Sony A9 III Concert focus issue w/ A9iii

[akira5]

I’ve been doing a lot of concert photography lately with my a9m3.
The auto focus will focus on a Mic stand or object in front of a musician and then everything beyond it is out of focus.
Also other photographers flashes and cameras get in my frame and screw up focus.
My ideal is to get everything in the frame in sharp focus.

I usually shoot AF-C, Focus area is wide and sometimes Spot XL or spot. Region is Mutli or center spot.
I use a Sigma 14-24mm 2.8 almost always at 14mm. Some say that the sigma motor is slower than a native Sony lens. And to get a Sony 12-24mm. I use back button focus. I also use a godox V1 pro flash set to manual and sometimes TTL for all Shows.
My camera settings are F6.3-8, SS 200-250, ISO 4000-5K. I’ve attached a pic of my issue.

Any feedback appreciated.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Hmmm... How very irritating to get that excellent pic of a mic stand.

All I can say is that my humble a7iv, with wide area, face-eye priority, eye AF would have got that. In fact, if there is a face in the screen, it pretty-much refuses to focus on a thing, I usually only resort to spots when, for some reason that only it knows, it refuses to see a particular face as a face. Rare, but it happens. I wonder why, in that instance, your camera decided to love the stand!

 

[akira5]

Hmmm... How very irritating to get that excellent pic of a mic stand.

All I can say is that my humble a7iv, with wide area, face-eye priority, eye AF would have got that. In fact, if there is a face in the screen, it pretty-much refuses to focus on a thing, I usually only resort to spots when, for some reason that only it knows, it refuses to see a particular face as a face. Rare, but it happens. I wonder why, in that instance, your camera decided to love the stand!

Thanks. I should have used Af eye focus but didn't. a lot of the live shots have crowds and lots of faces so I turn it off. Any advice on wide pics with multiple faces?

 

[iain clyne]

Sometimes you have to go back to single point. I do a lot of rugby and even with face detect it will lock on the wrong face so I use single point to be sure I get what I want in focus.

 

[Roland]

I have mine for birding on tracking xs. I helps with shooting between dense branches.

 

[akira5]

Sometimes you have to go back to single point. I do a lot of rugby and even with face detect it will lock on the wrong face so I use single point to be sure I get what I want in focus.

Thanks.

Sometimes you have to go back to single point. I do a lot of rugby and even with face detect it will lock on the wrong face so I use single point to be sure I get what I want in focus.

Thanks. In single mode it stays on one player moving? Which focus area do you use for rugby?

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Thanks. I should have used Af eye focus but didn't. a lot of the live shots have crowds and lots of faces so I turn it off. Any advice on wide pics with multiple faces?

I use tracking wide for area, eye-autofocus on. If there are several people in the pic, I put the centre of the frame over the face I want and half-press: tracking will hold that eye/face while I recompose. Focus-recompose for the tracking era!

It's quick and usually reliable.

I do a lot of rugby and even with face detect it will lock on the wrong face

But maybe not quick or reliable enough for rugby!

I have focus area on C1: I can go to spot+tracking reasonably quickly. Then I focus-recompose using the spot*.

Thankfully, it is not often, on the Indian classical music stage, that anyone picks up the ball and runs with it .

A couple of years ago, when I was thinking about upgrading from a6500 to a7iv, I was asking around: questions like, how much better is the AF. I always recall one answer that I got: so much better it feels like cheating. Absolutely. The focus is better and quicker than my ability to frame the shot. I call it my expensive point&shoot. I point, it gets the shot. Uncannily often, even when there is more than one person in the frame!


*If the eye/face changes to another person too easily, there is a menu setting for that. I keep min on maximum stickiness. (I expect Ian probably knows that)