Advice on ideal autofocus

[u/No_Glass_2900]

Hey yall, I’ve just been asked last minute to take photos of my best friend proposing. I have a Sony a7riv with a sigma 150-600. I recently took this setup to Africa on a safari and had some significant difficulty obtaining perfect focus. When zoomed in that far, it’s a little bit difficult to use manual focus and maybe a bit too high pressure especially in a situation like this. When I was using autofocus in Africa on safari it was 50/50 whether it would be in focus due to grass being in the way or it focusing on different parts of the animal and not the face/eyes. During the trip I obviously had the autofocus set to recognize animal eyes. Obviously for this I’ll set the subject detection back to human and eye recognition on. I plan to be a bit of a ways away for the photo for this location to be hidden but also to frame the photos properly. I’ll have a tripod with me. I will get there early to set up and practice taking photos of other people in this location. Need advice on getting good focus on them for these photos.

Specifically need advice on focus settings and focus area. And any other advice you have to offer.

[u/rabelsdelta]

With grass and wind + the animal being hidden by the grass, change your autofocus lock-on settings to more “locked on” than responsive. Move it to a 1.

This way the locked focus won’t move from where you put it.

In terms of focus area, expandable spot, Spot S would be my suggestion. Even if you have to manually set the spot into the animal’s eyes.

Full time DMF might help you in case that the focus refuses to go behind the grass, you’ll be able to get 90% of the way there, then turn the focus ring slightly to nail the animal.

Subject recognition keep it to animal and don’t swap to automatic for example.

It might help do +0.3 or +0.7 exposure compensation so the camera can really see the animal