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R5 generic object tracking with FW 1.5

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SigZero

SigZero

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Hi All,

I know that this has been raised many times, but I just want to ask if someone has similar fundings about R5's AF in 1.5 Firmware.

I'm using tracking in "generic" mode - without any specific subject type selected in settings (as I'm mostly tracking planes and trains).

My experience is that in "specific" mode (ie. eye or animal tracking) works much better in 1.5 but "generic" mode become much much less precise and sticky. Before 1.5 my R5 was really stickiy to selected object with I would say 99% precision. Now, with 1.5, its really common that it looses object (especially if it is small and distant). That was not a case with pre-1.5 firmware.

Do you have any experiences with FW 1.5 and tracking generic objects?

Br, Paweł.

--
My photo-blog: http://pawel.online
 
Last edited:
R6 not R5 but i experienced similar.

I tend to track things that don't have eyes and my normal main choice for that is single point AF (occasionally zone or expanded).

My in focus keeper rate dropped from about 90% with 1.4 to 40% with 1.5 for the same subject, same lighting etc.

I rolled back the R6 to 1.4 (which luckily you can do on this model) and immediately got my 90% back.

No matter what im doing with the case settings and so on i just cant get the performance i had before. It seems better for subjects it "knows" at the expense of things it doesnt.
 
gnirtS said:
R6 not R5 but i experienced similar.

I tend to track things that don't have eyes and my normal main choice for that is single point AF (occasionally zone or expanded).

My in focus keeper rate dropped from about 90% with 1.4 to 40% with 1.5 for the same subject, same lighting etc.

I rolled back the R6 to 1.4 (which luckily you can do on this model) and immediately got my 90% back.

No matter what im doing with the case settings and so on i just cant get the performance i had before. It seems better for subjects it "knows" at the expense of things it doesnt.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that, I thought I'm alone here. Probably not much people using tracking for generic objects.

Seems that indeed 1.5 is much better at tracking "trained" specific objects but is much less precise on tracking generic objects which do not fell into "people, animals, cars".

Switched back to non-tracking AF :(

Im considering switching back to 1.4.

Br, Paweł.
 
SigZero said:
Hi All,

I know that this has been raised many times, but I just want to ask if someone has similar fundings about R5's AF in 1.5 Firmware.

I'm using tracking in "generic" mode - without any specific subject type selected in settings (as I'm mostly tracking planes and trains).

My experience is that in "specific" mode (ie. eye or animal tracking) works much better in 1.5 but "generic" mode become much much less precise and sticky. Before 1.5 my R5 was really stickiy to selected object with I would say 99% precision. Now, with 1.5, its really common that it looses object (especially if it is small and distant). That was not a case with pre-1.5 firmware.

Do you have any experiences with FW 1.5 and tracking generic objects?

Br, Paweł.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't even worry about it. This is getting out of machine learning and into real AI. Think about it, you'll get it selecting trains but where on the train will it focus? The front lights, the wheels, the windows, the conductor?

Same is true for anything else. Take a hot air balloon for instance. Where should it focus, the basket? The big logo on the front? Top, bottom, left, or right? How about an airplane? Wing, cockpit, landing gear, rear engines, afterburner? What?

Now throw in the object recognition in a sea of objects, frankly it's pretty amazing as is with known objects like birds. But now you want it to distinguish what, every possible shape known to mankind and track that for you?

There are more pressing matters than this, I think. For one, I'm interested in this SPAD sensor and what it can do, like read out super-fast. That might change how tracking works in the future.

So, my advice is to wait and see on this for a future camera.
 
I recommend Nina Bailey's e-book that has had AF section extensively updated since the last firmware update.
 
QSMcDraw said:
Excellent topic! You've inspired me to experiment. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Agree. Excellent topic! I didn't even know there's a 'generic' option before reading this thread. I've set the tracking to 'people' all the time.
 
moon1029 said:
QSMcDraw said:
Excellent topic! You've inspired me to experiment. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Agree. Excellent topic! I didn't even know there's a 'generic' option before reading this thread. I've set the tracking to 'people' all the time.
Click to expand...
The "generic" tracking is true with all modern AF systems - I've had them in all my previous Sony cameras. In case of A7R3 it was moderate, in A7R4 it was excellent. Before FW 1.5 with my R5 it was even better that A7R4, which I did not expect. After 1.5 update I think it's closer to A7R3 performance :(

Probably AI system is trained for people, animals and cars - there might be no "place" for efficient generic object tracking (by shape, color etc).

One more addition - it's obvious that in generic object AF the focus will be set anywhere within area that camera considers as tracked object - so it might be not very precise. For my subjects its ok. I'm talking about how AF tracks objects as they are progressing through the frame. After FW 1.5 camera looses object much more frequently.

Br, Paweł.

--
My photo-blog: http://pawel.online
 
Last edited:
SigZero said:
gnirtS said:
R6 not R5 but i experienced similar.

I tend to track things that don't have eyes and my normal main choice for that is single point AF (occasionally zone or expanded).

My in focus keeper rate dropped from about 90% with 1.4 to 40% with 1.5 for the same subject, same lighting etc.

I rolled back the R6 to 1.4 (which luckily you can do on this model) and immediately got my 90% back.

No matter what im doing with the case settings and so on i just cant get the performance i had before. It seems better for subjects it "knows" at the expense of things it doesnt.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that, I thought I'm alone here. Probably not much people using tracking for generic objects.

Seems that indeed 1.5 is much better at tracking "trained" specific objects but is much less precise on tracking generic objects which do not fell into "people, animals, cars".

Switched back to non-tracking AF :(

Im considering switching back to 1.4.

Br, Paweł.
Click to expand...
 
f4870462b54241aeb79d998efa811aaa.jpg.png



--
Rose
-----
 
Blokfluitist said:
f4870462b54241aeb79d998efa811aaa.jpg.png
Click to expand...
Not sure where that screen shot comes from but it is not what the R5 manual says about the "None" selection. It doesn't say, it "turn off the camera's ability to detect people, animals and vehicles and allows the camera to focus on more generalized subjects".

What it does say is that "the camera determines the main subject automatically". That says nothing about being generalized or turning off trained subjects.

Here's page 402 in the R5 manual updated for FW 1.5:



26296e9c55d2480faea27aa902e86a34.jpg.png
 
gimp_dad said:
Blokfluitist said:
f4870462b54241aeb79d998efa811aaa.jpg.png
Click to expand...
Not sure where that screen shot comes from but it is not what the R5 manual says about the "None" selection. It doesn't say, it "turn off the camera's ability to detect people, animals and vehicles and allows the camera to focus on more generalized subjects".

What it does say is that "the camera determines the main subject automatically". That says nothing about being generalized or turning off trained subjects.

Here's page 402 in the R5 manual updated for FW 1.5:

26296e9c55d2480faea27aa902e86a34.jpg.png
Click to expand...

The info above is about automatic selection of subject within the AF area. But it's also good to cite next page:

3fab6b8381224c9caebdc93f6604ef64.jpg.png

It says that when there is no relevant subject the camera tracks other objects.

Br, Paweł.

--
My photo-blog: http://pawel.online
 
Last edited:
SigZero said:
gimp_dad said:
Blokfluitist said:
f4870462b54241aeb79d998efa811aaa.jpg.png
Click to expand...
Not sure where that screen shot comes from but it is not what the R5 manual says about the "None" selection. It doesn't say, it "turn off the camera's ability to detect people, animals and vehicles and allows the camera to focus on more generalized subjects".

What it does say is that "the camera determines the main subject automatically". That says nothing about being generalized or turning off trained subjects.

Here's page 402 in the R5 manual updated for FW 1.5:

26296e9c55d2480faea27aa902e86a34.jpg.png
Click to expand...

The info above is about automatic selection of subject within the AF area. But it's also good to cite next page:

3fab6b8381224c9caebdc93f6604ef64.jpg.png

It says that when there is no relevant subject the camera tracks other objects.

Br, Paweł.
Click to expand...

Agreed. And expecting the camera to randomly choose the objects we are hoping for when it doesn't have a trained subject to track seems much less productive than just keeping focus points on the objects we want.
 
gimp_dad said:
Agreed. And expecting the camera to randomly choose the objects we are hoping for when it doesn't have a trained subject to track seems much less productive than just keeping focus points on the objects we want.
Click to expand...
Yep. My pre-1.5 workflow was to select object using active AF point and the the AF system tracked the object flawlessly. Unfortunately on 1.5 it's very often loosing the object or even not selecting the correct object clearly under AF point.

Br, Paweł.
 
SigZero said:
SigZero said:
Agreed. And expecting the camera to randomly choose the objects we are hoping for when it doesn't have a trained subject to track seems much less productive than just keeping focus points on the objects we want.
Click to expand...
Yep. My pre-1.5 workflow was to select object using active AF point and the the AF system tracked the object flawlessly. Unfortunately on 1.5 it's very often loosing the object or even not selecting the correct object clearly under AF point.

Br, Paweł.
Click to expand...
Interesting to hear your experience. I assume you were selecting "No priority" under "Subject to detect". Is that correct? I don't think I ever intentionally used face+tracking for objects that weren't animals or people. I was an early user of the R5 and I recall the first implementation of face+tracking seemed totally random (it just seemed confused and jumped all over) if I attempted it on other objects. I never ended up trying it again with later FW releases, just sticking with my approach of manually placing AF boxes where I wanted them if not tracking faces/eyes. I might roll back one of my two R5s to FW 1.4 so I can play around with this some more.

My guess is that the whole subject tracking AI got retrained given the major changes found in FW 1.5. This could absolutely have had unintended consequences for types of objects that are not explicitly defined. And this change may even be implied by the new labeling of "Subject to detect" which now says "None" rather than "No priority" if it isn't "People", "Animals" or "Vehicles". As the number of potential objects not explicitly defined could be infinite, it will be interesting to see what they do from here with the subject heuristics.

Hopefully Canon will ultimately publish an AF guide for these modern bodies to help us get clarity on the best strategies to use for the various situations.
 
The screenshot I posted comes from "Understanding the R5" by Nina Bailey who specialises in writing user guides for the Canon EOS system. She has just updated the ebooks on the R5 & R6 adding an extra 34 pages on the AF system alone, reflecting the changes in the most recent firmware update. She is the founder of EOS Training Academy where she directs the training programme, and also Technical Editor of EOS magazine, the original Canon magazine for EOS enthusiasts.

https://www.ninabailey.co.uk/ebooks/understanding/understanding-eos-r5.html
 
Thank you for sharing the link. The R5 Advanced User's Guide is extremely limited, apparently assuming that an "advanced user" is going to experiment and see how everything works together. For those of us who have time to experiment, great, but in the meantime, we could miss a LOT of great shots during the learning period.

A well written guide from somebody who has used the R5, tried different approaches, and gathered information from a number of other photographers can really shorten that learning period by months!

I personally don't believe anybody could come cold to the R5 and make heads or tails of the AUG. It builds on experience with previous Canon full frame cameras, but it is in no way a tutorial!
 
Blokfluitist said:
The screenshot I posted comes from "Understanding the R5" by Nina Bailey who specialises in writing user guides for the Canon EOS system. She has just updated the ebooks on the R5 & R6 adding an extra 34 pages on the AF system alone, reflecting the changes in the most recent firmware update. She is the founder of EOS Training Academy where she directs the training programme, and also Technical Editor of EOS magazine, the original Canon magazine for EOS enthusiasts.

https://www.ninabailey.co.uk/ebooks/understanding/understanding-eos-r5.html
Click to expand...
 
Today I've decided to roll back to 1.4.0.

The difference is absolutely huge.
To be clear - I'm talking about camera ability to find and track generic (non human and animal) objects. In 1.4.0 almost any selected object is correctly identified and camera is flawlessly able to track it (with AF point) when it moves along frame.
In case o 1.5.0 the initial find and ability to keep tracking object is much less reliable.
All settings the same between both FW.

Br, Paweł.
 
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