I must admit I'm having problems with manual focusing on the Sony Alpha A7 and A7R cameras. I find it much easier on the Nex family and evn on the M43 cameras. It must be the FF sensor thing. The Zebra function the cameras offer is great in my opinion and once I figured out how it actually works I never switched it off again. To get the best possible use out of it, ensure that you see some Zebra stripes in the viewfinder. If you don't then you're underexposing the frame. The way I set it is to use EC to back off the expsure (if required) until I don't see any stipes in the viewfinder and the bring the EC back up until I do see some. This gives me my required exposure for the shot; and it works.

Theproblem I'm having is nailing the focus on the exact spot where I want it. On the Nex and M43 cameras I was able to do this quite quickly and I could be pretty certain the focusing was correct. I'm not able to fo that with these Alpha cameras, my focusing is just off what should be in focus. Sometimes I've got backfocus and sometimes front focusing, caused by myself of course and not the camera because it's me that's focusing the lens.

I'm going to try the following methos for awhile to see if things get better. Set the cameras to raw + jpg and set the jpg for B&W. Turn down the peaking setting to low and colour to red which seems best for me in this config. You might prefer yellow because it's really a personal thing. Hopefully this will help me focus on the correct point.

As you can see in the image above, take wide open at f1.2, I don't think I nailed focus correctly on the bench, but it hard to see in my opinion. Anyone out there have any more tips to help me get better at this. One point though, I do not like using the magnified view, maybe that's my problem but I really have trouble with this function and I don't intend using it in the future.