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Sony Alpha A1

General Commentary on Sony A1 Eye AF

This page starts my evaluation of the Sony A1 for its Eye AF feature, for humans, animals, birds.

The first thing to notice with the Sony A1 is its hyper responsiveness. No other camera I have ever used comes close to how snappy it feels, both when focusing and pressing the shutter release. The zero-blackout is super nice as well.

With Eye AF tracking enabled and with AF-C, it can be seen in real time that the A1 not only tracks eyes straight-on, but at all angles, up or down, occluded or fully open. It even reliably tracked Tigger’s eyelid with the eyes closed for several seconds. Pretty impressive!

I had to work hard to forget about the AF sensor indicators; I am so used to focus-and-recompose and paying attention to where I put them. My first shoot taught me that I will have to retrain myself for this type of shooting to focus on the composition and only the composition—which is a GOOD thing.

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Diglloyd Guide to Mirrorless is by yearly subscription. Subscribe now for about 25 cents a day ($90/year).
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Diglloyd Guide to Mirrorless offers comprehensive integrated coverage of most APS-C and full frame mirrorless cameras and lenses.

Special emphasis is placed on Sony full-frame, including Sony lenses and the high performance Zeiss Batis and Zeiss Loxia lenses plus Rokinon/Samyang and others. Fujifilm X, Olympus and Panasonic M4/3, Sigma dp Merrill and dp/sd Quattro are also covered in depth. Years in the making, it offers a wealth of material for choosing and using a mirrorless camera.

  • Make better images by learning how to get the best results right away. For example, the best way to set up your Sony camera.
  • Save money by choosing the right lens for your needs the first time, particularly with the numerous lenses available for Sony.
  • Make better images, a sort of “cheat sheet” saving yourself months or years of ad-hoc learning—best practices and how-to and processing parameters are discussed and shown.
  • Jaw-dropping image quality found nowhere else utilizing Retina-grade images up to full camera resolution, plus large crops.
  • Real world examples with insights found nowhere else. Make sharper images just by understanding lens behavior you won’t read about elsewhere.
  • Aperture series from wide open through stopped down, showing the full range of lens performance and bokeh.
  • Optical quality analysis of field curvature, focus shift, sharpness, flare, distortion, and performance in the field.

Want a preview? Click on any page below to see an excerpt as well as extensive blog coverage, for example on Sony.

Tigger thinks brains are better than eyes
f2.8 @ 1/30 sec handheld EyeAF=Animal, ISO 4000; 2021-03-15 19:28:11
Sony A1 + Sony FE 12-24mm f/2.8 GM @ 24mm
RAW: LACA corrected, push 1 stops, +67 Shadows, +30 Whites, +50 Dehaze, +10 Clarity, Chroma NR {10}

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