3kramd5 said:
Have you tried flexible spot (the rough equivalent to single AF points) off center? My lenses which work at all work fairly well (though they struggle more in low-contrast situations than my SLRs) at the center, but much off center they tend to hunt.
I just took a few shots outdoors on a sunny afternoon, albeit in a square with lots of tree-shade, with my 24-105 using flexible spot in the smallest size in the farthest corners of the phase-detection focus area. No hunting at all. Accuracy is another matter, though (and this seems true no matter where the focus point was) - where there was nothing between me and the subject, no problem, but if there was something near the subject (not over it - I'm not talking about shooting a bird on a branch through leaves) it would sometimes focus on that other thing instead (I had the problem all the time with a mirrorless Fuji I briefly owned). But it focused accurately on the most difficult subject I aimed at - fingers on an extended arm on a black statue which had, behind the hand, a black lamp post, all in dappled shade. Go figure.... (I've never found AF even on Canon to be 100% reliable, but Canon body + Canon lenses is probably better than this overall.) Maybe larger focus points would be more reliable, at least where the subject isn't tiny?
By contrast, indoors, in low light, the outer focus points hunted so long I gave up; useless.
If I had bought this camera so I could use Canon AF lenses with the same performance as they provide on a Canon body, I would send it back. (I would rather use MF lenses any day.) As that was only a small part of my decision to buy it, I'll keep playing with it. If its main advantage is providing IBIS for lenses that don't have it, I may consider the a7II instead. The additional resolution is fun, I suppose, but it's not all that different from the a7r in that regard, and I don't think the image quality is significantly different either (if at all - not that the a7r needs improving in *that* regard).
