Back in the Sony SLT days, the company included an incredibly useful feature into the a99 Mark II called the Custom Focus Limiter. It allowed you to limit your autofocus to any distance range you wanted, and by golly, we wish it were still a thing.
In the video above, Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake of DPReviewTV explain why they love this feature, and implore camera makers to add it back into their modern bodies.
As they point out, focus limiters do exist on high-end lenses, but they only lock the lens into a pre-specified focus range (e.g. 3m – infinity). A custom, software-based focus limiter like the one Sony used to use in the a99 II has no such limitation. You could potentially set your autofocus to a much more restricted focus range, ensuring that your camera never accidentally focuses on the far background when, say, you’re shooting sports or outdoor portraits.
Check out the full video above to see Niccolls and Drake demonstrate this useful feature in action. Then drop into the comments and let us know what other now-defunct features you’d like to see in the next generation of cameras.
