The Nit Pickers guide to AFS on D70

[mike hawley]

I feel as though my anorak hood is slipping down and affecting my judgement but hopefully somebody out there is as sad and picky as me!
The AF on my D70 is working better for me now that I have taken the advice of the many kind and helpful people on this forum but at the risk of going one step too far........
Has anybody else found it difficult to AF accurately on birds given the size of the AF areas on the D70? The size of the central AF area usually means that I am including the birds head AND some of the background and I suspect that the resulting sharpness of the image is sometimes compromised. I have tried using the outer AF areas which appear to be smaller but it seems natural to want to centre the subject.
Any help from experienced D70 users would be appreciated.

[compa]

While I have never even looked through the viewfinder of a D70 (I shoot with a Canon 20D) I can't image that it is all that different from the focus points of any other DSLR. If the area that you want to focus on is so small that the focus point overlaps it, consider moving closer to the subject or getting a longer lens. You might even consider digiscoping.

[AmpelisChinito]

Hey, I find it to be easier if you go into the menu and choose your AF as a SINGLE AREA. It's the one with the smallest square in the middle. I don't know if you can include all areas focused, especially if you are shooting at different depths.

[Keith Reeder]

The focus area is literally only a few mm across, Mike, so it's not very likely that it's overlapping the subject (unless, as Compa says, the bird is tiny in the viewfinder), especially if you're on "Single Area" as Ampelis Chinito suggests.

Do me a favour, Mike - shoot a picture or two in NEF mode that show this problem, and open them up in Nikon Capture.

You can then right click on the image and select "Show focus area" and it will show you exactly where the camera was actually focussed - it might be a surprise how often you won't be focussed where you think you were (voice of experience here!)

Also, are you shooting with the lens wide open?

[paulc]

I find that my D70 focus area is much better when used as a single point af and usually the centre point, I found that the dynamic focus setting always focused on the closest subject and I found it frustrating to find that when you loaded your shots into nikon capture that they were all out of focus, or at least your subject was out of focus, apparently the D70 firmware upgrade addressed this issue, but I aint really bothered changing my af from single center af.
however, I find that even if I can get the birds head or eye inside the af area, then the shot is usually ok and in focus.

[Leif]

I never use AF so I might be off-target here, but can't you AF on the area of interest, by placing it in the centre of the viewfinder, then enable AF lock, recompose and shoot? This of course assumes a stationary bird.

Leif

[Keith Reeder]

No reason why not, Leif - though as you say, it needs a very cooperative bird and some will power on the photographer's part..!

;)