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.

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.

I think I see the difference. You are doing Face/Eye detection automatically with the full field of view. On the RP if you set the Initial Servo AF Position to anything besides Automatic, you can then use any point as the focus area. I set mine to the center box, so it focuses and tracks on anything in that box. Eye detect and then face detect have priority, but if there isn't one in the box, it picks an object from that box.  If it can't focus on anything in the box, it expands the focus area.

In your scenario, move the camera so that the face is out of the center box, and it switches to object detection and it will track your bouquet perfectly.

Which is also exactly what it sounded like the OP wanted to do. Focus and recompose use to have a bad reputation, but with these smart cameras it is the fastest and best way for most photos.