I recently set down my trusty D300s and bought a Z7 II. I am struggling with the focus settings for the Z7 II for indoor off-camera flash on a tripod. With the D300s, I focused and shot in Live View: AF-C, AF-ON only. I moved the focus box to the area I wanted to focus on then pressed and held the AF-ON button until I heard a beep. Sometimes the camera had trouble focusing. It would make a valiant effort before eventually giving up. In such cases, it would not make a beep.
I was hoping to replicate this behavior with the Z7 II. It often works as I want, but I have encountered situations where the camera makes a beep, indicating that has been able to focus, but then fails to fire. Today I observed the same behavior using both AF-S and AF-C.
My AF activation setting: AF-ON only, Out-of-focus release Disable. I don’t want the camera take a photo if it can’t focus. What is strange to me is that it sometimes indicates that it is able to focus (by making a beep, though sometimes no beep with AF-C) but then won’t fire.
AF-C and AF-S priorities are set at their defaults (release and focus, respectively). (I don’t understand how AF-ON/Out-of-focus release Enable/Disable dovetails with these priority settings.)
I would be grateful for any thoughts on what I should do differently.