Back Button Focus for Wildlife

Samuraidog wrote:

Morris0 wrote:

Samuraidog wrote:

Morris0 wrote:

Samuraidog wrote:

Greybeard2017 wrote:

DocShaka wrote:

Hello all.

I came across an interesting video today that mentioned the possibility of setting two BBF buttons to two different modes. For wildlife, particularly Bird In Flight, it would be a game changer to have my XT4's AEL button use AF-S (or AF-C) and single point and then be able to instantly jump to the AF-ON button and have that use AF-C 5x5 focus mode as the bird or other subject starts to move.

Is this possible on our Fujis? I can't seem to find the setting if it is.

Thanks for any info.

Doc

Not on the X-T4.

The closest you could get with the X-H2S is to set up different custom banks of settings and switch between them - then you could keep a single AF-ON button with different meanings. You could use a function button to instantly jump between modes.

This is what I've done on my X-H2S. C2 is set to single point bird mode, and C3 is set to zone for birds in flight. It actually works out fairly well, as I also have a default shutter speed for both scenarios. Certainly not as fast as simply pushing a button without moving your face from the camera, but it works OK for me so far.

I'm wondering why you have to switch to zone from subject. My understanding is the camera will revert to zone if configured if it dose not find a subject.

Morris

Tell me more about this. I'm trying to understand this concept.

If you have both zone and subject detection configured, subject detection is priority and when a subject is not found zone will be used.

Example: You have bird subject enabled and zone AF enabled. If you point at a bird the camera will see and track the bird, even if a dog walks into the frame as long as the bird is visible. Now if you decide to follow the the dog. The camera will not see a bird yet if the dog is in the focus box zone AF will focus on the dog.

Morris

This makes me think I should use zone for perched birds in thick brush instead of single point. I never thought to do that.

Yes if you have bird subject tracking enabled.  It is situations like this that subject tracking was invented for.  Enough of the bird's face would need to be visible for it to work.  Also when there is a high contrast background so the focus goes to the subject rather than the background.

Morris