Can Canon AF do real time tracking of objects (not just faces,eyes,cars,animals etc)?

Laqup wrote:

Just to give an example: Imagine a scene where you are shooting portraits. Your camera is not static / on a tripod but you are moving freely around. You have a thin DOF and snap away happily with subject/eye detection. Suddenly you see the opportunity to focus on a different detail in the scene (e.g. the person holding some flowers or some details in the outfit) and you want to quickly snap different compositions with the additional detail (that can't be detected by the subject/eye detection algorithms), maybe even while the face is still visible. With Nikon or Sony you just hit a button, "lock in" the other detail, freely move and snap happily away.

We're aware of the case for focusing and recomposing.  Several people have stated that Canon cameras can also do that.

What we didn't do is hook up a phone or a video camera to film the back of the camera while you wave it around.

With Canon that is much harder to achieve in my experience. If the face is still visible you will have to deactive subject detection or use different focus methods.

Not with my camera, you don't, as stated previously.

But when not being static, moving around and re-composing you will typically have to adjust the area you are focusing on.

No you don't.  You just move the camera, just like you demonstrated.

I do this by switching to single point AF,

unnecessary

using the EVF

also unnecessary

and selecting the focus point via the touch screen ("touch and drag AF").

You don't have to drag anything.

Depending on how fast and often you recompose this is serious work.

No it isn't.  It's trivial.  You don't HAVE to move the focusing spot, but if you want to, you just touch the screen.  I'm not entirely sure you can do that with a Sony.  You can also move it with buttons if you want.

And if you want to use subject/eye detection in between you will always have to cycle through the AF methods.

Not with my camera.

With Nikon you can jump from subject detection to fully controllable "any object tracking mode" and back again with only one additional button press. It is quite a bit faster. To be honest, it is hard to explain and to get excited about if you have never used it. Here is an example video (should start at 6:42):

https://youtu.be/GbCTwetu_n8?t=402

I'm sure it's wonderful, but this is a Canon forum.  It's really in bad taste to go on and on about Sony and Nikon.

He is using the joystick at the beginning to shift the position of the tracking focus field, this is of course not necessary (guess he is doing it because his camera is on a tripod and he wants to start with the figure in the center). And of course this is again a somewhat static setup, in realworld usage you will be moving yourself much more for e.g. weddings.

Here another very quick example on how to switch really fast between any object tracking and subject detection (3:41) (just watch the next 10 seconds):

https://youtu.be/Unc0k_H6KXQ?t=221

Another example, well explained (6:07):

https://youtu.be/Wy8iXtoxa24?t=367

Update: This is actually the best video, at 7:50 he demonstrates fast toggling between eye AF and tracking.

Maybe you can see the usefullness to have this mode and kind of tracking performance.