Auto-Focus issues

[Ioncloud9]

I've been using my RX-100 VA to mostly take pictures but every once in a while, I want to take a quick video clip. However, I noticed when taking them, sometimes the water can get a tad murky or the subject moves away and the camera decides its the best time to try and auto-focus itself during the video. Is there a way to focus BEFORE the video clip or disable auto-focus and only allow manual focus during video?

Also, while I'm at it, what are the best settings for focusing with this camera? I've been using center focus as it seems easiest to center on the subject and try and focus on that.

 

[2ndjetty]

Are you using a video light or lights? Lighting the scene will help create contrast, which will help the camera maintain focus. Aside from that, yes, turning off autofocus during video recording would be a solution. I don't have the camera to look through the menu for how to do that though...

Regarding focus, there are a number of options. To start try using AF-S (single focus), and move the spot focus box around the frame based on precisely where you'd like to focus (e.g. the subject's eyes). After that you could start experimenting with the Automatic focus, which has a focus assist that allows you to manually control the focus with the front control ring. I'd start with option 1 though until that's second nature..

 

[Ioncloud9]

Yeah I was thinking the same thing about AF-S. The conditions I was in probably wouldn't have been helped by lights. There was quite a bit of debris in the water, and the camera was really wanting to focus on that instead of the much larger subjects. I think there would have been quite a bit of reflection or backscatter if I had turned on lights.

For the most part I was able to maintain focus, there were just a few incidents where when the subject moved away the camera didn't know what to focus on.