Below is a repost of my old comment from a focus peaking thread.
TL;DR:
"high sensitivity Peak 3" means a wider band of red. (That confused me at first!)
"low sensitivity Peak 1" is a narrow band.
Telephotos need different sensitivity settings than wide angles.
100% sometimes will barely show red when that same sensitivity works fine at full scene view.
~~~
Testing today on my Z6 iii:
I see that Focus Peaking on the i-menu is easy: The front dial changes Peak 1,2,3. The rear dial sets On or Off. If Peaking is already highlighted on the i-menu, I just click the front dial to change Peak 1,2,3 and half press the shutter to set it.
Just now, I tested my 24-120 f/4.
At
24mm, even Peak1 is too wide. It is helpful in Manual Focus mode, along with the focus box turning green. With 100% zoom, it's minimal red, which works quite well.
at
120mm, Peak 1 barely shows red. Peak 3 works well. At 100% zoom, close up, Peak 3 is a very narrow band, matching what I can see as in focus here.
(With a little experimenting now, peaking seems a bit more forgiving than what I remembered from my Z6. Maybe I'll do some side-by-side tests.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From an
old peaking thread :
Focus peaking shows areas of high contrast edges. Out of focus images have fuzzy edges, so they don't show the color.
From the useful
Z6 Hogan Guide pdf:
Note that “high sensitivity” means that a broader area is
considered “in focus”, while a “low sensitivity” means that a
smaller area is considered in focus. If you’re being highly
critical in focus, you need to set 1 (low sensitivity). If you’re just
trying to get close quickly, consider using 3 (high sensitivity).
Nikon’s wording is probably backwards to what you’re
thinking.
~~~
(I have autofocus lenses. Peaking works on those too. WIth autofocus turned on, the red only shows when holding down the autofocus AF-On or a half press shutter. Very useful. This works great for focusing when there's branches or similar objects in front of the subject.)
Testing just now, I got very little color peaking from a fuzzy microfiber towel, and lots of peaking from a page of printed text. So the lack of sharp edges affects the peaking.
Settings
I have the
red video button set to
"My Menu". I had added
d10-Peaking Highlights to the menu, so I can quickly switch peaking sensitivity. But I have to click the menu selection, then click Peaking, then choose the peaking level. 3 steps.
But now I see that Peaking is available as a choice for the
i-menu. That's even faster to switch levels and switch back again when done -- when the i-menu selection is on Peaking, the control wheel changes it's value, and pressing any button exits and saves the choice. Much faster.
I have my
F2 button set to
100% zoom. It's useful for focusing and for reviewing images. It zooms to the focus point in the image.
I can zoom the reviewed image to see how sharp the whole focus peaking region was, compared to what I saw in red before taking the shot.
The peaking display gets a higher sensitivity when zoomed in 100%. This makes sense, otherwise the whole view might be red!
I normally leave it on the Peak 2 setting, but do change it as needed.
~~~
50mm F1.8 lens:
peak level 2 or level 1 are good. Level 3 is too broad, I think. Peak 2 works well. Even peak 1 is good.
but at 100% zoom: peak 1 ("low sensitivity" = narrow range, precise focus) barely shows any red at all. Just very tiny bits of the zoomed area are a bit red.
Peak 2 is better. Peak 3, ("high sensitivity" = wide range), works great with the 100% zoom.
24-70 F4 at
24mm:
Peak 3, wide range, lights up most of the image! Not all of this is fully sharp when checking the image.
Peak 1, narrow range, still has a pretty wide band of red. Wide angle lenses have more of the image in focus.
200mm F5.6:
Using the 100% zoom, I find it just as easy to see the focus changing as I turn the focus ring. The red focus peaking isn't really needed.
Peak 3, wide range, showed a wide band of red. Not all of it was completely in focus when zoomed in to review. It did work pretty well with the 100% zoom, showing a reasonable amount of red to be helpful.
Peak 2: the nearest and farthest parts of the red band were a little out of focus, even when stopped down to F11.
Peak 1 has a narrow, and usable, band of red. But, at 100% zoom, it was essentially invisible, I rarely saw even a dot of red anywhere. But while zoomed, just seeing the image itself move in and out of focus was effective, no red peaking needed with this much of a telephoto.
