bleyton Loc: Los Angeles, CA

Hi, first time posting in this section.

I purchased a Sony A6000 a few weeks ago, so I took it out for a spin this weekend. We have a nice wildlife reserve close-by where they have a lake with lots of birds.

I'm really just trying to get comfortable with the camera, and I am practicing my focusing and tracking. One thing I noticed is that whenever I try to focus on birds (mostly ducks) sitting in the water, the camera seems to want to focus on the water in front of my subject. I change my aim, and keep trying, but it's difficult to get it to focus on my subject.

I am using the 55-210 kit lens, and I have the focus set to Wide. I tried switching to Center, but didn't really have any better luck.

I have had varying success with birds in the air though - some shots come out great, others not so much. I am loving the 11 fps that the A6000 can shoot, though it's really easy to get 11 out of focus shots in a row :-0

Are there any tricks to focusing reliably on my targets?

Thanks,

Brian

bleyton Loc: Los Angeles, CA

Hmmm. No ideas?

While you are thinking about it, here are some of the shots I took over the last few days that I thought were pretty nice. Tell me what you think.

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OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

I don't know Sony camera's, but a couple thoughts, 1st, I'd post a water/duck shot your having a problem with, by what you said, sounds like it could be a front focusing issue, you may have to Fine Tune the lens/camera combo (if your camera has the ability to do so) perhaps little or low to no contrast in the duck/water situation, can't tell with no example posted. Perhaps camera can't find an edge to grab onto as it certainly did in the photos you posted. I would for sure use single point or single spot focusing, whatever Sony calls it... shutter speed to slow?, aperture?, hand held? tripod? Tough to tell without an example.

Rab-Eye Loc: Indiana

I have an A6000, and I’ve found it does not track moving subjects as well as my DSLR. I do love it, but it’s not my best option for BIF.

bleyton Loc: Los Angeles, CA

Tracking moving objects hasn't really been my issue. It doesn't work every time, but my success rate has been good enough, considering my lack of experience and the speed of the birds.

What has me frustrated is scenes like the one below. To get that shot, I had to keep pressing the button halfway, changing my aim, until the blinky boxes finally grabbed a spot somewhere around his head.

I was shooting hand-held, in manual mode, fous-mode set to Wide, using either 1/1600 or 1/2000 at f6.3, with auto-ISO turned on. This specific picture was at 1/2000, f6.3, 800 ISO. I haven't doctored anything in Lightroom.

As I said, selecting Center focus did not seem to give better results.

Am I just too far away? The same thing happens even when the subject is closer.

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jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Change to a single focus point. Using multiple points is not good when there are subjects in the frame that can fool the camera into thinking they are the subject to be focused on. The camera will focus on parts of the subject that have the most contrast differences or the closest subject that one of the points covers. 99% of the time you should use 1 single focus point so that YOU are in control of what you want the camera to focus on.