[HGMonaro]

Not here to complain

Here's an experiment I did a couple of weeks back (while waiting for my son to run around the track!)



slight intentional re-adjustment of focus point...



Ohh, son came in 3rd!

[kittykat46]

I thought the camera did a good job on focusing, considering both the sweater (?) and the chain fence are just about black in colour, with very little texture.

Its tricky, though, no matter what camera you are using, to get it to focus correctly on a more distant subject through a small gap in a nearer object.
Almost by default, it will usually lock in on the nearer object.
Many cases of reported "front focus" are actually cases like this - I know, because I've made the same mistake before.

[HGMonaro]

yeah, I was impressed as this was repeatable.

[aerodave]

A lot of times, it's just a matter of knowing where your auto-focus areas are in the viewfinder, in relation to the red overlays (if your camera does that, as the K-7 does).

I've measured this in the past by trying to focus on a small black dot (like from a fine tip marker) in the middle of a well-lit white sheet of paper. By seeing how far in different directions from the red focus indicator I could place the black dot and still have the camera find focus, I could map out the AF sensor area. If you know where your camera's focus areas actually are, you can keep unintended subjects out of the area and give your camera an easier time locking onto the right thing.

With my K100D, the center AF area is centered a little above the red square and basically fills the top 2/3 of the spot metering circle. With my former K10D, the area was basically the bottom right quadrant of the sport metering circle...the red indicator was centered int he viewfinder, but was just barely inside the top left corner of the actual focus area. And with my new K-7, the AF area appears to be very well centered on the red indicator, and fills most, but not all, of the spot metering circle.