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

Laqup wrote:

R2D2 wrote:

Laqup wrote:

and a teaching on how to do it differently and why this method is not relevant anyway. In my eyes the disrespectfulness is coming "from the other side" and his observation is spot on.

Well what relevant method do YOU use for shooting your landscapes?

R2

Try to think a bit outside the box. You are focusing very much on landscapes and "still lives".

The method the author describes is useful in general, without the focus on landscape. Read the initial post and you will see that first of all the method itself was described and only later landscape was mentioned as one example were the author is using this technique. But as you can also read in the initial post it can be used for "just about anything". So try to keep that in mind while suggesting different methods or before "condemning" the method. Think about the possibilities for various use cases.

For many years I was a "Canon only guy", I never used this method myself in the past, but since I got the Z6 and Z7 I discovered that this is a very viable and quick method of choosing the focus point and to my knowledge it can't be used with the same reliabilty on Canon bodys (at least not the ones I use) and it is one of the biggest low-lights of my EOS R5.

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.

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. But when not being static, moving around and re-composing you will typically have to adjust the area you are focusing on. I do this by switching to single point AF, using the EVF and selecting the focus point via the touch screen ("touch and drag AF"). Depending on how fast and often you recompose this is serious work. And if you want to use subject/eye detection in between you will always have to cycle through the AF methods. 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

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.

It is almost like Canon, Sony, Nikon, etc all have different AF systems. Also seems they all have different upsides and downsides. Neat.

As for locking onto a focus point My R3 and R7 can do this in a way that sounds like the inverse of Sony and Nikon. Enable\Disable [Subject Tracking].

On my R3 I have this mapped to one of the 4 front buttons and I my R7 I have it mapped to the one front button. Turn off [Subject Tracking] and the focus point is locked on the selected focus point turn [Subject Tracking] back on and the AF system will be actively looking for something to focus on.

Quick video of this:

I personally rarely use this as the Cameras seem pretty much clairvoyant in knowing what I want to focus on.

Cheers