The AI Autofocus in Sony’s Affordable New A6700 Is Utterly Fantastic

Sony's new A6700 might have the best autofocus ever found in a consumer-level camera. 

The A6700 is a $1,399 camera that packs in the exact same autofocus system from its high-end, $3,900 A7R V, an AI-enhanced version of Sony's already legendary autofocus system, able to identify people, and animals, and even recognize planes, trains, and automobiles. Focus is obviously a very important part of photography and one which we take for granted with our cameraphones, but why is it such a big deal? 

"This year we picked up an A7R5, which I believe has the same AI autofocus system as the A6700, and it is absolutely incredible," aerial photographer Steven Holtzman told Lifewire via email. "One thing I've learned is that as long as you can see the subject in the frame, the autofocus system will nail the focus every time. It is a rare day when I get a blurry photo because the AI autofocus system didn't function as it is supposed to. You don't need to worry about missing the moment."

Focus

Just like our eyes, a camera needs to shift the elements that make up its lens in order to bring something into sharp focus. When something far away is sharp, the foreground will be blurred, and vice versa. Our eyes do this automatically. So do modern cameras, although typically you have to tell it what you want to focus on by moving a little square around the viewfinder with a d-pad. 

Thanks to the laws of physics, cameras with small sensors—phones, basically—have a large "depth-of-field," which is the amount of distance, front-to-back, that appears to be sharp. With larger sensors, this depth-of-field is shallower. It's the reason big cameras can capture a sharp subject with a blurred background, and also the reason why phones have to fake this effect with portrait modes. 

The downside is that, on bigger cameras, focussing accuracy is critical. But when you get it right, the creative possibilities are endless. 

"Fast and accurate focus allows us to capture sharp and well-defined images, ensuring the subject is in clear focus," professional travel photographer Kevin Mercier told Lifewire via email. "Furthermore, precise focus control helps to achieve desired creative results, such as shallow depth of field or selective focus, enhancing the overall aesthetic appeal of the photograph."

More recently, cameras have been able to recognize faces and eyes and focus on them. This is almost always what you want, and it's what the A6700, and the high-end A7R V, are good at. 

AI Inside

The Sony A6700 is a mirrorless interchangeable camera with an APS-C-sized sensor. It's a neat update to Sony's A6X00 series, with several improvements, but today we're focusing on the focus. It's billed as AI, but it's the same machine-learning tech that has been detecting smiles and fine-tuning exposure for years now, only better. 

Sony's autofocus has long been the gold standard, both fast, and tenacious once locked on. But now it can quickly and reliably recognize humans, birds, insects (!), cars, trains, and airplanes. The AI is smart enough to ignore a subject if it is too far away from a manually selected focus point, which means you get the final say. 

"Autofocus is important for ensuring as many of the pictures I make are useable, this both frees me up to concentrate on what is happening in front of the camera instead of being distracted by controlling the camera," professional photographer Harley Bainbridge told Lifewire via email. "But it also helps me achieve images that would be extremely difficult under other conditions. For example the tracking of moving subjects such as during sports events, bird watching or in my use, people participating in activities. This can be as simple as a bride walking down the aisle or a young child running around causing chaos in the background."

The beauty of a system like this is that you can treat it like a cameraphone when you just want to snap a shot, but you get full manual creative control when you want it. Of course, that's the promise of all contemporary cameras, but the difference here is that the autofocus is apparently so good, you really won't have to think about it.

Unless you're trying to take picture of a bird eating a bug in mid-air next in the carpark next to an airport railway terminus, I guess.