Hi it's Sabine from Pangolin's home turf the beautiful Chobe River
in Northern Botswana. If you don't know where that is make
sure to go and check it out it's a great location for wildlife viewing
and wildlife photography.
Now taking our guests on almost a daily basis here in Chobe
and other wild places in Africa
I've come to realize that the autofocus system of cameras
seems to be quite a confusing subject for people that just start out in
wildlife photography. So today's video is about Canon's
autofocus system. Although it is based on Canon cameras
you can also apply to different camera models.
That's the beauty of Chobe!
I will explain the different autofocus modes,
the autofocus point or autofocus area selection options that your camera
gives you and i'm going to give you some hints on
how you can fine adjust your autofocus.
As a wildlife photographer obtaining quick focus on moving subjects is really crucial.
So when I switch my lens from manual
focus to autofocus my camera now gives me different options
on how to set up my autofocus system.
Lets first look at the different autofocus modes that our camera gives us.
If we go into the menu we have three options here.
There's One-shot, AI focus and AI servo. The terminology is for Canon
but other camera manufacturers call it different but the principle stays the same.
So in one shot, the idea is that we focus on a stationary subject
pressing our shutter button halfway down to get
focus and then keep it halfway down to keep it locked at the subject
and press it down to take the picture. If we want to we could keep it halfway in
and also recompose our shot going left or right, up or down
to create a different composition and then just fire away
because our focus has been locked on our subject.
However, what you cannot do is you cannot go forward
or backwards because then you change the distance
from the camera to the subject and it will be out of focus.
So this is a great mode if you shoot subjects that are stationary.
However in wildlife mostly our animals are moving
and you want to be ready for that. So let's go and see what the other options are.
We also have the second one called AI Focus
I'm gonna come to that in a minute.
I first want to have a look at AI Servo. That is Canon's continuous auto
focusing mode to track moving subjects. So same scenario.
Let's say you have an animal that is currently static.
You focus on your animal pressing the button halfway down
and now your animal starts walking left or right or flying. Whatever you're shooting.
If you keep your button now halfway in
and you follow the subject that is moving
you will be keeping the subject in focus as long as the focus point stays on the subject.
So the focus mode in the middle called AI Focus
is supposedly the camera's manufacturer
giving you an option to jump between one shot and ai servo so the camera is
supposed to automatically detect that you currently shoot a stationary
subject so it will lock the focus and then as soon as the subject starts
moving your camera is supposed to detect that and starts tracking.
However, that is quite inaccurate and I would stick to either One-Shot or
AI Servo depending on your situation for wildlife.
I would always recommend AI servo mode.
Now it's time to choose an autofocus
point or an auto focus area. Again depending on your situation
your camera gives you quite a few options there.
So let's look first at the smallest focus point
which is called spot autofocus. Don't confuse that with spot metering that is
completely something different. That is your camera's light meter mode and
people often get that confused. Spot autofocus is just the way you
select where your camera should focus. So spot Autofocus
is a very very tiny area for super-precise focusing.
So if you really want to make sure that you focus exactly on
the eye of your subject or you focus maybe you try and focus
in between grasses or something in the foreground
spot autofocus can come in handy. However, the downside of spot autofocus it is so
small that you can also easily miss your
subject and completely end up with an out of focus image.
The second option that your camera gives us here
is your single autofocus point and that is probably the most common used one and
also, the one that comes with the default
settings of your camera. It's twice the size of the spot
autofocus and it gives you also a chance to really
be precise with your focusing on your
subject but not lose the subject as easy as with
spot focusing. The next option that we have
is the single point with four little helpers around
and that can help you especially if you have
maybe a very very tiny subject which you struggle to keep the focus on.
Imagine a bird on a little stick and there's a bit of wind and your bird is
wiggling. It can be quite difficult to keep the
focus on that bird with only a single focus point so if you have those four
little helpers around that can help you if the middle focus
point where focus is achieved initially sort of falls off
then these four helpers are there to grab still
on your subject and keep it in focus. The option after that
is exactly the same just now you have eight little helpers that can help you.
So it's just an extended area of not missing the focus and your
chances of getting your subjects in focus are even bigger.
But you need to be a bit careful. I found
sometimes if I have an animal in a busy environment a bird
maybe in quite tall grass or something these
helpers often can also jump towards the grasses
at the side. So you just need to figure out what works for you.
The next option is called zone autofocus and here
you have a little cluster of focus points
which is also quite a big area that it can focus and the difference between
this and a single focus point with the eight
helpers, for example, is that your camera basically within
that zone will probably focus on whatever is
closest to the camera. Whereas the one the single point with
the helpers it will always focus on the middle focus
point where you place it first and only use the helpers if the focus
falls off that focus point. If you even want a wider focal area you
can also use the larger zone. Quite helpful
if you really struggle with focusing. If you have maybe a clean background
only the sky then you can use this focus mode to have an extended focus area
and make sure that you get focus on your subject so your camera will choose
within that zone where exactly it's going to focus at. So you have less
control and if you shoot on a larger aperture and you have a
greater depth of field that might not matter and that would be
a great option. But if you shoot on a very shallow depth of field then
this might be a downside because it might
focus instead of the eye of your subject maybe rather at the wingtip. If you shoot
a bird for example then the eye is not going to be in focus any more.
And last but not least we have auto
selection autofocus. Now that seems to be tempting
at first because you have this large area in which your camera now
can achieve focus. But depending on which autofocus mode
you are depends on the behavior of this auto-selection of autofocus.
If you shoot in one shot your camera will focus on whatever is closest
to the camera. If you shoot in AI servo or continuous
focusing your camera will focus on the initial focus point
that you had placed in a certain area and again if your subject starts moving
and the focus falls off that focus point, it will then select
in that whole cluster of focus point depending on your camera model.
Depends on how many focus points there are.
Modern cameras have around 61 also focus points.
Your camera will then choose which one
of those 61 it will focus on. Again it can be a great asset if you
have a clean background and there's nothing much else to focus on
with a fairly large f-stop so you have a great depth of field
and you will be good at tracking your subject. However, if the background gets
busy or you shoot on a shallow depth of field
you really don't have much control and that is why i personally try and
shoot most of my shots on the single focus
point that gives me really precise control on where I focus.
Sometimes i do tend to choose the single focus point with the four little helpers
if i really struggle getting focus but that is the only two i really use.
In your menu i'm gonna show you now how you can actually set up which focus
modes you generally use so that when you dial through the
different options that it doesn't take you such a long time. So if we go into
our autofocus menu under the 4th tab, you find select AF
area selection mode. Just press set and you will enter the menu and here you
can now check the ones that you use currently
and uncheck all the ones that you don't tend to use.
So that your cycle through those modes gets a lot quicker.
Now that you know the different autofocus modes and the autofocus point
selection options let's have a look how we can
fine-tune our autofocus system.
Now let me say that this is only
relevant if you decide to shoot an AI servo mode. In one-shot that
doesn't make any difference because you're not tracking anything but
an AI servo we do and we can change the behaviour of the tracking.
So let me show you once again in the menu.
If you go to your autofocus menu.
The purple menu in the first step, you get different
cases which are basically different presets your camera gives you
to choose from depending on whichever situation you
shoot and you can always click the info button that gives you a
little bit more information about when this setting is appropriate.
If you look below you have a tab that is called "rate"
and if you press that you can now enter these different presets
and do some fine-tuning according to your own needs.
However, I found this a little bit confusing and I rather prefer
to put those three options that we have to fine tune our autofocus
in a completely different custom menu so i can quickly access that
and fine-tune it every time i need to change it.
If you rotate through your menus and you come to your green little star icon
you can now add a new menu for yourself and you can add whatever options you
want in this menu. So if we click to register settings
we just gonna dial through the different options until we find
tracking sensitivity. We add that one. After we're gonna go to accelerating
decelerating tracking. We add that one and last but not least
AF point auto switching i'm gonna add that one as well.
But what settings do we need? Good question. That really depends on your
shooting scenario. Probably also on your camera.
Every camera still behaves a little bit different
even though the settings might be the same. So, unfortunately, I can't give you a
recipe here but just talking from my own experience
the most important of those three and it really
tends to make a difference in my photography is the tracking sensitivity.
So if we access that you get on the right hand side responsive and on the
left-hand side it says locked on. So if we move our wheel towards locked
on you can choose between -1 and -2 as your setting
and that means that if you focused on a subject
and for some reason you momentarily lose the focus, because maybe something
has moved in front of your subject, maybe another animal
or you tracked a bird in flight and suddenly there's a tree in front of it
for just a split second your camera will now
not instantly focus on the subject that came in between you and the animal
that you're shooting. Basically, your focus is a little bit
more sticky with your subject which is great and to
be honest really has improved my success rate in getting birds in flight.
So I prefer to have that set to -1
which just makes my focus a little bit more sticky
with the subject that i initially gained focus on.
So you also can of course put it towards the other side.
If you quickly need to refocus on something else. Maybe in sporting events
and it will much quicker change focus from one subject to the other
accelerating and decelerating tracking is another option that you can change if
you want to. If you have a subject that is constantly
moving at one speed for example in one
direction then you probably want to have it set to
zero or the minus sign. If, however, your subject is moving very
erratically forth and back left and right quickly
stopping or accelerating again then you want to have
it a little bit more responsive and you put it towards the plus side.
So you can play around with those settings as well and see
if your keeper rate improves that way. Now last but not least
auto focus point switching is only relevant if you shoot in
any of the zone autofocus area modes and that is determining how quickly
the focus point is basically handing over to another focal point within the area.
if the focus has been lost on that focus point.
So the higher you put it if you put it
to the plus side the more quickly it will hand over to those other focus
points and if you set it to the minus side it
will just hold on a little longer before it hands
over to the next focus point. On the second tab within your autofocus
menu there's also AI servo first image priority and AI Servo
second image priority. Basically if you
shoot on a high frame rate on continuous shooting and
you set it on your high frame rate you shoot a lot of pictures very quickly
after each other. So the first image within that burst
that you send off you can now tell your camera i want to
make sure that this first image is a hundred percent in
focus and i want you to confirm that focus for me.
Then you can move the priority towards focus which is on the right-hand side.
If you want to fire the shot off quickly
because it is an action scenario and you don't want to miss anything
you could say I don't care if you can confirm the focus for me.
Please just release the shot and get it off.
I don't want to miss that action so if you put it to release that does not
necessarily mean that your pictures won't be in focus.
Your camera is just given a little less time to confirm that focus.
So as a wildlife photographer I preferably
have my first image priority set to release because I really want to get
off that shot quickly and not miss anything and then my second
image priority I usually leave on equal priority and
then the camera basically gives you a middle between
focus and speed of shooting. If you want to make sure you get the
entire high speed that your camera offers you on your frame advance
you can of course set it to speed and it will give you the full
burst that your camera can give you. I usually leave it on equal priority and
that seems to work just fine.
Thank you so much. I hope this tutorial
was helpful. If you would like to join me on safari
and learn more about wildlife photography
there's a link down below and you can find out how you can join me.
If you like this video, please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our
channel we really appreciate your support
and see you in the next episode. Bye.