Canon R7 - settings for moving/soaring birds (1 Viewer)

[Shumi]

Hi All, I ask for your kind advice here. I am probably getting something wrong with the settings, and would be grateful for your support.

So, recently I switched from Canon D80 to the mirrorless R7. I am using R7 together with my “old” Canon EF 100-400 lens and the Canon EF-RF adapter. This set-up works well for stationary birds (indeed, it works better than the “old” DSLR set-up using D80 did).

The problem I have is with moving birds, e.g. raptors soaring in the sky. Two issues that I am facing:

1. The camera does not seem to “lock” onto the target birds as good as D80 did (like, I have a distant bird in the viewfinder, I press the shutter button – and the focus is lost). This does not happen all the time, but it does happen frequently enough to be a problem;

2. The quality and sharpness of images often is not the best – as is well illustrated by the two images I attach. The (feral) rock pigeons clearly seem to be out of focus, although the camera appeared to have locked onto them well and they weren’t flying fast anyway. The Golden Eagle was admittedly quite high up, but still I am pretty sure I would have gotten better sharpness with my old D80.

Below I present my autofocus camera settings:

AF1

• AF Operation – SERVO
• AF Area – Area around the center (selection #3 in the order)
• Subject tracking – OFF (and I am now thinking whether I should turn this back on for flying birds?). I did not believe having this ON was useful for stationary birds, as autofocus seemed to “drift off” the target bird on many occasions;
• Subject to detect – Animals
• Eye detection – enable
• Switching tracked subjects – 1 (and I am now thinking whether I should reduce that 0?)

AF2 – I have it set to Auto currently. So I am thinking whether I should perhaps switch to Case 2 and reduce tracking sensitivity below zero?


Pls kindly comment on whether you believe some of the above (or any other) camera settings could be changed to address the two problems I described in the beginning?

And pls also kindly comment specifically on this Subject Tracking feature – do you have it ON, and if yes, on what occasions (stationary birds, flying birds, any other set-ups)?


Many thanks,

Alexander

 

[Owen Krout]

OK, I'm a little out of my league here as I am still using a Canon 7D.

However, I would suggest turning subject tracking on and according to what your expecting to shoot there are probably further refinements. My 7D is usually set for tracking fast moving subjects as it's rare to have subjects stationary. Also, I'm set to lock and hold initial target. I achieve that by having the focus control off on the shutter button and using a back button with my thumb. For in flight I hold the focus button with my thumb to let it change as distance changes. Works well for me.

Eye detection would be great at many times for me, but at the ranges your showing, probably isn't reliable.

Let's get some input from R series users!

 

[Shumi]

OK, I'm a little out of my league here as I am still using a Canon 7D.

However, I would suggest turning subject tracking on and according to what your expecting to shoot there are probably further refinements. My 7D is usually set for tracking fast moving subjects as it's rare to have subjects stationary. Also, I'm set to lock and hold initial target. I achieve that by having the focus control off on the shutter button and using a back button with my thumb. For in flight I hold the focus button with my thumb to let it change as distance changes. Works well for me.

Eye detection would be great at many times for me, but at the ranges your showing, probably isn't reliable.

Let's get some input from R series users!

Thank you for sharing your insights.

The approach you suggest - focusing with back buttons - appears to be the one suggested by professional photographers (at least in the tutorial videos I have seen). So this is probably a better approach. It is, however, different from what I am used to - so I have been hoping that I could stick to the "simpler" approach using the shutter button for focusing (which, admittedly, worked well for me with the D80 DSLR camera).

Or perhaps I am missing something - is there something extra offered by back button focusing that you simply cannot achieve with the "simpler" shutter button focusing?

On the eye detection - yes, fully agree with you. It should work well at reasonably close distances (and I do have a separate button assigned to Eye Detection on my R7) - but it is unlikely to be of too much help when the distance to the bird is just too big (e.g. with a raptor soaring high in the sky).

 

[davids]

Hi Shumi

Like you prior to getting an R7 I had not used back button autofocus and had considered it too complicated. However when I got the R7and I tried it out it was much simpler than expected.

There are lots of YouTube videos on setting up the R7 but I found Wild Alaska’s helpful:

In my (far from expert) opinion there are two main advantages with back button autofocus:

The biggest is it allows you to switch quickly between focus modes. Following the setup in the video above up I have two buttons set up, one for whole area eye AF and the other for spot AF. For birds in flight I would normally use the whole area button. It works fine for birds in the sky but can struggle when the bird is against a busy background. I don’t think there is anything you can do about the latter problem, it is just a limitation of the camera. For static/slow moving subjects or birds in trees I would use the spot autofocus button

The other advantage is it allows you to stop the camera trying to focus unnecessarily when you are pressing the shutter button. This is useful as the R7 can loose focus particularly in low light conditions. So, for example, on a static subject, I would find the focus using the back button, take my finger off the button and then press the shutter button.

Overall, I think I would really struggle using the R7 with shutter button AF.

Hope this makes sense and helps.

Regards

David

 

[TheBlackGrouse]

Or perhaps I am missing something - is there something extra offered by back button focusing that you simply cannot achieve with the "simpler" shutter button focusing?

When shooting flying birds BBF gives you a stable grip, because you can press the button. You need a good grip when birds are in the air.

It's much easier to have your finger just above the shutter than press it halfway.

Besides, no mistakes, it's on or off, no accidental firing.

 

[ApusApus]

When shooting flying birds BBF gives you a stable grip, because you can press the button. You need a good grip when birds are in the air.

It's much easier to have your finger just above the shutter than press it halfway.

Besides, no mistakes, it's on or off, no accidental firing.

I have to admit that I find the opposite! Because of the smaller R7 body size, I find that my thumb no longer "sits" where the AF button is and requires me to alter my grip to an unnatural one which makes camera shake more possible but I guess it's down to personal preference!



Shane

 

[TheBlackGrouse]

I have to admit that I find the opposite! Because of the smaller R7 body size, I find that my thumb no longer "sits" where the AF button is and requires me to alter my grip to an unnatural one which makes camera shake more possible but I guess it's down to personal preference!



Shane

That's possible with a smaller body, I should have mentioned that I was talking about the 7DII.

 

[Mendobirder]

Hi All, I ask for your kind advice here. I am probably getting something wrong with the settings, and would be grateful for your support.

So, recently I switched from Canon D80 to the mirrorless R7. I am using R7 together with my “old” Canon EF 100-400 lens and the Canon EF-RF adapter. This set-up works well for stationary birds (indeed, it works better than the “old” DSLR set-up using D80 did).

The problem I have is with moving birds, e.g. raptors soaring in the sky. Two issues that I am facing:

1. The camera does not seem to “lock” onto the target birds as good as D80 did (like, I have a distant bird in the viewfinder, I press the shutter button – and the focus is lost). This does not happen all the time, but it does happen frequently enough to be a problem;

2. The quality and sharpness of images often is not the best – as is well illustrated by the two images I attach. The (feral) rock pigeons clearly seem to be out of focus, although the camera appeared to have locked onto them well and they weren’t flying fast anyway. The Golden Eagle was admittedly quite high up, but still I am pretty sure I would have gotten better sharpness with my old D80.

Below I present my autofocus camera settings:

AF1

• AF Operation – SERVO
• AF Area – Area around the center (selection #3 in the order)
• Subject tracking – OFF (and I am now thinking whether I should turn this back on for flying birds?). I did not believe having this ON was useful for stationary birds, as autofocus seemed to “drift off” the target bird on many occasions;
• Subject to detect – Animals
• Eye detection – enable
• Switching tracked subjects – 1 (and I am now thinking whether I should reduce that 0?)

AF2 – I have it set to Auto currently. So I am thinking whether I should perhaps switch to Case 2 and reduce tracking sensitivity below zero?


Pls kindly comment on whether you believe some of the above (or any other) camera settings could be changed to address the two problems I described in the beginning?

And pls also kindly comment specifically on this Subject Tracking feature – do you have it ON, and if yes, on what occasions (stationary birds, flying birds, any other set-ups)?


Many thanks,

Alexander

I had similar problems with the same rig - the AF just didn't work as well with the EF 100-400 as it does with the RF 100-500. When it did, the images were great, but for moving birds I had a pretty low hit rate. I struggled with it for some time and had some conversations on DPReview forums. Several people had similar experiences, especially with the original series EF 100-400 (the mark II version apparently works much better). So I saved up and got the RF 100-500 and have had much better luck with it. Still quite variable, sometimes the R7 just loses focus even when it's tracking the bird's eye, it's a known issue with this body; just something to put up with at this price point I suppose.

I generally do leave Subject Tracking ON and use Case 4 when shooting BIF specifically, and set it to maximum tracking. Eye detection is ON by default but I have a button set up to toggle it. I also set up a button to toggle between three AF areas (whole frame, expanded center, spot) and use the half-press AF. BUT - I am now starting to experiment with back-button focus just to see if it works any better.