Use Subject & Eye Tracking Like A Pro

hi everybody joe here from shutterspeak photography very nice to see your smiling faces again here on youtube so if you're the proud owner of an icon c camera and i'm betting you are if you're watching this video you have a really great auto focusing system you have face detection you have eye detection and you have subject tracking now all of these things kind of go hand in hand and if we understand what each of these different focusing terms mean and how and when to use them we can really nail down focus in just about any shooting scenario now i've used the nikon z to photograph professional sports major concerts here in new york weddings and even family birthday parties and getting focused nailed down right it's just a matter of understanding when do i use subject tracking when do i rely on the camera to do face and eye detection on its own and what do i do when i need to switch from a scenario where the camera has locked onto a face and there's another face and that's the one that i really want but i can't get to that face so i'm going to show you how to work through all of those scenarios using your face tracking your eye detection and your subject tracking as well as a few modifications to the menu systems that's going to make it even easier for you to use so maybe now is a great time for you to grab your nikon z camera and follow along hey let's get started okay so the first thing i'd like to do is step you through a couple of menu tweaks that i make to my nikon z cameras that enable me to use the autofocus system a little more easily now the first week is going to be to this front section of function buttons now the function buttons are set up by default to white balance and uh exposure we're going to change white balance to autofocus so that when we have our camera up to our eye we have the ability to change both exposure and autofocus by just a touch of a button without the camera ever leaving all right now i have a whole video on that that you can check out here and why i really believe in that system but it's really going to help us with autofocus tremendously okay the ability to change the autofocus settings on the fly like that with the camera up to your eye is just invaluable and the next thing i want to show you is the lens function button now if you have a pro series lens with a lens function button we're going to program that to also help us with our autofocus system and if you don't that's okay that's fine but you're still going to be able to do the same thing but i just like having some of the functions right here at my thumb because when i'm holding this camera like this it just makes sense to be able to click right there but you'll still be able to do the same things just with different set of buttons and i'm also going to show you what the auto focus button does on the back auto focus on which a lot of people don't really understand they know it's back focus but how does it work in terms of autofocus and object tracking with the nikon z and i'll show you how that functions alright so let's jump into the menu settings right now okay so the first change that i like to make is in the custom settings menu that's the pencil and then go on down to f controls once you're at controls click onto controls and then go to f2 custom controls now you'll see that i have the function one button which is that button in the front to the right if you're looking from the back of your camera forward so the right side of your lens at the top that is set to metering which may be your default as well and now i have set the function to button to focus mode slash af area mode now this is going to allow me to control the type of focus that the camera is using by pushing that bottom front button so if you don't have it set just click on that and then you'll scroll through this menu here until you find focus mode slash af mode just hit ok and your camera will then be programmed to that mode once you exit out of the menu system and the other important change that i make is to that function button that's on the side of your lens so the lens function button number one this one and two we use number one for this because it's on uh two of the three main lenses it's on your 14 to 24 your 24 to 70 and your 70 to 200 this lens button is on all three of those we click into that and we're going to select subject tracking and what that's going to do for you is it's going to put the option to turn on and off subject tracking at your thumb and this is going to maximize our ability to always get the shot which is kind of the most important aspect of any focusing system is to always be able to get the shot okay so let's take a look at how how these changes affect us okay so we're on the back of my nikon z62 series camera and you see we have kylo ren here who has graciously volunteered to pose for this tutorial as you know if you've watched my other videos i tend to use star wars characters quite a bit and i am a big fan so if you are too give me a shout out in those comments so we see eye detection has picked up kylo ren's eye and if you remember we programmed those two front function buttons so the top function button may have already been set at metering and if not hopefully that's what you set it to and we have the bottom button set up to our focus mode so now what you can do is you can spin that back command dial to change the type of focus and you can change the focus type using the front command dial so we can go into pet detection we can go to spot you can go into weighted wide large large with face detection right area and then area with face okay so that's great and if you didn't have uh or if you don't have a z62 okay you may be in this mode area right now with face detection and that's fine i'm gonna leave my two on this mode because that's what's appropriate for this camera so let's say for example we didn't want to focus on kylo ren's eye maybe the subject was the vader mask we could change the focus mode of course and maybe use a single focus point or something like that but we have object detection so that's going to be a better way of doing that and if you recall we programmed object detection to the side lens function button so now we have to do is hit that side button and you'll see a box comes up and then we use the dial that's alongside the ok button on the back of your camera to move it to where we want once we have it in the right spot just hit ok and now we are locked onto that area and that's just a great way of utilizing object tracking now if we want to go back to kylo ren's face all we need to do is hit that subject tracking button again and there we are we're right back in face tracking and that works fantastic okay and if you don't have a lens that has that side button maybe consider programming a button on the back of your camera subject tracking because it works really well now if you don't have a lens with that side lens function button that's okay what you would do in that case is just hit the ok button and you'll be in that mode okay now you can move over to the veda mask hit ok again and you'll see that now we are in object tracking mode but now here's the catch if you hit ok again to bump out you're going to be back in object tracking mode okay so let's go back to our veda mask and there it is so to exit out of object tracking and back to face tracking you need to hit the magnifying glass minus at the bottom of your screen uh i'm sorry at the bottom of the back of your camera but it's indicated on the bottom of your screen you see it there indicated it's showing the word exit and it's telling you press magnifying glass minus to exit out and what you do you're right back in that face tracking mode and so that's how that works and by just knowing how these buttons work that's going to make all the difference in your success in terms of using object tracking and face tracking but let's say we just wanted to temporarily track an object now we can do that also by again just hitting that okay button move the box to what we want to track and now we can press the af on button on the back of the camera and hold it once we hold down you'll see that we are temporarily tracking that object for as long as we hold it okay once we let go we're back to our selection point and we can move it to a another point okay and track that point by hitting okay and pressing and holding that auto focus button and you'll see now we are tracking that point okay if we wanted to track the face we can do that as well hit ok and it locks onto the face okay now the other way of doing this is we can half press the shutter button and you'll see the camera will focus on the face but it'll stay locked on as long as we are in that mode okay so using the af on button is a temporary way of tracking and focusing um without having to press that okay button if it's something that you just need for a brief second okay so again we go to the mask we hit af on hold it and we're tracking it for as long as we're holding the af on button as soon as we let go we're back to the selector point now if you put this on the face here and we have pressed the shutter without saying okay we'll do the same exact thing as using the af on button on the back of the camera as soon as we let go we're back in object selection now again if we hit the magnifying glass minus button right back to face detection mode now let's say we wanted to focus on the other eye same thing using that circle with the okay okay so what if we had two people in the scene well now you see that there is both a left and right arrow on eyes the eye of our ray character right so if we move to the left that's going to change to the other eye if we move to the right it's going to change to the right eye and if we move to the right again you're going to see how it's going to jump over to kylo ren and then we can move to the right again and move to that other eye so that's how that system is going to work for you if there's two faces in the scene and it does give you the ability to move back and forth very easily okay so now i've brought the aperture all the way down to f 2.8 so what happens in a scenario where the face of the ray character is so out of focus that there is no way the camera even recognizes it as a face so we can change the eye on kylo ren but you see we no longer have the option to switch over to rey because she's just too out of focus so the best way to handle this is to go into your subject tracking mode move up to the face click ok focus and then hit subject tracking again if you're using the lens function button or use the magnifying minus sign and that will get you into your auto eye focus again your face detection and you see now we can move back and forth and kylo ren is in enough focus in the background there that we can still move over to him and focus on him okay so that's how we would handle that scenario okay so once we understand how the system works you'll see how much easier it is for you to handle just about any situation that you get into with this auto focusing system and what techniques you need to use to resolve those shooting scenarios and get the best possible outcome every time so i hope you found that video helpful if you did please help me out by hitting the like button and hit the subscribe button and ring the bell so you get notified of future updates to this channel that beyond anything would help me out the most and most of all it it's free so i appreciate you doing that and i thank you for it hey until i see you next time have a great day youtube bye

Channel: Joseph Nuzzo

Views: 15,178

Keywords: eye tracking, autofocus, Nikon Z, nikon z7, nikon z6, nikon z50, nikon, nikon z5, nikon z6 ii, nikon z system, nikon z 6, nikon z7 ii, nikon z series, nikon z6ii, nikon z7ii, nikon mirrorless, nikon z6 camera, mirrorless, z6, nikon z mount, nikon z 7, nikon z lens, nikon z autofocus, z mount, z7, z50, nikon mirrorless camera, continuous autofocus, autofocus explained, how to use nikon autofocus, nikon autofocus video, autofocus settings

Id: GbCTwetu_n8

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021