Focus ring has no effect when zoomed out

[Warren Kawamoto]

Kyle,
To understand better, turn on the "lens info" button on the side of your camera. You'll be able to toggle from meters to feet. That scale you see on the monitor represents depth of field, or the distance of acceptable sharpness in front of your lens. On full manual mode (ring pushed back) turn your focus and watch the scale. The area in white represents your zone of focus that is sharp.

Set your focus to 2.7 feet with your zoom on WIDEST and open your aperature to 1.9. Notice that the scale says you're in focus from 2.7 feet to 4 feet.

Now set your focus to infinity, and you'll see that your scale says everything from 7 feet to infinity will be sharp.

Play with the iris now, and you'll see that the zone of sharpness decreases when you open up, and increases when you close down.

Lastly, play with the zoom and notice that the when you zoom in, your white zone gets very shallow and when you zoom out, almost everything is in focus.

After playing this way, do you understand the relationship between your zoom, iris, and focus? Do you see that when you're at full wide, it's hard to throw a subject out of focus? If you do understand, you'll realize there probably is nothing wrong with your lens.

Lastly, put your lens in manual (pushed forward) and everything is exactly the same as full manual, except that the lens barrel distance scale doesn't move. But you can still see your lens info scale in your monitor and it's white zone. Also, now you can macro focus if the switch is enabled. Macro focusing allows you to focus on something about two inches away from your front lens element.

[Kyle Powers]

Warren,

I worked with a Sony tech yesterday and together we did some tests. Me with my EX3 and him with his. It sounds like my Camera is in fact operating properly.

That being said you have provided some great info and I will definetely do the exercises you have outlined for me tonight.

Thanks