NRothschild
Veteran Member
I got to thinking about this AF-C and Focus/Release Priority thing and I want to go into my thinking in greater detail, only because the context of this thread is educational. I'm not saying my way is the only right way, I only want to explain my logic so people can come to an educated decision.
I started with a D70 and I quickly learned the value of a dedicated AF-ON button, especially in AF-C mode. I think the major shortcoming of the D70 is the fact that you can NOT shoot AF-C focus priority. For me, that is critical and when I got a D2H I thought I died and went to heaven. I used the D70 as a 2nd body and I use it with a dedicated AF-On button, but I can't shoot it the same way I shoot the D2H and that bothered me at a variety of levels. I recently bought a D200 and one the main reasons I went to that expense was to make my 2nd body work just like the D2H- dedicated AF-On and shooting in focus priority with a built in mechanism allowing me to do focus/recompose.
I think that shooting a D2 series body in Af-C release mode as default cripples the body almost to the level of a D70 CAM900 relative to what a D2 CAM2000 body can potentially deliver. The only real difference is the inherently better speed and accuracy of CAM200 makes the entire issue somewhat less critical, but it doesn’t make it go away. Here's why.....
Much of what I am going to say is dependent on your subject and shooting style, but I am using a worst case situation here, which is typical of my shooting, where either my subject is moving, often erratically, and/or I am hand holding the camera, adding small but critical erratic movement relative to what the AF sensor sees and precisely what the sensor is actually focusing on.
When I focus in AF-C mode, I typically see the focus confirmation dot blinking on and off, and I usually hear my lens focus mechanism chattering in response to repeated and continual commands from the AF engine. I assume my experience is common.
We have two very fast and responsive systems that ideally should work together: when I press the shutter, the camera fires instantly with no hesitation. More importantly, the AF engine is constantly re-computing it's focus distance and it is responding to every twitch of my body and/or every twitch of my subject. When you shoot release priority, those two systems are totally out of sync. You are rolling the dice as to whether or not your shot will be precisely (and I mean precisely) in focus. You may get acceptable results either way, but certainly if the shutter fires when the confirmation indicator is off, your image will not be as sharp as it could have been and you didn’t get all of your money’s worth from your very expensive camera body and lens.
When you shoot focus priority, you are adding a tiny, usually imperceptible delay that allows these two very advanced systems to work together as designed.
I will be the first to admit that after my initial excitement over the AF-C/Release Priority feature, I slid back to release priority because of the issues of focus/recompose. But over time I have come to appreciate the engineering effort that Nikon put into the positioning and programmability of the Af-ON and AE-L/AF-L lock button, as I discussed in a previous post to this thread:
“… the solution, which is to set the AE-L/AF-L button to lock focus, and then do a thumb roll to the AE-L/AF-L button when you are ready to recompose. I think the AF-ON and AE-L/AF-L buttons have their peculiar angle and close association specifically to facilitate this thumb roill and I have spent a bit of time trying to perfect the technique so that I can do it quickly without thinking too much”.
I believe the camera was designed specifically to make all this work smoothly (including Focus/Recompose!!!) in AF-C/Focus priority mode because without that engineering, much of the technological "magic" of the CAM2000 system goes to waste. You don't need the sophistication of the CAM2000 system as a whole just to get an eyeball in focus for a studio portrait or a tree in focus for a landscape. That system was designed to shoot anything, anytime, anywhere, with the highest probability of getting it in focus that the mind of man can engineer. But to make that work most efficiently, the system needs to be in focus priority. This is my opinion, of course, but it an opinion formed after shooting tens of thousands of frames of dynamic subjects over a two year period while going back and forth between the release and focus priority modes.
I'm not arguing that any given shooter should shoot the way I do and I also recognize that one fixed size control interface may not work as well for all hand sizes and shapes. I do think that Jason should put a very condensed version of the above into his tome for completeness.
Most importantly, Tom’s post above implies that the camera was not engineered to perform focus/recompose while in AF-C focus priority mode. That is a common misperception but is simply inaccurate and I think it is a very fundamental and critical point that affects every shot we make. I will also be the first to admit that doing the “thumb roll” was not an easy thing for me to get used to but the effort paid off because I believe I now get the most out of CAM2000 that it has to offer.
--
Regards,
Neil
--
Regards,
Neil
I started with a D70 and I quickly learned the value of a dedicated AF-ON button, especially in AF-C mode. I think the major shortcoming of the D70 is the fact that you can NOT shoot AF-C focus priority. For me, that is critical and when I got a D2H I thought I died and went to heaven. I used the D70 as a 2nd body and I use it with a dedicated AF-On button, but I can't shoot it the same way I shoot the D2H and that bothered me at a variety of levels. I recently bought a D200 and one the main reasons I went to that expense was to make my 2nd body work just like the D2H- dedicated AF-On and shooting in focus priority with a built in mechanism allowing me to do focus/recompose.
I think that shooting a D2 series body in Af-C release mode as default cripples the body almost to the level of a D70 CAM900 relative to what a D2 CAM2000 body can potentially deliver. The only real difference is the inherently better speed and accuracy of CAM200 makes the entire issue somewhat less critical, but it doesn’t make it go away. Here's why.....
Much of what I am going to say is dependent on your subject and shooting style, but I am using a worst case situation here, which is typical of my shooting, where either my subject is moving, often erratically, and/or I am hand holding the camera, adding small but critical erratic movement relative to what the AF sensor sees and precisely what the sensor is actually focusing on.
When I focus in AF-C mode, I typically see the focus confirmation dot blinking on and off, and I usually hear my lens focus mechanism chattering in response to repeated and continual commands from the AF engine. I assume my experience is common.
We have two very fast and responsive systems that ideally should work together: when I press the shutter, the camera fires instantly with no hesitation. More importantly, the AF engine is constantly re-computing it's focus distance and it is responding to every twitch of my body and/or every twitch of my subject. When you shoot release priority, those two systems are totally out of sync. You are rolling the dice as to whether or not your shot will be precisely (and I mean precisely) in focus. You may get acceptable results either way, but certainly if the shutter fires when the confirmation indicator is off, your image will not be as sharp as it could have been and you didn’t get all of your money’s worth from your very expensive camera body and lens.
When you shoot focus priority, you are adding a tiny, usually imperceptible delay that allows these two very advanced systems to work together as designed.
I will be the first to admit that after my initial excitement over the AF-C/Release Priority feature, I slid back to release priority because of the issues of focus/recompose. But over time I have come to appreciate the engineering effort that Nikon put into the positioning and programmability of the Af-ON and AE-L/AF-L lock button, as I discussed in a previous post to this thread:
“… the solution, which is to set the AE-L/AF-L button to lock focus, and then do a thumb roll to the AE-L/AF-L button when you are ready to recompose. I think the AF-ON and AE-L/AF-L buttons have their peculiar angle and close association specifically to facilitate this thumb roill and I have spent a bit of time trying to perfect the technique so that I can do it quickly without thinking too much”.
I believe the camera was designed specifically to make all this work smoothly (including Focus/Recompose!!!) in AF-C/Focus priority mode because without that engineering, much of the technological "magic" of the CAM2000 system goes to waste. You don't need the sophistication of the CAM2000 system as a whole just to get an eyeball in focus for a studio portrait or a tree in focus for a landscape. That system was designed to shoot anything, anytime, anywhere, with the highest probability of getting it in focus that the mind of man can engineer. But to make that work most efficiently, the system needs to be in focus priority. This is my opinion, of course, but it an opinion formed after shooting tens of thousands of frames of dynamic subjects over a two year period while going back and forth between the release and focus priority modes.
I'm not arguing that any given shooter should shoot the way I do and I also recognize that one fixed size control interface may not work as well for all hand sizes and shapes. I do think that Jason should put a very condensed version of the above into his tome for completeness.
Most importantly, Tom’s post above implies that the camera was not engineered to perform focus/recompose while in AF-C focus priority mode. That is a common misperception but is simply inaccurate and I think it is a very fundamental and critical point that affects every shot we make. I will also be the first to admit that doing the “thumb roll” was not an easy thing for me to get used to but the effort paid off because I believe I now get the most out of CAM2000 that it has to offer.
--
Regards,
Neil
--
Regards,
Neil
