Autofocus Settings Tutorial.

Hi it's Sabine from Pangolin's home turf the beautiful Chobe River in Northern Botswana. If you don't know where that is make sure to go and check it out it's a great location for wildlife viewing and wildlife photography. Now taking our guests on almost a daily basis here in Chobe and other wild places in Africa I've come to realize that the autofocus system of cameras seems to be quite a confusing subject for people that just start out in wildlife photography. So today's video is about Canon's autofocus system. Although it is based on Canon cameras you can also apply to different camera models. That's the beauty of Chobe! I will explain the different autofocus modes, the autofocus point or autofocus area selection options that your camera gives you and i'm going to give you some hints on how you can fine adjust your autofocus. As a wildlife photographer obtaining quick focus on moving subjects is really crucial. So when I switch my lens from manual focus to autofocus my camera now gives me different options on how to set up my autofocus system. Lets first look at the different autofocus modes that our camera gives us. If we go into the menu we have three options here. There's One-shot, AI focus and AI servo. The terminology is for Canon but other camera manufacturers call it different but the principle stays the same. So in one shot, the idea is that we focus on a stationary subject pressing our shutter button halfway down to get focus and then keep it halfway down to keep it locked at the subject and press it down to take the picture. If we want to we could keep it halfway in and also recompose our shot going left or right, up or down to create a different composition and then just fire away because our focus has been locked on our subject. However, what you cannot do is you cannot go forward or backwards because then you change the distance from the camera to the subject and it will be out of focus. So this is a great mode if you shoot subjects that are stationary. However in wildlife mostly our animals are moving and you want to be ready for that. So let's go and see what the other options are. We also have the second one called AI Focus I'm gonna come to that in a minute. I first want to have a look at AI Servo. That is Canon's continuous auto focusing mode to track moving subjects. So same scenario. Let's say you have an animal that is currently static. You focus on your animal pressing the button halfway down and now your animal starts walking left or right or flying. Whatever you're shooting. If you keep your button now halfway in and you follow the subject that is moving you will be keeping the subject in focus as long as the focus point stays on the subject. So the focus mode in the middle called AI Focus is supposedly the camera's manufacturer giving you an option to jump between one shot and ai servo so the camera is supposed to automatically detect that you currently shoot a stationary subject so it will lock the focus and then as soon as the subject starts moving your camera is supposed to detect that and starts tracking. However, that is quite inaccurate and I would stick to either One-Shot or AI Servo depending on your situation for wildlife. I would always recommend AI servo mode. Now it's time to choose an autofocus point or an auto focus area. Again depending on your situation your camera gives you quite a few options there. So let's look first at the smallest focus point which is called spot autofocus. Don't confuse that with spot metering that is completely something different. That is your camera's light meter mode and people often get that confused. Spot autofocus is just the way you select where your camera should focus. So spot Autofocus is a very very tiny area for super-precise focusing. So if you really want to make sure that you focus exactly on the eye of your subject or you focus maybe you try and focus in between grasses or something in the foreground spot autofocus can come in handy. However, the downside of spot autofocus it is so small that you can also easily miss your subject and completely end up with an out of focus image. The second option that your camera gives us here is your single autofocus point and that is probably the most common used one and also, the one that comes with the default settings of your camera. It's twice the size of the spot autofocus and it gives you also a chance to really be precise with your focusing on your subject but not lose the subject as easy as with spot focusing. The next option that we have is the single point with four little helpers around and that can help you especially if you have maybe a very very tiny subject which you struggle to keep the focus on. Imagine a bird on a little stick and there's a bit of wind and your bird is wiggling. It can be quite difficult to keep the focus on that bird with only a single focus point so if you have those four little helpers around that can help you if the middle focus point where focus is achieved initially sort of falls off then these four helpers are there to grab still on your subject and keep it in focus. The option after that is exactly the same just now you have eight little helpers that can help you. So it's just an extended area of not missing the focus and your chances of getting your subjects in focus are even bigger. But you need to be a bit careful. I found sometimes if I have an animal in a busy environment a bird maybe in quite tall grass or something these helpers often can also jump towards the grasses at the side. So you just need to figure out what works for you. The next option is called zone autofocus and here you have a little cluster of focus points which is also quite a big area that it can focus and the difference between this and a single focus point with the eight helpers, for example, is that your camera basically within that zone will probably focus on whatever is closest to the camera. Whereas the one the single point with the helpers it will always focus on the middle focus point where you place it first and only use the helpers if the focus falls off that focus point. If you even want a wider focal area you can also use the larger zone. Quite helpful if you really struggle with focusing. If you have maybe a clean background only the sky then you can use this focus mode to have an extended focus area and make sure that you get focus on your subject so your camera will choose within that zone where exactly it's going to focus at. So you have less control and if you shoot on a larger aperture and you have a greater depth of field that might not matter and that would be a great option. But if you shoot on a very shallow depth of field then this might be a downside because it might focus instead of the eye of your subject maybe rather at the wingtip. If you shoot a bird for example then the eye is not going to be in focus any more. And last but not least we have auto selection autofocus. Now that seems to be tempting at first because you have this large area in which your camera now can achieve focus. But depending on which autofocus mode you are depends on the behavior of this auto-selection of autofocus. If you shoot in one shot your camera will focus on whatever is closest to the camera. If you shoot in AI servo or continuous focusing your camera will focus on the initial focus point that you had placed in a certain area and again if your subject starts moving and the focus falls off that focus point, it will then select in that whole cluster of focus point depending on your camera model. Depends on how many focus points there are. Modern cameras have around 61 also focus points. Your camera will then choose which one of those 61 it will focus on. Again it can be a great asset if you have a clean background and there's nothing much else to focus on with a fairly large f-stop so you have a great depth of field and you will be good at tracking your subject. However, if the background gets busy or you shoot on a shallow depth of field you really don't have much control and that is why i personally try and shoot most of my shots on the single focus point that gives me really precise control on where I focus. Sometimes i do tend to choose the single focus point with the four little helpers if i really struggle getting focus but that is the only two i really use. In your menu i'm gonna show you now how you can actually set up which focus modes you generally use so that when you dial through the different options that it doesn't take you such a long time. So if we go into our autofocus menu under the 4th tab, you find select AF area selection mode. Just press set and you will enter the menu and here you can now check the ones that you use currently and uncheck all the ones that you don't tend to use. So that your cycle through those modes gets a lot quicker. Now that you know the different autofocus modes and the autofocus point selection options let's have a look how we can fine-tune our autofocus system. Now let me say that this is only relevant if you decide to shoot an AI servo mode. In one-shot that doesn't make any difference because you're not tracking anything but an AI servo we do and we can change the behaviour of the tracking. So let me show you once again in the menu. If you go to your autofocus menu. The purple menu in the first step, you get different cases which are basically different presets your camera gives you to choose from depending on whichever situation you shoot and you can always click the info button that gives you a little bit more information about when this setting is appropriate. If you look below you have a tab that is called "rate" and if you press that you can now enter these different presets and do some fine-tuning according to your own needs. However, I found this a little bit confusing and I rather prefer to put those three options that we have to fine tune our autofocus in a completely different custom menu so i can quickly access that and fine-tune it every time i need to change it. If you rotate through your menus and you come to your green little star icon you can now add a new menu for yourself and you can add whatever options you want in this menu. So if we click to register settings we just gonna dial through the different options until we find tracking sensitivity. We add that one. After we're gonna go to accelerating decelerating tracking. We add that one and last but not least AF point auto switching i'm gonna add that one as well. But what settings do we need? Good question. That really depends on your shooting scenario. Probably also on your camera. Every camera still behaves a little bit different even though the settings might be the same. So, unfortunately, I can't give you a recipe here but just talking from my own experience the most important of those three and it really tends to make a difference in my photography is the tracking sensitivity. So if we access that you get on the right hand side responsive and on the left-hand side it says locked on. So if we move our wheel towards locked on you can choose between -1 and -2 as your setting and that means that if you focused on a subject and for some reason you momentarily lose the focus, because maybe something has moved in front of your subject, maybe another animal or you tracked a bird in flight and suddenly there's a tree in front of it for just a split second your camera will now not instantly focus on the subject that came in between you and the animal that you're shooting. Basically, your focus is a little bit more sticky with your subject which is great and to be honest really has improved my success rate in getting birds in flight. So I prefer to have that set to -1 which just makes my focus a little bit more sticky with the subject that i initially gained focus on. So you also can of course put it towards the other side. If you quickly need to refocus on something else. Maybe in sporting events and it will much quicker change focus from one subject to the other accelerating and decelerating tracking is another option that you can change if you want to. If you have a subject that is constantly moving at one speed for example in one direction then you probably want to have it set to zero or the minus sign. If, however, your subject is moving very erratically forth and back left and right quickly stopping or accelerating again then you want to have it a little bit more responsive and you put it towards the plus side. So you can play around with those settings as well and see if your keeper rate improves that way. Now last but not least auto focus point switching is only relevant if you shoot in any of the zone autofocus area modes and that is determining how quickly the focus point is basically handing over to another focal point within the area. if the focus has been lost on that focus point. So the higher you put it if you put it to the plus side the more quickly it will hand over to those other focus points and if you set it to the minus side it will just hold on a little longer before it hands over to the next focus point. On the second tab within your autofocus menu there's also AI servo first image priority and AI Servo second image priority. Basically if you shoot on a high frame rate on continuous shooting and you set it on your high frame rate you shoot a lot of pictures very quickly after each other. So the first image within that burst that you send off you can now tell your camera i want to make sure that this first image is a hundred percent in focus and i want you to confirm that focus for me. Then you can move the priority towards focus which is on the right-hand side. If you want to fire the shot off quickly because it is an action scenario and you don't want to miss anything you could say I don't care if you can confirm the focus for me. Please just release the shot and get it off. I don't want to miss that action so if you put it to release that does not necessarily mean that your pictures won't be in focus. Your camera is just given a little less time to confirm that focus. So as a wildlife photographer I preferably have my first image priority set to release because I really want to get off that shot quickly and not miss anything and then my second image priority I usually leave on equal priority and then the camera basically gives you a middle between focus and speed of shooting. If you want to make sure you get the entire high speed that your camera offers you on your frame advance you can of course set it to speed and it will give you the full burst that your camera can give you. I usually leave it on equal priority and that seems to work just fine. Thank you so much. I hope this tutorial was helpful. If you would like to join me on safari and learn more about wildlife photography there's a link down below and you can find out how you can join me. If you like this video, please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel we really appreciate your support and see you in the next episode. Bye.

Channel: Pangolin Wildlife Photography

Views: 140,341

Keywords: autofocus settings for wildlife photography, canon camera settings for wildlife photography, nikon camera settings for wildlife photography, wildlife photography camera setup, wildlife photography tutorial, wildlife photography tutorials for beginners, camera settings for pro wildlife photography, autofocus, tracking sensitivity, tracking sensitivity canon, autofocus settings, autofocus settings tutorial, auto focus settings, autofocus tips, autofocus explained

Id: TesyJSg9N9I

Length: 17min 42sec (1062 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2020