Eye or face detection?

I have just been playing around with my D800 and taking shots of my better half.

I was using the 50mm F1.8 and using the toggle to shift the AF point around.

Even when I did with the Pentax's it wasn't a guaranteed hit unless i was close and the subject was still.

I was shooting full body shots 5meters away and it was hitting the eyes 100% of the time.......

Is there an eye detection or face recognition system built into the Nikons?

Needless to say I was impressed and exactly what I was looking for in my brand change.

If this is something you guys take for granted, I gather the D750 is at least as good ?

Slowly getting used to the Nikon menu's but it's taking a few weeks because of ingrained habits.

The metering was a bit random though, that's the next lesson ............

..On the newer Nikon cameras has the "Face-detection" feature, such as D850 & D500..

..use the "Face-detection" and "Group-area AF" as a combo, and works well together..


..from the D850 pdf manual..


..from the D850 pdf manual..


..Picture taken with D850, sooc jpeg, face-detection "on", group-area af..

..happy shooting my friend..

..Cheers..

"According to Page 94 in the D800 manual, Face Detection through the viewfinder is enabled by simply rotating the subcommand dial until it reads "Auto". If it's in AF-S, the focusing system will detect and give priority to faces. If it's in AF-C, it's supposed to track the face"

I just had a quick google search and looks like the D800 also has an earlier or similar system.

It prioritises faces in AF-S and tracks them in AF-C.

I've never experienced A 100% hit rate before .....

robbo d said:

"According to Page 94 in the D800 manual, Face Detection through the viewfinder is enabled by simply rotating the subcommand dial until it reads "Auto". If it's in AF-S, the focusing system will detect and give priority to faces. If it's in AF-C, it's supposed to track the face"

I just had a quick google search and looks like the D800 also has an earlier or similar system.

It prioritises faces in AF-S and tracks them in AF-C.

I've never experienced A 100% hit rate before .....

Click to expand...

..yes, seems the D800 has an earlier version of the face-detection..


..from the D800 pdf manual..


..from the D800 pdf manual..

..happy shooting my friend..

..Cheers..

robbo d said:

I have just been playing around with my D800 and taking shots of my better half.

I was using the 50mm F1.8 and using the toggle to shift the AF point around.

Even when I did with the Pentax's it wasn't a guaranteed hit unless i was close and the subject was still.

I was shooting full body shots 5meters away and it was hitting the eyes 100% of the time.......

Is there an eye detection or face recognition system built into the Nikons?

Needless to say I was impressed and exactly what I was looking for in my brand change.

If this is something you guys take for granted, I gather the D750 is at least as good ?

Slowly getting used to the Nikon menu's but it's taking a few weeks because of ingrained habits.

The metering was a bit random though, that's the next lesson ............

Click to expand...

We have to understand what AF setting you are using, there is face detect but only in auto area mode. This is the last setting you can select in your AF selection.

With this setting I have found that it will focus on the closest eye of your subject





Here I ran a test using this setting as you can see that the camera is picking the nearest eye to focus on. What is nice about this feature is that you can see in real time in the OVF what the camera is focusing on.

I don't know of any other AF setting that will allow the camera to select the face or eye to focus on, the only other setting would be 3D tracking but you first have to place the AF point over the eye you want to track to tell the camera that is the object you want it to track.

With 3D tracking it does not have to be a face or eye you first lock, here I used the head and the camera tracked as I moved around





Here I locked onto the chick





I find that its the latency of the pentax's af system that makes for the most inaccuracies I had with pentax in AFC , this is even evident in single point AF. With Nikon its always making small AF corrections in AFC whereas with pentax the subject distance would have to change more drastic before the camera would make corrections.



--
The Camera is only a tool, photography is deciding how to use it.
The hardest part about capturing wildlife is not the photographing portion; it’s getting them to sign a model release

..here's another example from my D850..




..Picture taken with D850, sooc jpeg, face-detection "on", group-area af..







..happy shooting my friend..

..Cheers..

This is the silver bullet I was looking for.

Initially unsure if Nikon would do what I wanted and maybe Sony maybe my next stop.

This is glorious !!!!!

Laughing and crying at the same time