This is a recurrent issue, in the classes that I teaching assistant for at Grand Valley State University.  I run into the problem almost every time I run into a photo student who just made the mirrorless jump.  If you read through mirrorless camera facebook pages and comb through the forums you will find tons of people talking about how mirrorless cameras just do not focus well in the dark.  You will also see tons of fixes, however the most obvious one is usually not in the responses or hard to find amongst all the BrandBoy angst.

The simple answer is mirrorless cameras come out of the box with “Live View Exposure Preview” enabled.  The What You See, Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) setting is actually a big draw for mirrorless cameras.  If I turn my shutter speed, aperture setting or iso, wow I can see what the image will look like through the Electronic View Finder (EVF).  This was a function I LOVED on the X100 fuji, it has had this function for years.  However you have to remember that this function IS NOT MEANT FOR FLASH OR STUDIO photography.  The reasoning behind this is that the sensitivity of your autofocus is impacted to the point of being almost unusable in the studio environment in this mode.  Nothing currently allows you to previsualize and image that is going to be lit by flash except your imagination.

So the simple answer is, if you are in the studio and your camera is having focus issues, turn this setting off.

On Nikon you do it here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Sony here:

On Canon here:

This will fix 99% of your focus issues.  The simple reason is your autofocus sensor needs good quality light to work, every lumen.  When you have the WYSIWYG preview turned on it lowers its sensitivity to the exposure setting you have picked.  In a dark studio this can be hell, even with modeling lights on pro heads you are not getting the full capability of your cameras autofocus system.

Last week I shot in a dark studio with one modeling light on my subjects key light on, I used my Z7’s eye focus auto setting and in 42 shots, it missed focus ONCE.  So no, your mirrorless autofocus isn’t trash and Nikon/Canon didn’t throw defective tools out there to catch up with Sony, or any of the other online fan boy garbage you here.  Now are the autofocus systems in the mirrorless cameras when shooting wildlife or sports as good as the flag ship cameras designed for that yet, no they aren’t, but they aren’t nearly as “Flawed” as many on the internet would have you believe.  Cameras are tools, cameras like hammers come in different types, you wouldn’t use a PhaseOne for sports photography and say it is a BAD camera.  That would be like using a roofing hammer to build furniture and complaining it isn’t a good hammer.