and how to get the best performance out of your sony alpha camera if used correctly autofocus can
add tremendous production value to your films without the need to rig up your camera with
additional focusing systems or making use of a focus builder i use autofocus for the majority
of my work because of how accurate and reliable it is and in many cases i'm confident that autofocus
will give me better results than human control the reason i love autofocus so much is because it
allows me to fully concentrate on the shot and the composition instead of focus something that can
be a distraction when you have to do everything yourself the autofocus system of the sony alpha
cameras are incredibly intuitive and the only thing you need to understand is which mode to use
when and why we're going to use the sony a7s mark iii as an example although the system is pretty
much the same on all the models except for a small tweak and eye autofocus lacking in some of the
older models but more about that later i'm only going to touch on the modes that i actually use
so starting at the top we've got the wide mode the wide mode can be annoying if you don't use it in
the right context because when you're shooting a scene with lots going on you can't predict
or control what the camera will decide to focus on it is however one of my favorite modes to shoot in
when working with people due to the great performance of the real-time eye autofocus I
only use this mode when shooting one individual or at least in a scene where one can only see
the face of one individual eye autofocus is my favorite feature because it doesn't matter how
shallow your depth of field as long as the eye is in critical focus the shot will work
it's incredibly reliable because when the little square appears on your subject
eyes that is your guarantee that the eye is in focus it's the camera's way of saying i got this
once i see the square i stop thinking about the focus and simply concentrate on the shot
all of the alpha models released in 2019 onward have this feature in video mode although previous
bodies like the very popular a7 mark iii can only do it in stills and not in real time video
although the a7 mark 3's face detection works really well it's important to take this into
consideration when buying a body especially if you like shooting talent at shallow depth of field
where eye autofocus will always nail critical focus on a side note a feature i like to use when
shooting in continuous autofocus is hold focus this works well in a scenario where your subject
is not moving but other movements might throw the focus off for example an object going past a lens
like a car or another person i use the shutter button because this is where my hand is already
gripped when shooting video without causing unnecessary shake to the image you simply soft
hold the shutter button and your square will turn green for as long as it stays green it means the
focus is holding and the camera will not try to change the focus this allows you to do creative
shots like this one where the model walks away out of focus next we've got spot focus by far the mode
i use the most i'm skipping zone and center focus because i can get the same results with spot focus
but with more control here you've got the option to select the size of the spot or in this case
the square i mostly use the large square although there are cases where a small and medium square
is required it just depends on what's going on in your scene in this mode the camera will
only focus on the area within the square with eye autofocus given priority within the square
your first option is to use the touchscreen and tapping on the area you want in focus for example
you can do a focus rack between subjects an essential part of narrative storytelling
another way to utilize it is to set your square in the desired area you want the focus to be
and then to move the camera allowing the focus to shift naturally as the square moves over your
subject spot focus is also the mode i use when i require a shot in manual focus so a neat little
trick is to disable continuous autofocus within the camera instead of switching it off on the lens
what this does is it gives your camera the ability to use autofocus on demand
while in manual focus mode giving you quicker focus on a specific subject without trying to
dial it in on the lens manually you can always double check it with the focus magnifier but
it's much faster and in this case having a smaller square gives you more precise focus on an area now
you don't have to hold in a button to keep the focus you simply carry on shooting
knowing that the specific area will stay focused now that we've covered these two modes there's
actually a way to combine them into one you can use spot focusing in wide mode by enabling
it on the screen first make sure touch operation is on and you'll see a small box appear and
tapping on it again will cycle through the different options the first is normal spot focus
but here you don't see the square when this mode is active you can tap anywhere on the screen and
the camera will focus with great accuracy perfect for doing focus racking without switching modes
a new feature that was only recently introduced is the tracker focus tracking works amazing if you
want the camera to keep a subject in focus that is not human or where the camera can't see the eye
like this example where the model is walking with her face away from us but we still want the camera
to keep her in focus you can see how the camera is tracking her movement without any effort
next we've got the focus speed setting as much as i love the insane speed of the sony autofocus
system it's also possible that it focuses too fast which might appear too digital luckily
sony gives you a choice to tweak it to your own liking so here you've got two settings
first you have the transition speed which changes how fast the camera focus on an object
one's focus is initiated the second is the subject sensitivity which is how sensitive the camera is
to changing focus to another subject not to be confused with focus speed but rather how quickly
the camera decides on the subject to focus on for instance in this shot with the slowest sensitivity
the focus only changes after a moment of being on a different subject and not on the talent now
for 90 percent of the shots i do i use it on a specific setting so you're welcome to try it out
for yourself but my go-to is transition down from seven to five and my subject sensitivity down from
five to four there are however instances where it makes sense to choose the fastest sensitivity
for example when you shoot in slow motion going at 100 frames per second you can see that with
a slow setting it feels like the camera takes too long to focus once the footage is slowed down in
this case i usually set my speed to the highest setting so that when the footage is being slowed
down it feels more natural and there you have it it's really just about knowing which modes to use
and why about understanding when to hold focus and when to use spot focus and how to tweak it
to your liking autofocus is here to stay and i can see it becoming a more integral part in modern day
filmmaking with one man operators getting better results than what is humanly possible there will
always be a place for manual focus but if the shot is doable and autofocus why bother
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