6.15.2 Zone

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Figure 6-22: Not as wide as "Wide", not as small as "Flexible Spot".

This is a hybrid between Wide (previous section) and Flexible Spot focus (Section 6.15.4) – here you have a very large collection of focus points all clumped together, and you can move them all en masse all around the screen. The camera will choose one of the AF areas within that zone. Pressing the center button (assuming the center button has been assigned to "Standard") and then moving the arrows left or right will change zones.

6.15.3 Center

“Center” uses ONLY the center focus area, ignoring all others. Like spot metering, it’s useful in difficult situations where the camera’s automation can't decide what the subject is. Using "Center", you can tell it. An example appears in Figure 6-23).

6.15.4 Flexible Spot (S, M, or L)

“Flexible Spot” lets YOU specify a focus point anywhere in the frame, and it lets you specify a size of the AF point as well. (Changing sizes involves clumping together smaller PDAF points. This is all invisible to you – all you know is the square gets bigger.)

To invoke Flexible Spot:

  1. Menu --> Image 3 --> Focus Area --> Flexible Spot
  2. (Also make sure MENU --> Image 7 --> Custom Key(Shoot.) --> Center Button is set to Focus Standard.)

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Figure 6-23: Here’s a situation where the Wide autofocus setting might get it wrong: when shooting an animal (face detection doesn’t work on animals) behind bars. Here it makes sense to use either “Center” or “Flexible spot” to prevent the bars from being focused on. (We ended up adopting this kitty. He’s since clawed up the couch and the curtains.)
  1. Use the Left and Right arrow keys to choose between Small, Medium, or Large spot focusing area.
  2. Hit the center button to select
  3. Use the cursor buttons to choose your focus point.
  4. Press the center button to acknowledge your selection. (This is a completely optional step, BTW. If you don’t hit the center button then you can move the focusing point whenever you want. The downside is if you had assigned functions to the left, right, and down buttons, they won’t be available as the camera thinks you’re still fine-tuning the position of the spot focus area.)

Remember, changing the focusing mode doesn’t affect the exposure mode. If you want to use spot metering (which isn’t flexible), you should invoke that with the AEL function (discussed in Section 6.23.2) first before focusing.

TIP 1: If you invoke either Digital Zoom or Clear Image Zoom, the focus confirmation changes from small green squares to one gigantic dotted-line square which fills the screen.

TIP 2: This actually marks a distinct change of behavior from the A6000 and previous E-mount cameras. With the A6000, you had to press the center button each time you wanted to change the focus point; then you could use the top dial and/or rear wheel (in addition to the 4 arrow buttons) to move the focus point. With the A6300, when taking stills, you only have to press the center button ONCE and then you can leave it in change-the-focus-point mode until you turn the camera off. And only the 4 arrow buttons can be used to change the focus point. (In Movie mode, focus point selection works the old way. Go figure.)