Best way to stay in focus shooting fast moving action.

[Badmonk]

Good morning 😊

Sorry to trouble everyone but wanted to ask a quick question. I shoot a lot of fast moving action, people running, sliding, jumping etc (I use Sony A7S2) now I am talking video not stills, and I know the auto focus is very good but say for eg if I shoot on a go pro then the whole scene is always in focus. How would I achieve a similar effect with the A7S2 please?

would I be best to stay in AF but have a very high F stop and change the ISO/shutter as well please?

any other tips or tricks please?

apolgies for all the questions but this is my first time using DSLR’s for video. Thank you for any help.

[IamNic]

Hi @Badmonk,

the GoPro has a fixed focus lens, so everything farther away than 30-50 centimeters (different from GoPro to GoPro, since there are tolerances with the lens calibration) is in focus.

You can't achieve depth of field and other effects you normally desire on camera lens.

There surely are wide angle lenses which you can attach to your camera to achieve the same, yet then you can't really zoom anymore.

To answer your initial question - it is possible, yet you would need to do without certain effects you normally desire on a camera lens.

- Nic

[Badmonk]

Hey Nic

thanks so much for replying. I only used GoPro as an example. Yeah when I am shooting a nice dramatic shot of my actor for eg, pointing a gun and I like to have some bokah, blurring out his face and his gun is nice and focused but when I am shooting a fight scene it would be nice to not have to worry about the focus so my question was, what is the best way to acheive this please? If I am chasing a guy who is running, I can’t rack focus etc and keep him focused all the time, I need the focus to be for the entire scene.

high F stop with a high ISO?