primary light source.

Mike

John Wharton said:

Joerg-Engel,

I looked in the manual and found that Twilight is for distant
scenes under low light conditions and Twilight Portrait is for
taking shots with people in the foreground using flash with a scene
in the background. So I'm thinking this is by design.

Sincerely,
John Wharton

Click to expand...

Joerg-Engel,

You're welcome. But I agree with the others. I would have thought this was a bug as well. My previous Sony had two Twilight modes. Twilight and Twilight+. The only difference was the exposure, not the focus. Anyway, I'll have to check this out to see how the two modes perform.

Sincerely,
John