Approaching the Scene 143: Nikon Z Action AF Tracking Guide & My New Settings

today one for the nikon mirrorless faithful we're going to talk about some new thoughts i have on autofocus for action and wildlife uh with the z cameras and a little update to the setup video for the z62072 z6 and z7 [Music] well hey everybody uh this is a fun one for the nikon z faithful or for anybody z curious i'm going to talk a little bit about some new thoughts i have on shooting sports and action and wildlife with the z cameras some new settings that makes the hand dance that you do with the autofocus system the advanced autofocus modes with this camera a little bit easier and even a couple of control settings that are just changed throughout everything i do with the camera really it's about remapping external buttons so it'll be a little bit of an update to the setup videos that i've done for the z62 and z72 as well as z6 and z7 this is applicable to all of those cameras so i'll show you some examples of looking through the viewfinder with me while i'm shooting and also run through the menus and show you what i'm talking about if you haven't checked out the setup videos that i have for the z6 z7 z62z72 i'll link those in this video's description i really would urge you to just look at the z62z72 video with this is kind of an addendum to it changing a few of those settings i'll show you exactly how to get from the end of that setup video that i've done in the past to what i'm doing now all right before i jump in and do that a little note about office hours we have an office hours coming up this tuesday let's see it's going to be tuesday the 20th and we're going to be talking about why mirrorless won what's great about mirrorless what's still great about dslrs but why everything is really moving into mirrorless why no companies are really putting research and design dollars into dslr anymore take your questions have a conversation about that i'll be joined by rick lepage hopefully my good friend david archer and always as always woody and darren will be there so you know jump into the zoom meeting if you can that's more interactive you can also watch it on youtube live you can sign up at hudsonhenry.com officehours and submit a question while you're at it it can be about mirrorless versus dslr or really any photographic subject we're going to be talking about not just nikon here either it's about sony canon fuji you name it everything's sort of going towards mirrorless and we'll talk about why that is i also want to talk really quickly about workshops we launched a bunch of workshops for late 2021 and a whole bunch of them sold out really really quickly i still have some slots left in moab i have i think one single slot left in each of my cuba workshops in november moab is in october it's gonna be a spectacular fall workshop and one of my favorite places in the world that i know like the back of my hand although there's always new things to find there so you know hit me up checking you can always see that stuff at hudsonhenry.com workshops all right so let's dive in you know i've talked quite a bit about shooting sports in action with the z cameras being quite a bit different with mirrorless cameras in general than shooting with dslrs the modes are different you know dslr shooters for years and years i use dynamic area auto focus and afc mode for just about everything you know if it's a static object you just take your thumb off the trigger with the mirrorless they're more advanced but you have to be in the right mode and nikon you know i think they're refining it'll be interesting to see what they do with the z9 and future generations of cameras right now their cameras have much more accurate autofocus in the afs mode with single point you know pinpoint autofocus low light autofocus turned on i mean you can you can nail focus on stars and planets when you're out doing milky way you can just trust that the focus that you're locking in on a pinpoint stationary object is is locked in when you're shooting sports in action it kind of depends on what kind of action or wildlife you're shooting you know is it close action where you're panning with it well in that case i would say auto area autofocus is what you want to be using we've talked a lot about that the camera just picks the point you don't even have a point selected if you you if you're shooting people you can throw it into eye detect face detect auto area autofocus where if it sees an eye or a face or multiple faces and eyes it lights them up and you can pick between them with the left and right movement of the joystick if you're photographing wildlife you can choose animal eye detect that tends to work better on cats and dogs but i've had it work on deer and birds that i've been shooting then there's with the z62 and z72 there's wide area uh with eye and face detect and wide area autofocus with animal eye detect and those work really well for saying i only want my subject to be in that part of the frame now if you're in auto area auto focus one thing that i love to do is activate subject tracking if i've got an object that's one of many and i want to single that one out or if i'm not really moving around with my camera and there's something closer in the frame that the camera wants to lock focus on instead i can override that by just activating a subject tracking point putting it over my subject and hitting up the af on button with my thumb and boom all of a sudden you know i'm locked on that subject wherever it goes in the frame until i let off or deactivate that point and go back to full auto area but i find that doesn't work quite as well for tracking fast moving close subjects that are frame filling it's really hard to keep that box you know in in the frame it's better to let the camera just choose your subject and it does a fabulous job of that so i have in the past said you know use in still mode we remap the uh the movie record up on the top right next to the shutter button that movie record button to change auto area auto focus mode so the back dial would change the mode front dial would change the area but it's really inconvenient when you're shooting to bring your middle finger up here and try to roll that dial while you're holding down the movie button it's kind of a tough one so instead what i've had in the past there are two function buttons on the front of the camera one is right under your middle finger as you're holding the grip one is right under that right ring finger the fourth finger the the the third finger if you're holding on to the grip so those two fingers aren't generally doing very much it's really easy for them to hit a button and i have advocated in my setup videos setting up the u3 button the user three mode to switch my typical bracketing usually i have bracketing set up under my ring finger on the right hand to switch that to subject tracking activation and deactivation so just hitting that little button if you're in auto area autofocus will activate that tracking square or deactivate it if you don't want it so it's just a simple push the way that nikon maps it by default is you hit ok on the back of the camera to activate subject tracking and you have to hit the the zoom out button to deactivate it well that's really awkward if you're if you're reaching way around while you're trying to auto focus and do everything else this is really simple you just hit that button bam it's there hit that button bam it's off you don't have to take your eye away from the viewfinder you don't have to take your thumb off the af on button it's just a simple activation this finger right here is just hitting it to turn it on and off now in other modes with the camera i like that to be bracketing when i'm shooting landscapes and maybe i have really high contrast i want to capture a frame on the meter and a frame three stops underexposed for example in order to to be able to put it together in an hdr image with more dynamic range and capture those highlights that might be blown out in a really high contrast image so you know but when i'm shooting sports in action and wildlife that's not an option anyway so i just get rid of that and switch it to subject tracking i'm not changing that one bit what i've had under the middle finger on function one button in the past has been depth of field preview and that's where traditionally cameras have put that button for depth of field preview it's just muscle memory for us to reach in with our middle finger and hit that button in the old days there was a little lever that you pulled down on the old manual cameras that stopped the aperture blades down on the lens mechanically and you could get a feel for depth of field so it's always made sense to me to have that under my middle finger except that that's a button that doesn't make use of either my thumb or shooting finger it's really easy to move depth of field preview over to the movie record button that's a simple press i don't need to turn any dials to work with depth of field preview and move my auto focus mode button off of movie mode onto that function one button and that way when i'm shooting if i if i want to change autofocus modes let's say i want to isolate my subject from others by using that wide area with face and eye detect turned on i can just push that function one button with my middle finger and rotate that front dial with my index finger to select the area mode that i want in auto focus continuous mode i could switch from auto focus continuous to auto focus single servo for a stationary subject with my back dial so i have both my thumb and my finger free i'm not holding down that movie record and trying to bring up my middle finger awkwardly to roll the front dial it's really nice and when i want to do depth of field preview it's pretty simple to just tap that movie record button right next to the shutter it's rare i'm pushing depth of field preview and the shutter button at the same time so it really is just a simplification of the controls it's going to take you a little while to remap your muscle memory there but but let me show you what i'm talking about i'm going to flip over and show you my camera right now so right now if i go into my i menu you can see that i'm in wide area auto focus mode with face and eye detect you know if i hit that button and select let's say i was just in auto area autofocus face human face detect all right we're going to go right there and i want to switch to where i'm in auto focus continuous all right well that's one way to do that using the i menu but that tends to kind of pull me away it's a lot of button presses if i'm shooting and i'm looking through the viewfinder and i just push that f1 button this actually you'll see afc and the face and eye detect pop up on the right in this video but in reality that's just kind of been remapped by the hdmi out it's really across the top up above your frame when you're shooting through the viewfinder or looking at the live view on the back of the camera and now when i turn my back dial i can switch if i'm holding that that that middle finger in on the function one button i can switch from autofocus single servo manual focus autofocus continuous and the front dial is going to shift to now wide area animal wide area human wide area animal auto area auto area eye detect auto area animal all right and if i'm in my u3 mode where i have the bracketing remapped and i'm in an auto area by tapping that suddenly i have my subject tracking point which i can move around with the joystick and when i hit the af on button boom all of a sudden it starts tracking now there's nothing i have my lens cap on otherwise it would just be kind of a mess of computer screen and camera right now but when i'm out in the field and i lock that on to say my little girl running around the yard it just locks her on it's not going to look for anything but her it's going to move all over the frame with her you know if i'm having a hard time picking her out of a group of people i can just put that on her face and as long as i can keep her face in the frame she's a little ways away boom let's say you're photographing a scene with a penguin and there's one penguin that stands out to you you're shallow depth of field but there are a whole bunch of penguins and a couple of them are closer to you if you don't have that subject point activated the camera might choose a penguin that isn't your penguin suddenly you hit this button move it over your penguin say it's in the bottom right hit your auto focus on wherever that penguin goes that tracking box will follow it around the frame when you let off you can move the camera around reacquire you can move the point hit the button again it's only while you're holding down af on it locks and stays locked on your subject hit the button again suddenly you're shooting an albatross flying fast across the frame let the camera make the decision you know i find that when close subjects are moving by me and they're frame filling the camera does a magnificent job choosing what it should be focusing on if you know suddenly i want to go into that wide area if i oh i'm switching that's my back dial move the front dial and go into say wide area let's go animal eye now all of a sudden wherever i put this square it's looking for subjects in that square that lets me isolate just a part of the frame where my subject is and have it ignore everything else now in this mode you've got to be able to kind of keep that part of your frame over your subject it's always going to be looking in that wide area square for your subject and if it's got face or eyes in it if there's an animal face or eyes it's going to lock in if suddenly you're working with people you can just move one to the left and boom all of a sudden you're working with people's faces and eyes all right so that's the way to work with these cameras and i would have you practice those modes forget about dynamic it's really a legacy mode dynamic area looks like uh this when you go into it and i think it's a legacy mode a lot like um center weighted metering was a legacy mode for those who came from the manual camera days so i would really really focus in on these modes that i'm talking about the wide area with face detect wide area with animal eye detect the auto area where you let it choose itself and override with subject tracking when you need to and that's the one i'm using more than anything else alright now let's talk really briefly about how we go into the menus and set this whole thing up i'm going to show my camera again while i'm working with it and we'll we'll launch into here and i'm going to basically go into the menu and show you how to do this so you know the if you've done the setup videos that i've talked about this is going to show you some ways to just adjust those control settings that i talked about in my z62z72 setup video again that is linked in the video's full description and and you can just click on the video's title or show more to get to that link or you can search my youtube for for setup or z62z72 and you'll find it but what we're going to do i'm going to jump in here i'm going to go into my my menu and where we really want to go in here and change let's make sure that we're in well any mode i would say get out of your user mode right then i was in a user mode so i'm going to go into manual right now and i go into my menu and we're going to go into this is the all the way to the left puts you in the different menu categories you can see there's movie shooting there's custom settings we want to go into custom settings we want to go down to f controls you can jump into any part of this menu you want and under the f controls you've got custom controls so we're going to go into custom controls and the things i have changed now are the function one button you can see as i move over this it shows you what we're programming so for generalized shooting i have bracketing set for function two that's the big deal right bracketing is set for function two for function one i have changed it from depth to field preview to autofocus so if i click on that what we've got is autofocus mode with the front dial auto focus area mode with the back dial these are all the settings you could choose from we're going to go with that one all right hit the ok button i've changed the um the shooting the movie shooting button which you can see mapped right there it's mapped right here next to my uh next to my my shutter so there's the shutter there's the movie shooting button which you don't use while you're in still mode and i'm mapping that one to depth of field preview all right that makes sense you don't use that in conjunction with those dials so tying up your index finger pressing it not a big deal all right so that's my generalized shooting right lock that in press menu and we're done all right so now coming back out of there i want to switch into user three mode i'm switching to user three mode and that mode i have set as shutter priority mode 1000th of a second by default that's kind of where i was when i when i made my settings so shutter priority 1000th of a second auto iso turned on and then the menu options that i want to change under controls i'm going to go back into here and i want to go into custom controls just like we were and now all of a sudden for function two i wanna select subject tracking now that won't be that way for you necessarily all right um i want subject tracking boop and i want um autofocus the same settings we just had the only thing that's changing is we're switching the the bracketing on function two that that that ring finger or the right hand to be subject tracking activation and deactivation all right so that's in that list subject tracking boom now some people might ask what if you have a lens that has buttons on it so if you look here i'm actually using a lens right now to have two function buttons i actually put subject tracking on that as well just so i have one more spot to do it with my thumb it's like my thumb is right in between my focus ring and my zoom ring there and then the back button if i have a back button i like to put play that gets rid of that problem with nikon having the play button accessed with the right hand so that while you're shooting you can actually hit play on the lens barrel you know that's not going to be there for every single lens that you're working with but once you've got those settings locked in then you're going to go into the menu and you're going to go from custom settings i'm pushing the the d-pad over to the left down to the setup menu and i want to go down to that second option save user settings and i'm going to go down and say save to u3 save settings bam now all of a sudden those settings are locked in now if you were doing that if you were doing that for the first time and you hadn't done my setup video from the z62 and z72 from before we actually to set up the users but the user settings number three you would need to go into shutter priority you'd set your shutter speed to a thousandth of a second your iso to auto iso then go and make those control assignment changes then save that to user setting three because it's also going to lock in what mode you're in you wouldn't necessarily put it in user 3 to originally program it but if you've already done the the z62 z72 setup video that i just did you can put it into the user 3 menu mode because it's going to lock in all those settings that you did when you did the video before and all you need to do is go change that control function like i just showed you over so that's essentially it everyone if you have questions about this hit me up uh i'm finding that the more i work with the autofocus system on the z62 and z72 the more i question whether i i need to keep the d500 except for getting that additional reach that i have with it you know the the buffer is so deep with these the autofocus is faster those smart modes like auto area mode are just kind of shockingly good um and being able to activate and deactivate subject tracking by just remapping the buttons it takes a little practice it takes a little learning you have to be patient with it you know it's going to seem very different if you're used to years shooting with dslrs and slrs before that it's a new thing but trust me it it is highly highly accurate and it opens up new potentials and i'm sure that the interface will be getting simpler and simpler if i have one complaint it's just that there's a little too much switching from one mode to another to get the result that you want i think it would be nice if it were a little easier to just leave subject tracking activated when subjects move in close and you're panning with them it tends to lose subjects that are moving really fast within the frame and frame filling motion so for example if a burden flight comes by really close and you've got a 500 you want to be in auto area with no point selected whatsoever but if the bird's way off in the distance coming towards you and you're not moving the camera very much as you track it or there's more than one bird it's hard to to nail that single bird that matters to you without activating the subject tracking and that's why you want it to be a simple press of that ring finger of your right hand without having to run around on the back of the camera making selections it's just simple make it muscle memory learn to do it without looking up from the viewfinder you should really be working to change autofocus area modes very simply with that press of the middle finger and roll the dial activate deactivate subject tracking in the auto area modes and playback your images without ever looking up from the viewfinder just keep working all right so if you have questions about any of that stuff hit me up if you have questions about workshops i hope you'll sign up for the office hours hudsonhenry.com office hours is going to be a really good one this coming tuesday i got vaccinated i'm super excited to travel i can't wait to get back out with people collaborating learning having adventures taking beautiful photos it's starting to happen and i'm actually traveling my wife and i are vaccinated and we're taking our kids to see the grandparents in florida for the first time in like a year and a half so that's really exciting we're taking off in a little more than a week so all right everybody i hope everyone else is enjoying spring weather that's in the northern hemisphere with us the it's been really beautiful here in oregon and we've certainly been soaking it in and enjoying some of the last days of skiing on the mountain and some of the first days of kite boarding in the river and just being out with our kids running around in the sun and i hope everyone else is enjoying too all right guys we'll see you next week thanks

Channel: Hudson Henry Photography

Views: 25,962

Keywords: Nikon, Z7, Z6, mirrorless, lesson, education, training, how to, gear, photography class, digital photography, depth of field, f5.6, aperture, live view, Approaching The Scene, Hudson Henry

Id: GcAyzLRrdws

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021