I find that face detect autofocus works very well on my G85, as it did on my previous GH4, E-M5, and GX1. However, there are two situations where it doesn't work so well:
1. If there are multiple people, there's no way to select which face to focus on.
2. If the face turns away, there's no guarantee on what you'll get next. It might be a different face (see above), or the body.
Do newer Panasonic cameras provide solutions for these situations? For example, the G9 manual says:
My old Olympus E-M5 had the nice behavior where you could specify a focus point to fall back on if face detect failed. That provided a work around for the second situation but not the first. With Panasonic cameras I've used, if you select a focus point--which requires a button or touch screen press--that disables face detect. I find the Panasonic way simpler to understand, but the Olympus a little bit better in practice--and still not ideal.
I know certain other, ahem, tony manufacturers solve this differently, but I don't want to get into a system debate. I'll say that the need for true continuous face AF doesn't really matter for me. I'm talking about relatively static subjects here, and a relatively slow FPS.
1. If there are multiple people, there's no way to select which face to focus on.
2. If the face turns away, there's no guarantee on what you'll get next. It might be a different face (see above), or the body.
Do newer Panasonic cameras provide solutions for these situations? For example, the G9 manual says:
I'm not sure what "align an AF area" means, because I didn't think there were AF areas in face detect. I'd rather not use the touch screen, since that doesn't work well for me when using the EVF. (My nose presses the screen.)Member said:
My old Olympus E-M5 had the nice behavior where you could specify a focus point to fall back on if face detect failed. That provided a work around for the second situation but not the first. With Panasonic cameras I've used, if you select a focus point--which requires a button or touch screen press--that disables face detect. I find the Panasonic way simpler to understand, but the Olympus a little bit better in practice--and still not ideal.
I know certain other, ahem, tony manufacturers solve this differently, but I don't want to get into a system debate. I'll say that the need for true continuous face AF doesn't really matter for me. I'm talking about relatively static subjects here, and a relatively slow FPS.