Mastering Sony AutoFocus for a7III a7R a7S a9 a6000 a6400 a6600 ZV-E10 ZV-1

Welcome back to our Modern Day Travel Filmmaking series. This is part two out of five in which I will go over how to take advantage and master the autofocusing system when shooting videos using your Sony Alpha cameras. We're gonna talk about how to properly set up the autofocus settings and what focus areas to use depending on what situation you'll be in. Now, in order to have the fastest, the smoothest, and the most reliable autofocus performance, it's important to use native lenses, meaning lenses that are specifically designed for the Sony E-mount cameras, like the Zeiss Bodyseries. These have full compatibility with the camera's autofocusing system. In this episode, I will be demonstrating with the Sony A73, but know that the setup process is roughly similar with the other latest Sony Alpha cameras. It's just that certain settings may be on a different page, so just a heads up. Let's start off first by making sure our autofocus drive speed and track sensitivity is set to normal and standard. This section can be found in tab two, page two. Autofocus drive speed will control how fast the camera rack focuses. Autofocus track sensitivity controls when the camera should react to grab focus. Should you find the autofocus is not working the way that you want, this will be the first place I would come back to and make adjustments. Next up is setting up face detection autofocus, and this prioritizes the focus on a face above all else. This setting is in tab one, page six, under face slash IAF set. Make sure face detection frame display is enabled as that will tell you which face the camera's focusing on if there are multiple subjects in the shot. In addition to that, make sure subject detection is on human. Now, I would highly recommend placing the face detection autofocus somewhere in your quick function menu setting. That way you can turn it off when you don't need it. Let's say, for example, you are shooting an establishing shot of a building, but there are people in your foreground. Obviously, if you have face detection turned on, the camera will start focusing on their faces and not on the building, thus ruining your shot. Last setup item on the list before we move on to focus area. I would highly recommend programming the autofocus manual focus toggle on one of your custom buttons on your camera. I personally have it on C2. This is going to help you lock in your focus. Oftentimes, I like the camera to achieve focus for me first, but I toggle to manual focus later to keep it from shifting. I will show you some examples on this in just a bit. All right, let's go ahead and jump into the individual focus areas and show you how to use them based on certain situations. This top one right here is wide focusing, and this looks at the entire frame on the screen and focuses on whatever's the closest to it or whatever sticks out the most. Now, I personally like using this focus area with face detection turned on for the sort of talking head style YouTube videos or interviews. This mode works incredibly well for vlogs as well. If I'm out and about, my face is the dominant subject in the frame so it won't focus on other potential faces that are behind me, and I can flip the camera around to show the audience what I'm looking at. Next up is zone focusing. This helps narrow down certain parts of the screen you want to focus on. This is perfect for shots utilizing the rule of thirds like filming an interview or objects placed on one side of the screen. You can control the focus area with the joystick of your camera. Moving on to center focusing, and this is the focus area that I use the most when I'm out traveling. Whenever I'm filming landscapes, I put the main subject of interest in the middle because there might be foreground elements in the shot. The other focus modes will pick up on those instead of focusing on the main subject of interest. With center focusing, I'm honing in specifically on a structure so the camera keeps it in focus as I'm moving towards it or away from it. Let's analyze this shot of Tokyo Skytree Tower really quickly. I want my focus on the tower, but there are cherry blossoms in front of it. If I were to use any other focus areas, the focus will be on the cherry blossoms and not on the tower, so I have to use center focusing. But because I'll be moving left and right, the camera will focus on the cherry blossoms because they will move to the middle. In this situation, the autofocus and manual focus toggle that we set up earlier will come in handy. I first let the camera grab focus of the tower first, then I lock the focus down and begin incorporating movement into my shot. Later, I added another foreground element where I'm sliding out behind from the tree to review the tower. Same principle. I lock down the focus first, then got behind a tree, and then perform my camera movement. The next focus area option is spot focusing, and we have three options for this one. Small, medium, and large. And this is for very specific part of the screen that you want to focus on. For example, if I'm doing any sort of tight detail shots, I would want to be using spot focusing. I can also move this focus area around by using the joystick or the touch capability of the camera. For Sony A9 and A6400 users, you have a very unique autofocus feature called real-time touch focus tracking where you simply tap on the subject or object on the screen. The camera will form a box and stay focused on them. This is helpful for when you want the focus to follow certain moving subjects in the frame, like a sporting situation or a wedding situation. To get this set up, head to the menu and find function of touch operation in tab two and set that to touch tracking. Make sure to enable touch operation in tab five to activate the touch feature. In the next episode, we're gonna focus on the best cinematic settings where we're gonna go over how to get proper exposure, what frame rates to use, and how to shoot slow motion effectively. And if you're just joining us on this journey to modern day travel filmmaking out here in Japan, you'll be able to find a full playlist of the entire series somewhere here on the screen. Guys, thank you so much for watching. I'll see you guys in the next video. Peace.