Why does my XT-4 still attempt to focus despite being in manual mode?

JNR wrote:

Way back when I switched to BBF I found that it was quite an adjustment for a few days, and then it became natural to me. For me, muscle memory is a challenge if I'm shooting in multiple ways, so I try to keep everything set up mostly the same way for all situations. So, I'm shooting BBF in all situations.

i use BBF in Manual focusing mode all the time, but never with AF-S and AF-C. Despite much experimentation, I have never been able to get BBC results with anywhere near the consistent accuracy that I get using the shutter button for AF with Fuji cameras, especially with moving subjects. If full-time BBF works for you, great, but it doesn't work well for me at all. Just flipping the front MCS button and I'm instantly from BBF with manual fine-tuning, to fast/accurate AF with the shutter button, the best of both worlds, IMO.

I should experiment with that. I'm not entirely happy with how the X-T5 is responding on AF with moving objects (AF-c). I don't do a lot of action - so had chalked it up to that, but the XF 70-300 has been more frustrating than expected in testing. Still winter here, so very limited real action shooting.

I gave it a thorough comparison on the X-T5 today, shifting between BBF and half-press activation - all with AF-c shooting. Could not find one bit of difference in the responsiveness or hit rate. This was the first time I had activated half-press on the new model - and I did find it much better in terms of consistent feel and feedback than the X-T2/20 models. That isn't a real factor in deciding between half-press and BBF for me.

In fact, there is good reason to go the BBF route with the newer models because you have a much broader useful AF phase-detection area in which to operate, not to mention the better tracking capability. Unfortunately, the tendency to lose AF tracking and arbitrarily variable eye detection operation (no matter how you're activating AF) is where things tend to fall down.

I'll play around with it some more, but I'm wondering if Erik simply had bad-luck streaks when using BBF. When you think about it, there isn't a good reason why AF would work better activated one way or another. And there is no way I'm going to buy the idea that the quick press method (no stopping halfway to allow AF to lock on) is somehow the way to get the most successful results consistently. I've tried that in the past and - predictably - too often the AF never locks on properly.