Focus Hunting -- A7ii with the 50mm

[ColSebastianMoran]

Anyone else seeing focus hunting.

A7ii with the new 50mm f/1.8 lens. Hunts continuously, pretty bad. With different focus area settings.

I had seen this occasionally with the Sony system, but not as bad as this.

Curiously, "Settings Reset" in the tool-box menu fixes it. Curiously, because it makes me wonder what setting it was that made this happen? Ideas welcome.

 

[KismetSky]

Maybe it was set to AF-C and didn't find any moving objects to lock on to?

 

[f16sunshine]

I heard this about the Sony 50mm f1.8.

One of my favorite lenses in the Canon eos system is the lowly 50mm f1.8. (favorite because of it's flaws)
I was hoping to find similar traits in the Sony lens.

This lens supposedly is designed to focus at the taking aperture.

So for example if you have lowish light and set it to take advantage of the great ISO capabilities of the Sony at say f5.6 for good DOF, the lens will focus stoped down to f5.6 causing it to struggle with finding a contrast.
Do you notice that it hunts more when stopped down?

Why is designed this way? No idea.
Maybe the lens has bad focus shift and Sony uses this method as a work around?

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Tried it at several apertures. Hunted at all apertures, in pretty good light.

Can't be just the low light; it hunted at f/1.8 in good light.

Again, problem disappeared with Settings Reset. Still curious what caused it, what to avoid doing in the future.

Now I have to reconstruct my custom setting choices. If problem turns up again, I'll be back.

 

[f16sunshine]

How about the images?
Does the lens perform nicely IQ wise ?

I'm still curious about this one.
Would like one AF lens for this camera.
I have a couple different fast Zeiss 50mm one in Contax SLR and another in M42.
Spending $700 on a ZA 55mm seems silly but a couple hundred on the Sony 50mm might be ok.... if it works 😱

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Andy, I don't know.

I do know the 55mm f/1.8 Sony/Zeiss is a fab lens. I use it all the time as a portrait lens on my APS Sony bodies, and as a normal on the A7's.

Why did the chicken cross the road? Why rob banks? Why climb mountains? Why buy the inexpensive 50mm when you already have the fab 55mm lens?

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Andy, it works. The 50mm works.

Here's a review that would be meaningful to me.

 

[nikon_sam]

I know the Nikon F4s would hunt when the batteries started to get low...

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

I know the Nikon F4s would hunt when the batteries started to get low...

Thanks Sam. No, the batteries are full-up.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Update:
- The problem came back. None of the obvious things was the problem.

- Success in quieting the problem by updating the camera firmware to Version 4.

So, if you are seeing this hunting behavior with Sony lenses, check your camera body firmware version.