hello i'm graham hope everyone's having a great day welcome to part four in the panasonic lumix
bridge camera revisited series today i'm looking at the autofocus modes and styles
so we're looking at afs aff and afc we'll also look at how they combine to give us our
bus modes on which one you should use in which type of situation now if you're a new viewer
to the channel please do click that subscribe button and the bell notification icon and then
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so today we're going to be looking at autofocus modes and styles and first of all i've got the
four cameras on the table here which we'll be taking a look at got the fz80 the fz 330 the
set 200 and the fz1000 this is actually the mark ii version but it's going to be the same with the
original mark one now because of the differences in the menu and systems what i've decided to do
is show everything on the set 8082 today but i've created a special page on my photographic blog and
i'll put a link to that in the video description below you'll be able to then follow along all the
menu settings for the procedures we'll be setting up well obviously the normal way we take pictures
with the camera and acquire focus is to press the shutter button halfway down we get the focus beat
and we get the acquired focus and then we continue by pushing the button down to take the exposure
now that's assuming that we've not changed any of the default operating conditions and if i just go
into the menu here you're going to see we've got shutter af and that's set to on now that's
the default which means that when you have to press the shutter button you will get focus
now there is another way of acquiring focus and it's one that's normally used by wildlife
shooters or sports photographers and it's called back button focus and to imply back
button focus we set up this button here which is marked af ae lock on most cameras
on the set eight it's a single button on the other cameras
you may find that it's in the mode switch here to enable you to set this particular feature
now with back button focus we employ the fact that we're going to program this button so that when we
press and hold that with our thumb we acquire focus and then when we press the shutter button
we've divorced the focus mode from that shutter button enabling us to capture the image without
the camera having to reacquire focus so it becomes much quicker and a lot more convenient gives you
an additional feature there if you want to take multiple pictures at the same focus point you
just hold your thumb on the button and carry on taking pictures and the camera doesn't have to
refocus for each shot much quicker and getting shots that's why it's loved by wildlife and
sports photographers so let's see how we can set up back button focus on the fz80 so first
of all we need to go into our menu setting we're going to turn shutter af off first of all because
we're not going to be using the shutter to cause focus so we're going to turn that off and we now
need to go to the afae lock button and when that normally has the auto focus and exposure lock we
want to change that to af on so now when we press this button we will get the focus acquisition the
other thing we want to set up on the next page is the half press release and we need to set that to
on so that when the shutter button reaches a halfway point it causes the shutter to be fired
so when we set that up if we press the button we acquire focus and i press the shutter button
lightly and it will take the picture because we're not waiting for that second depress of the button
to get us into that mode so again press and hold the back button focus button you get the focus
take the picture and now you can keep on firing with that same focus point acquired by the camera
so that's back button focus and that's how to set it up on the fz80 as i say in
the dedicated page on my photographic blog i'll show you how to set up that
same procedure for the other cameras they're largely the same except for the fz200 which
doesn't have some of the features but again you can still set up a back button focus with the s200
we'll now take a look at the af modes which the camera will use to select focus and the
quickest way to do that is to use the quick menu so here on the fz80 we've got the button at the
bottom and if you cursor down into that you can see we've got face detect tracking mode 49 area
custom multi mode single area and with the f780 and above you've got the precise autofocus you'll
only enable that if you're in the afs mode it doesn't work in aff so you don't have the precise
on the set 200 but the other cameras do have that face knight tracking will and does it say is it
will actually detect face and it will try and detect an eye and put the sharpest point of focus
on that tracking we can set up to track an object or person moving 49 area is normally the default
so if you press 49 area then it will try and focus on the most predominant image of your shot so if
you wanted to use 49 area it will largely find the most dominant one if it's not finding the area you
want then of course you can actually just touch the screen and tell it where you want the focus
to be so if that changed to over here then if i just press here the focus point will be down there
so that's 49 area useful feature again back into the q menu select it the custom multimode
by default is the cross shape so if i just tap the screen you can see the area defined in the custom
multi mode you can of course program this yourself into any shape in the free area mode so if you
wanted to have just a line across the middle or a vertical line or a z shape you can do that in the
free mode and then set it as one of the presets so providing your image it falls within those
rectangles the camera will focus on that particular area you wanted to change the position
then of course you can drag the focus point to where you want on the screen
the next one is the single area and single area selected by that symbol there press
that and now you will see on screen you've got a rectangle which is defined by the four arrows
now you can either use the back control dial to change the size of that target
or you can pinch and squeeze to do that if you've got a touch screen you can change the position by
using the touch screen or you can use the back cursor button to change the position as well
so you've got lots of flexibility there as to where to set the target part of the image within
that target will be used to capture the focus so whatever's in that square you will catch the focus
the final one is precise area so again if we're going to that you'll notice we've got
a very small cross in the middle of the screen and when you have to press the shutter button
you get an expanded view of the image that's going to be captured under that precise point
so that is a precise we'll go back to single
which is my preferred option and there you've got the single area
we'll now look at the af styles and the styles are the choice between autofocus single afs
autofocus flexible which is aff and autofocus continuous now there's some logic behind which
you will choose for whichever situation you're in afs is specifically designed for static subjects
so if you've got your camera on a tripod or your static and your subject's static then if you're
using the afs mode once you press focus it will lock at the half depression of the shutter button
and stay locked unfortunately if your subject moves once you put quiet focus in the half press
position the camera will not focus on the area you're intended so if you've got children running
around and you want to try and capture them if you press a button halfway down and you've got a lock
on focus and then they've moved when you press the shutter button they will be out of focus so afs is
specific for static subjects afs can be useful though in situations where the subject moves
parallel to the center plane so for example if you are photographing a motor racing event providing
the car is running parallel to the sensor or is within the depth of field that you've got
with your set focal length and your aperture then afs can give you some faster burst mode sequences
than the other mode so there is a place for afs providing the focus distance doesn't change
aff is useful if you're trying to capture your children running around and they're moving slowly
once you've got your finger pressed into the halfway position the camera will continue to
track the focus point as they move so it does give you a bit of leeway in your focus position
the camera will try to track it however if the subject is moving in one direction perhaps from
the camera and away or towards the camera afc is predictive focus and it uses a computational
aspect of the camera to work out where the subject will be in the next time frame so
once you press the button it will continue to track anything that's moving in the scene
so it's a good moment if you want to try and capture things that are moving quite quickly
the camera will track it if you have a subject which is coming towards a camera then shutter
speed will arrest any subject motion but you just need a fast autofocus to enable the camera
to keep picking up that position as the object moves closer to the camera now obviously the
distance will matter there if it's a long way from the camera then the subject isn't changing
very much in terms of how the autofocus motor has to work if it's close to the camera the autofocus
motor has to move further so again distance will affect the way the autofocus system works
now if you've got a subject which is moving diagonally towards or away from the camera
you'll find that shutter speed does play a great important part in capturing an image that's got no
subject motion blur and the camera has a time to acquire focus in this image on screen now with the
train running around the track you'll notice that the focus has been been captured but the image is
still out of focus or subject motion blur there's a static point of the image there which is uh seen
across the track but the image is actually moved due to subject motion blur the only way i could
get that focus point was to actually use external flash with a 500th of a second exposure time to
capture the image within that plane so again with something moving across your diagonal you need to
be using a fast shutter speed in order to arrest subject motion and again telephoto position with
the shallow depth of field is going to be worse than wide angle with its deeper depth of field
now on the fz80 the af style is set in the menu with aff's aff or afc
with cameras like the fz300 or the later cameras you'll find that they are selected by
the switch on the surround of the af a lock button the choice between afs and aff is done in the menu
in that case now there is another one which is in the custom setup mode and
it's on page two which is quick af now if you turn that on
once you've got the quick af set to on when you bring the camera up or place it to your eye
the camera will begin that focus sequence for you even before you press the shutter button so
it has started to acquire focus so it's got it into the focus area that you might
want to take a picture and then finally tune it when you press the shutter button halfway down
it does use a little bit more battery power so use that sparingly if you're on an all day shoot
so in summary we've got the af styles which are afs which is primarily designed for
static subject aff if you've got subject motion which can be unpredictable so a forward movement
or back movement taking place rather slowly or you've got afc where you've got a predictable
movement either away from the camera or towards the camera the camera will use its computational
power to try and establish what the focus point will be using of course the fd and later cameras
afc is a useful operation if you're shooting sports and the subject is coming towards you
or moving away you'll get a faster operation now all these affect the way burst mode works
if you're shooting in the afs mode that's a single shot if you're using burst mode the camera
captures the first image with that point of focus all subsequent images are kept at that same focus
point so the camera can actually expose quicker so that's why you get these faster burst modes speeds
when you're in afs if you're shooting an aff or you're shooting an afc then each frame
is exposed with a different focus point so it is much slower so it depends on which mode you've
selected as to how fast your bus mode will operate i hope you found that useful of course
again if you're a new viewer to this series please do click that subscribe button it really does help
and check out my photographic blog where there'll be that link to this dedicated page
we will be talking about back button focus on these particular cameras so as usual thanks very
much for watching please do take care and i hope to see you all in the next one goodbye for now