sp-350 focus....

[netmage]

Having an intermittent issue w/ my Oly-SP350 where it will loose focus, or the auto focus isn't locking in properly... happened in both open water situations as well as severe low light, i.e. penetration and cave... had to ditch about ~30% of my shots from this last weekend.

Sometimes zooming out to extremes and back, or power cycle helped, but not very reproducible.... Tried to ensure adequate focus lights from 2 ds-125 strobes and 21W hid on flood....

Any suggestions from folks....?

Also looking for good mounted focus light options.... probably need 90-120min burn time.

-Tim

 

[gert7to3]

This is feature/defect of P&S cameras.

Do you have your camera set on spot or iESP multi focus? If it's not set to SPOT focusing and metering then the camera searches around the whole scene before locking on a subject, oftentimes the wrong subject. This happens in busy environments with fish and stuff moving around alot. When you press your shutter release 1/2 way down, the camera is supposed lock and hold focus and metering. Admittedly, this is hard to do underwater with a long shutter release lever and gloves on. With both focusing and metering set to SPOT the camera has fewer choices to make, even if you can't hold the shutter 1/2 way down.

BTW the focusing seems to default back to iESP when you turn the camera off. SO you constantly have to reset it. It might be helpful to make this a MY MODE setting, to avoid having to scroll down all the time, though I haven't done this yet. (Note to self.....)

The menu settings you need are:

OK/Menu>>MODE MENU>>CAMERA>>ESP/[.]>>Pick the symbol with the single dot
This is for SPOT metering.
Then scroll down through the CAMERA menu to the third screen:
>>AF MODE>>select: SPOT
This sets the SPOT focusing mode.

Finally, if you are in a busy environment, trying to capture something like Tarpon zooming by you at night, it can help to go to manual focus, at say 6 ft/2 m. Then just blast them. It only took me three visits to Bonaire to figure this one out.

 

[Larry C]

Definitely, spot metering & MyMode. If you don't have MyModes set for your most common shots (like the action shot with fixed manual focus that Gert was talking about) set your camera where you want it. (Manual, shutter speed 1/125, aperture f5.6, focus=spot, fulltime autofocus off, picture quality RAW...or whatever settings you want for your wide, macro, action & shallow/no flash average picture) once it is set where you want it for a particular shot, go to the set-up menu and scroll down to MyMode set-up. Set the "Current" conditions as "MyMode1,2,3 or 4" and say yes to "save current settings". DO NOT turn off the camera until you've completed the process or settings will revert. When you've set the 4 MyModes where you want them, I strongly recommend setting your "custom button", the right hand button on top next to the on/off switch, as a permanent MyMode button.

 

[LineSider]

A focus light is almost a must with a P&S, I found. One of the best "white paper" treatments on them can be found on:

Reef Photo & Video Support Center - KnowledgeBase - Focus Lights - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Really makes the point, there are a few surprises.

Bob