D500 setup question

[DavidWright2010]

For many years I've used a D7200/Sigma 150-60mm lens for bird pix. For perched birds, it worked very well; BIF, not so much. Recently I found a 'like new' D500 at MPB for a decent price.

I've been studying the manual, and also found a Nikon manual "D500 Professional Setting Guide, sports AF edition", which I thought might be helpful in choosing the correct settings for BIF. However I see this on page 6:





OK. But why does the 3D tracking selection spell out "3D' in focus points? And what subjects are considered?

The next page reads:



Was a column on the left omitted? This doesn't make any sense.

Anyway, I'm guessing that for BIF, you want 3D tracking.

And later on, page 18, the discussion about Focus tracking with lock-on, for BIF you want blocked AF response delayed, and the Subject Motion steady for large birds (eagles) and erratic for birds like swallows?

Thanks in advance for any help.

David

 

[DavidWright2010]

Was focus set using Live View (contrast detect), or a press of a button to which focus acquisition (phase detect) has been assigned?

Button press

If you use Live View, you can confirm that the lens focuses well with the camera and that an autofocus fine-tune (AFFT) adjustment or an adjustment in the Sigma USB dock will improve the performance.

 

[DavidWright2010]

Was focus set using Live View (contrast detect), or a press of a button to which focus acquisition (phase detect) has been assigned?

Button press

If you use Live View, you can confirm that the lens focuses well with the camera and that an autofocus fine-tune (AFFT) adjustment or an adjustment in the Sigma USB dock will improve the performance.

So this morning I tested again. This is the corner of my neighbor's (stucco) wall. Since I'm viewing it from an angle, the white/black edges is closest, and the 2 walls are progressively further away:



2 shots at each setting - contrast detect vs. phase detect. They look very similar, except one of the LV images shows some horizontal blur. (This same thing happened with pix of his license plate - one of the LV mages showed a little horizontal blur.) I shot with OIS off and 12 second delay.

The camera consistently gave more exposure time in LV; 1/2500 sec as opposed to 1/3200 sec. (I lowered the brightness of the LV images in the PS comparison above.)

David

 

[Bill Ferris]

The screen shots aren't useful. Please, post full size JPEGs from the raw files (no processing beyond the file conversion) and keep EXIF intact.

Thanks

 

[DavidWright2010]

Here they are - 2 in each mode - LV is the 3rd and forth