Most A7RII users won't be aware of this problem but it exists for all of you.
To me Mirrorless means a DSLR without a mirror. I expect my camera to focus with the lens wide open at maximum aperture and when I press the shutter button the lens closes down to the aperture I have chosen, the shutter activates and a shot is taken. That is not the case with the A7RII!
We all know the Sony G series lenses are state of the art but like a lot of high end lenses with large glass elements they can suffer from focus shift. This means the focus point obtained when focused with the lens wide open actually moves when the lens closes to a smaller aperture when taking a shot. Getting a badly focused photo isn't always down to the person taking the shot, in some cases it's down to the camera and lens.
Sony knew some of its top lenses suffered from this whereas most users aren't aware of the problem of focus shift. They "solved" the problem by including a change to the focusing system in the firmware updates. Now your A7RII doesn't perform like a DSLR. When using AF-C it obtains an initial focus lock with the lens wide open and when it's roughly correct the lens closes down, adjusts the focus as required and then tries to track the subject. Most people like bokeh and shoot everything wide open to maximise it but what happens if you're shooting something at f8? It fails and fails miserably!
I was at a fashion shoot recently. Like most photographers I want the person in focus but since the clothes are the main subject of fashion they must be sharp and so I set my aperture at f8. Most would assume that f8 would ruin the bokeh but that's not the case. Between 20 and 30 feet the area in focus is only about 2 to 3 feet using a 200mm lens. That would ensure the outfits would be in focus and everything else would be blurred - perfect. What I didn't know was that the new focus system closes the lens to f8 to focus and at f8 the phase detection AF system is disabled, switching you to contrast detection whilst using the reduced light coming through a closed f8 aperture - not good. I ended up with the worst focus hunting I have ever seen. I couldn't focus on anything and missed shot after shot! Please bear in mind I was not trying to track a fast sport or extremely fast motorsports, I was trying to track someone walking at 3 to 4 miles an hour and still my A7RII couldn't cope. I had 6 lenses with me, 5 of them are fast primes and the same thing happened with all of them. The shoot was ruined!
I couldn't believe my wonderful camera had failed so badly (the A7RII is the finest camera I have ever used) and so I spent the next 2 days researching it. I discovered it is a well known problem, the photography community knows about it and is up in arms about it. Sony are also aware of it and have been for over a year and have done nothing about it despite being approached by upset photographers and in some cases by well known websites on their behalf - Sony has done nothing. A high end camera like the A7RII shouldn't need a work around to fix a basic problem like this...but it seems there isn't one anyway and so the photography community has asked and begged Sony for a firmware update that allows the photographer to chose between wide open focusing and closed focusing. So far Sony have let us down and badly!
Try it, put your A7RII in AF-C tracking mode, set your aperture at f8 or f11 and then try to follow focus something and see what happens... absolutely terrible! In effect, Sony had taken all of my £1000 plus lenses and decided for me that I can use them as long as I don't go past f5.6!!! Please try this and see how you do. In the meantime Sony, come on get your finger out and finally solve this problem!
One last thing...if they've crippled the A7RII so badly what's to stop them doing the same with the A9 in an effort to make the G lenses more accurate? Nothing it would seem.... I want the A9 but I'm not buying it until they prove they care and fix my A7RII.
I suspect it won't be long before Sony remove this post... ah well...
