Friday, October 10, 2008

Shooting In Low Light, Where Did My 5fps Go?

The following is a problem that affects the A700 when shooting in low light.

On this thread at DPR Sony SLR Forum forum member JUMPH asked a question that I think its worth to post in here for future reference if anyone else has the same problem.

He mentions problems with his A700, when shooting in low light conditions (he lists sunset or indoors at night as his examples) the camera wont fire at 5fps, but at 2fps.

He mentioned how he tested the camera using shutter speeds from 1/60 to 1/8000 and shooting with no memory card. In theory the speed he tested the camera at its enough to achieve 5fps, but he couldnt get them.

He shot this video to show how the camera would only go to 5fps if he used a bright light source pointed at the Eye-Start sensors.

Originally I thought that the problem was the shutter speed used or the memory card. But I was wrong.

According to forum member Ken_5D, the problem is that the AF is taking longer to confirm focus in low light. This makes sense since digital sensors do not see light as the human eye does, so a low light for us is dark to them.

He mentioned two possible ways to get around this problem:

1.- Use Manual Focus
(I told you, you will need to learn how to use it ;) )

Or

2.- Set the shutter to Release

Or

3.- Point a light source to the Eye-Start sensors.

So now you know, if you come across this problem, these are your options to get those frames per second back.

Finally, there is a thread in Dyxum forum that talks about this problem in great extent

Until next post!

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