# RX10 anomalies on long zoom - advice request



## Derell Licht (Sep 23, 2021)

I've had the RX10M3 for a couple of years now.  After years of using Lumix large-sensor cameras, I've been stunned at how superb this camera is!!

However, there is one anomaly that I have had with this camera, and I'm hoping someone can give me some insight into how to deal with it... It annoys me enough that I upgraded to the RX10M4, hoping it would fix that, but from preliminary shooting yesterday, I think it is going to have the same issue.

So the issue is this... I often find myself shooting long-zoom images at flying objects, but the camera has a tendency to, rather than focusing on the object, it will actually throw it *way* out of focus instead!! To give a more-detailed description of the situation, I will zoom out to full 600mm, then try to locate the flying object. When the object first comes into the field, it is visible, and almost in focus - but when I half-press the button to force focusing, it throws it *way* out of focus instead!!!

It does this on all of Auto, P, and S shooting modes; I typically use S for long-zoom shooting, so I can force a fast shutter speed - my intent is that it will adjust ISO instead, to get proper exposures, because a moderately-high ISO still gives excellent images with this camera. However, the loss of focus is a show-stopper!! What is going on here, why does the camera do this??

I have found that if I zoom back out to 400mm or so, it will then focus happily, but then when I zoom back in again, with the object already mostly in focus, the half-press will *still* throw it way out of focus. Actually, in some cases, just the act of zooming back in on the object with cause this loss of focus event. This does *not* happen with objects on the ground, only with flying objects... I'm guessing that part of the problem is that the object is so small, but the fact is that the camera *is* able to focus on those flying objects, if it would just let itself do so!!

Does anyone have any insights on this situation???


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