Nikon Autofocus MODES and SETTINGS for wildlife photographers

hello everyone i'm danielle and today's video is about nikon's autofocus system i'll be talking about the different autofocus modes and then i'll also be talking about the different auto focusing points that you can use also called autofocus area modes and lastly i'll be showing you a few tips and tricks in the menu system so that you get the most out of your autofocus here we go in wildlife photography there are a few things as important as getting tech sharp focus to achieve that focus it is necessary to understand the different options that are available to you in the auto focusing system personally i hardly ever use manual focus and i'm on auto focus for the majority of my shots it's worth a mention that different camera models have different auto focusing options available to them and they would also perform differently even on the same modes so grab your camera and follow along let's start with the auto focus modes number one single servo autofocus in this mode your camera focuses once and it does not continue to focus after the initial focus was achieved that means that when you press your assigned focus button whether you are using your shutter release button pressing it halfway or your back button once you've pressed that button and focus has been achieved that's it focus is locked at that distance you can set up a beep to tell you when focus has been achieved and confirmed and then you know that's it at that distance if the distance between you and your subject then changes after focus has been achieved unfortunately focus will be lost and the only way to refocus is to take your finger off of that button and repress it to refocus therefore afs is made for stationary subjects only and it does not um you it doesn't work when you're trying to track moving subjects so af is for stationary subjects only afc continuous focus mode in this mode once you have a quiet focus on your subject by pressing your focusing button down and as long as you keep your focus point on the subject the camera will continuously adjust focus whether it comes closer or moves further away from you or whether you move towards the subject or not the camera will continuously focus as long as you keep that focus point on the subject and your focusing button down it'll keep your subject sharp until you actually take the shot so it's made for tracking moving subjects just remember that there's no beep that you can set up um because constantly focus is changing continuously as it says continuous focus mode afa this is automatic autofocus you'll find this in some camera models and what this means is the camera chooses the autofocus mode that it wants to be in so it'll switch between afc and afs depending on the subject if a stationary subject starts moving it'll switch from afs to afc and vice versa personally i don't like using this mode at all because i find afc to be more accurate and applicable to wildlife photography aff it's made for videos so it tracks it tracks moving subjects in live view and it's only available when you're in video mode i don't find it to be as fast for fast moving and erratic moving subjects um but if you do see aff it's in video mode and that's that's what it does my preferred mode is afc always my reasoning behind it is i can photograph stationary and moving subjects within afc and i can't do the same in afs so even if my subject is stationary the bird is sitting there and i'm in afc when it starts flying away i'm ready to track it or like in botswana we often we shoot from boats so we often drift into a sighting and even if the bird is sitting dead still we are still moving towards the bird and focus can then adjust for armor or compensate for our movement and then when the bird flies off i'm i'm still ready to track it in afc to change between these auto focus modes you'll see a switch on the side of the camera it has a button in the middle and it has a switch between auto focus and manual focus so you press the button in and you move your command dials however you've set it up and it switches between different autofocus modes in newer models especially on the mirrorless range there's no such button on the left and you have to set up one of your function buttons as a shortcut to toggle between the different autofocus modes before i talk about autofocus points or af area modes if you're new to our channel welcome a warm welcome to you we love having you here and we hope that our videos will greatly improve your photography please remember to subscribe to our channel and hit the bell icon to get notifications about when our next videos are available to watch now let's talk about autofocus area modes single point this means that there's only one focus point to use and you can move this focus point around to be on the part of the subject that you want sharpest in low light it's best to use the center focus point these are a few examples where i like to use single point shooting through something needing very precise focusing when there's other distracting objects in the photograph and when panning to get the head of the subject as sharp as possible dynamic autofocus area mode this is where you'll see 9 21 51 153 points it differs from camera model to camera model what this does is you pick your initial focusing point then if your subject accidentally leaves that point and you don't manage to keep that one point on your subject the camera will then activate the surrounding points and use them to acquire focus however if your subject then leaves that cluster of 9 or 51 then focus will unfortunately be lost so this is often used for erratically or fast moving subjects when you struggle to keep a single focus point on the subject really important to note though is that your background has to be clean because if your background is not clean the camera might pick one of the points that fall on movement in the background or a subject in the background a tree where there's contrast so it's important to note that be aware that preferably use this mode only when you're shooting with a clean background the other thing to note is for example if you're shooting a bird the camera might pick the wing tip the focus point on the wingtip to focus and the face of the bird the eye might not be sharp so to overcome this you can increase your f number your aperture or you can choose to shoot with less fewer points so if if you find that happens when you're using 153 points maybe come down and use 21 or 9. 3d tracking this is similar to the other modes i've mentioned but the big difference is that it uses all the focus points of the camera so once again you use one point you select at one point you put it on your subject and you acquire focus if the subject then starts moving that same focusing point will follow your subject all around really important once again to have a clean background if you use this mode otherwise what happens is it picks up moving grass or it picks up something else in the frame that's also moving because it uses color to to focus it might pick up a contrasty area in a different different part of the frame that you don't want in focus so keep your background clean and make sure that there's no moving subjects in your frame i've also found it to save time in this mode because you don't always have time to toggle your focus point around so if you want to save time and you have a clean background and nothing else moving then switch to 3d and you can easily track your subject without having to move your focus points around manually next is group area autofocus mode in this mode the camera uses five focus points you only see four but there is a center one as well that it uses and it uses all these points simultaneously and that makes it different from the other autofocus area modes it basically activates one big focusing point by using all five together it does not give preference to one of the focusing points above the other however it's important to note that it does give preference to the subject that is closer so if you always want the subject that is closer to be in focus then it works really well group also works really well when your subject is separated from the background and there's no nothing interfering and the subject is is fairly fairly at a fair distance from the background be careful when you're using group area autofocus if the different points fall on different areas of your subject so for example if you're photographing a crocodile and one of the points falls on its nose then the eyes will not be focused if you're using a shallow depth of field if you're photographing a bird and one of the and it's facing you and one of the points fall on the beak then unfortunately the whatever's behind the beak will not be as sharp as the beak so you can compensate for that by increasing your f number um but just be aware of the fact that group always selects the part or the subject that is closest to the camera it's great to use in low contrast in low light and when it's difficult to track a subject other autofocus error modes to mention i just want to mention pinpoint autofocus this is for ultra specific focusing so it's only available in afs and in live view but if you have time and if you need pinpoint focus on a very small part that you need focus on say you're shooting in between a lot of grass then you can switch to afs and you can use pinpoint focus i usually stay on afc and i use single point it works fine but if you have the time and you want to be ultra specific with your focus then use pinpoint focus the other one is wide area so wide small and large nikon compares this to group area autofocus where it basically uses a large focus point made up of a few smaller focusing points acting as a cluster to change between af area modes it's the same button on the side of the camera that you hold in and then you just turn your front command dial to rotate between the different af area modes now let's look at setting up auto focus in the menu system to get the most out of it first up focus priority you can tell your camera to take the shot only once focus has been achieved or you can tell it to take the shot where the focus has been achieved or not i don't shoot on afs often but on afs i like to leave it on focus priority because you'll mostly be shooting stationary subjects hopefully if you're an afs if you're in afc you set up afc in different ways there are different options depending on the camera model first option release the camera takes the photo when the shutter release button is pressed whether the camera has focused or not your camera doesn't slow down and you're able to shoot at your highest frame rate possible on the setting then there's focus the camera will only take a picture once it has managed to focus this tends to slow down the frame rates a little bit when shooting in continuous mode in some camera models you will see a release and focus option this means the camera gives priority to focus in continuous release mode the frame rate may drop depending on the subject then you might also see a focus and release option so in continuous release mode the camera gives priority to focus for the first frame in a sequence and then to frame rate for the remaining frames now the question is why would you want the camera to take a shot if it hasn't focused well sometimes the camera has good focus but it hasn't confirmed it yet and then you miss the shot for example if you're shooting at a higher f number and you're working with a wider depth of field then there's maybe two areas in your shot that are so close together that the difference in focus is hardly noticeable but the camera doesn't take the shot because it believes it isn't focused and then you miss the shot unfortunately for this reason together with the fact that i get the maximum frame rate when i shoot release i prefer to leave it on just release next up is focus tracking on some cameras you'll see these options and on other cameras you'll see these options when you see the one to five blocked shot af response it means that you're telling the camera how long to pause after it has lost focus on a subject before it attempts to refocus and what this means is you're telling it how sticky or not sticky it should be one two five five being very sticky and one being not so sticky for example if something crosses between you and your subject and you don't want the focus to to switch to whatever's crossing in between then you make it very sticky just be aware that if you do make it very sticky towards five it means that if you then also accidentally lose focus so you drop your focus point off of your subject then it will take a little bit longer to reacquire that focus on your subject if you've set it to very sticky where i shoot it doesn't very often happen that we have things crossing between us and our subjects so for me i leave it around about the middle around about three but it depends if you know you're going to be shooting a certain subject that's being um blocked by others or you're shooting in a in a group of animals and you want to isolate one and specifically lock onto one then you can make it sticky onto that one the other option you might see here is subject motion you get steady and you get erratic if it's steady then it's for subjects that are moving predictably a lazy lion walking towards you at a slow pace very predictable very slow for erratically moving subjects so for example swallows flying around you'll set it to erratic i unfortunately can't predict what i'm going to be shooting because we shoot birds we shoot mammals so there's not one specific subject that i shoot but if you know that you're going to be shooting a specific subject for a long period of time then stick it to steady or erratic depending on the behavior of your subject lastly i want to mention limiting selectable autofocus area modes there's a lot of autofocus area modes available and you might waste time and miss a shot if you keep scrolling through all the available options looking for the one you want therefore you can just choose which ones are available while scrolling through and you do this in your menu personally i mostly use single point group and dynamic nine so i can only scroll i choose to only scroll between those three options but choose the ones that you want available to you on the shortcut and then you don't have to waste time or miss a shot by scrolling through these options and that is how the nikon autofocus system works the best way to get to nerd is to get out there and practice thanks for joining me in my video i hope you found the tutorial to be helpful if you want to join me on safari then click the link below come over to africa and we can do some amazing wildlife photography together also if you enjoy our videos remember to subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon to receive notifications about when our next videos are available to watch we really appreciate your support and i'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Pangolin Wildlife Photography

Views: 268,973

Keywords: nikon autofocus, nikon autofocus fine tune, nikon autofocus modes, nikon autofocus modes explained, nikon autofocus points, nikon autofocus settings, nikon autofocus system, nikon autofocus tutorial, autofocus area mode nikon, autofocus nikon, nikon af modes, nikon af settings, nature photography, photography help, photography tips, wildlife photography, pangolin photo safaris, pangolin wildlife photography

Id: wsyu5wp6L04

Length: 16min 11sec (971 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 09 2020