EM1 continous AF and tracking

Chris R-UK wrote:

Colin K. Work wrote:

Chris R-UK wrote:

Fri13 wrote:

Oh and E-M1 can beat cameras like 7D Mk2 in C-AF accuracy and speed.

Perhaps you could produce your evidence for that statement.

Do you own a 7D MkII? Have you shot with one?

I owned a 7D MkI for 6 years and I can tell you that my E-M1 with a red dot sight can shoot most of the things that the 7D could, but there is no way that the E-M1 has better C-AF accuracy and speed than the 7D MkI let alone the 7D MkII. The lack of cross type AF points in the E-M1 can be a serious restriction for some targets.

I'm not sure about this ... I would suggest the initial acquisition is faster and more reliable than the 7D, but once acquired the 7D holds focus better. But it does very according to subject and conditions. I think this accounts for the variety of reports on relative performance - depends what you shoot I guess.

Colin,

I have been shooting BIF recently with an EE-1 to find out what I can and cannot shoot with the E-M1. Using Sequential L and hybrid PDAF/CDAF the E-M1 is certainly worse at maintaining focus and tends to go in and out of focus as you track the bird. I have therefore switched entirely to Sequential H for BIF using the EE-1.

My impression using Sequential H is a little different to yours - I would say that the E-M1 is probably comparable to the 7D for maintaining focus but is sometimes slower at acquiring the initial focus. Shooting with an EE-1 you have to wait for the focus beep to know that focus has been acquired before starting to shoot and sometimes that takes a while. With the 7D the beep normally came faster and more reliably. I am having particular problems when the bird is coming head on in a very horizontal attitude and that could be due to the lack of cross type AF points on the E-M1 (although I would have thought that it would affect vertical targets more than horizontal).

For horizontal targets that have little height, I flip the camera into portrait orientation, and then it locks focus extremely quickly even for very small targets.  Having the grip makes this much easier.  Some simply tilt the camera so that the target is not horizontal, but I find portrait orientation works more quickly.

The EE-1 has its own advantages and disadvantages - you can pick birds up extremely quickly but I get a lot of cut off wings because you can't see the viewfinder. I probably need to learn to shoot at a shorter focal length to allow more room for error. The EE-1 is great fun to use.

All in all, after about 6 months and 3000 or so BIF shots with the E-M1, I am at the situation where I can shoot everything with the E-M1/EE-1 that I could shoot with the 7D and I probably get comparable keeper rates, but I don't yet have the confidence with the E-M1 that I had with the 7D that I can nail a shot when shooting the most difficult targets. If I was going out on a once in a lifetime wildlife opportunity I would prefer to have my 7D with me (if I still had it) rather than the E-M1, but not prefer it sufficiently to offset the disadvantage of carrying around heavy lenses like the 100-400mm that I used to shoot with.

I think that all this shows is that on-sensor PDAF is probably the way the mirrorless cameras are going to take over from DSLRs for C-AF. I hope that the next generation E-M1 has Liveview at higher fps rates, the option to choose between PDAF and hybrid AF and cross type PDAF focus points.

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Chris R