I have a small focus problem with my Olympus C-7070.

When I’m working in medium to low light condition my camera takes longtime to focus the subject resulting most of the time the subject to “escape” or problematic when you are working in certain condition (current).

As I’ve seen some posts of people having the same camera I would like to know if they have the same problem.

I normally take photo in RAW format with internal flash only and ISO set to 80.

Someone told me that this is a limit of my camera and I should use a small light to overcome this problem or use a higher setting of ISO that is, of course, affecting the quality of my photos.

In Low light you may want to rethink that iso setting ..
but I would imagine the focus problem is nothing you
can fix without a spotter or focusing light.

Try it on land .. most cameras need a certain amount of
light to focus, attaching a simple small low powered
flash light to you camera aimed at the subject will more
than likely help your focusing system out !

ISO 100 and 200 should do fine on most printing occasions with the C-7070.
However the ISO-Setting does not really related to the cameras ability to auto-focus.
The focus light Giles suggested should solve that.

I was checking some specs of an external strobe, Inon Z240. It has a “focus light”.

Is it a light that switch on while you press the shutter? Maybe this can help for this problem.

If yes, do you know if you can switch it on manually in case your strobe is not connected via TTL but via fiber-optic?

Thanks.
Alberto.

Hi Alberto

The “focus light” on the strobe is similar to a normal torch (although the bulb may be more technically advanced than a normal torch bulb), and works in much the same way.

Not sure what the Inon’s system is, but typically, focus lights are manually controlled with a switch:  you turn it on when you want to focus in low light, and turn it off when you don’t need it.  As far as I know, no-one has produced a strobe with a focus light that turns on when you press the shutter.  I doubt that (many) cameras send a signal through their hotshoe that they are trying to focus, so even when using a TTL cable, I don’t think there would be anything to tell the strobe to turn on the focussing light.

The strobe firing is separate from the focussing light, and as you say, controlled via either TTL or fibre-optic. 

regards
Graham

Thank you for all your replies.

I have found that some new strobe has got this focus light that can be switched on with a button and automatically switched off on shutter release.

Strobe like Inon Z240, Inon D2000W and Sea&Sea;YS-110 have got this interesting feature.

At least I know that with such strobes I can solve my problem.

Alberto.