Best AUTOFOCUS Settings for Sony A7IV, A7sIII, FX3, A7III, FX30, A6600, A7c Camera - CINEMATIC VIDEO

In this video I'm going to break down the different autofocus modes used in filmmaking 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 puller. 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 favourite 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 favourite 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's 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 III'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 a 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 keeping 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 focuses on an object once 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% 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 7 to 5 and my subject sensitivity down from 5 to 4. 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 the 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 in autofocus, why bother? If you found this tutorial helpful, come say hi on my social channels. Make sure you keep an eye out on Alpha Universe for more webinars and events like this one. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.