We've all been for a fun day out with our cameras hoping to get great action shots,
but ultimately coming home disappointed. Getting the photo you want, and more importantly getting
it in focus, can be suprisingly difficult, especially with a moving subject.This is Nina
and James and we're at an adventure park, with a zip-wire and an extreme swing. Today
i'm going to show you the basics of Auto-Focus using the 70D but most of these techniques
can also be used on other EOS cameras. So there's plenty of opportunity to get a great
action shot. Frame-up and half press the shutter button. The camera finds and then locks focus
until I release the shutter. These Auto-Focus marks in the viewfinder tell you your camera
has found focus. So, what's the camera doing? If you've been using Scene Intelligent Auto
Mode, that's the green square, you'll be used to the camera choosing it's own Auto-Focus
points and deciding whether the subject is moving all automatically. For this next moment
of James and Nina on the swing, I'm going to shoot a series of photos and I'll need
the camera to track focus between shots, so for more control over focus, I want to be
in one of the creative modes like program or TV. I'll also need to move from One Shot
to AI Servo as this tells the camera my subject is constantly moving. I want Nina and James
to be in a specific part of my frame, so I'll switch to Zone AF and select an area that
covers them with fewer AF Points for the camera to choose from, this will help ensure that
Nina and James are in focus, and prevents the camera from being distracted by other
elements in the frame. I could even track them with a single point, but that takes more
skill, so it's better for portraits, and stationery subjects. So as you can see if you can master
the AI Servo which tracks the focus and the continuous shooting you've really got potential
for some cracking action shots. There's a huge amount you can do to optimise the AF
settings within the custom function menu, but one of the really useful abilities of
the camera is to automatically select the AF points, depending on which way up you're
holding it. So I set this custom function to different AF points, and then select these
points when I'm holding the camera in landscape, and these when i'm holding the camera in portrait.
Now i'm going to shoot a range of shots of both of them on a zip-wire, flipping the camera
between portrait and landscape, and all I need to think about is catching the moment.
Great well uh, shot it from up here so now it's time to shoot it from down there. I want
to photograph Nina and James as they come in to land, but they're going to be moving
really quickly, so I need the camera to pick them up when they enter shot, then track the
focus all the way through it.In order to do it, I'm going to select AI Servo, and also,
automatic, 19-point selection. At the moment it's set to centre-point, but they'll be coming
in from the right, so I'll select it to this point here. Here they come, I'm placing the
selected start point over James and half pressing the shutter, the camera tracked him as he
travelled across the frame. So this time round, we're going down the zip-wire but I'm going
to be videoing and not taking photographs. In video mode I can make use of the face tracking
function which finds and tracks any face in the frame, and allows me to smoothly pull
focus between subjects. This time round I've changed the angle but it's going to be a real
challenge for the AI Servo because Nina and James are literally coming straight at me.
It's actually incredibly handy that you can automatically have a camera that's flicking
between portrait and landscape mode with these Auto-Focus points, because travelling at 35
- 40 mph is not something that you're immediately thinking of. Power To Your Next Step, Canon.