ELP! Sony A580 does not confirm focus, bleep but no red light :( HELP!

[kasnowak]

Hi guys, I'm absolutely gutted to see the result of my last photo session! Most of the pictures are blurred! I'm checking my camera and I noticed that when I lock the focus, it bleeps but it actually doesn't confirm the focus most of the time so the red light doen't show. It doesn't happen always but most of the time! It ruined my last photo session completely. I have just tested different lenses and they all give the same result. Before you ask, it does not depend on speed or light conditions or distance, I have tried everything today! I have reseted to Default Settings too and no change. sometimes where the area has got a lot of contrast it works properly. I've had this camera for about a year now and it has worked perfectly until now... Please HELP, what should I do?

[Mick2011]

Hi kasnowak, welcome to the Sony Forums

Could be a camera fault but focus issues, especially intermittent ones like the one you describe, are very often related to conditions and just sheer bad luck.

Focus lock will depend heavily on lighting etc, largely bacause it relies on detecting higher-contrast elements of an image. It's a pet hate of mine (autofocus) for this reason. You get to rely on it because 90% of the time it just works, and you forget that 10% margin where the camera selects the wrong point of focus. This can be nasty if you're shooting in a situation with a low-contrast subject in flat light, as the camera may consistently mis-focus for the majority of the frames.

It may be that you've had a 'worst case' situation there. I had one once with a set of shots in which the subject's eyes were quite consistently out of focus, even though I thought I was being careful to lock on to them. I worked out the AF was locking some hair close to the eyes instead. I do feel your pain

I've learned to double-check focus using AF-S with manual override; you let the camera lock, then grab the focus ring and fine-tune from there. Improved my focus-hit ratio dramatically.

If you're already doing this and still getting focus issues, take the camera to a decent camera shop and ask them to check it for possible mirror mis-alignment. This is assuming yours is no longer in warranty. But it does sound horribly familar.

Hope this is of some help.

Mick