Af points!!

mjb123

mjb123

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Ok I seem to be struggling with my af points! Is it best to stick to automatic and for what reasons would you choose centre point or any of the other 9!! When I take pictures of birds I focus on the birds eye but surroundings seems to come out sharper than the bird!! Am I making sense??
 
mjb123 said:
Ok I seem to be struggling with my af points! Is it best to stick to automatic and for what reasons would you choose centre point or any of the other 9!! When I take pictures of birds I focus on the birds eye but surroundings seems to come out sharper than the bird!! Am I making sense??
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The best thing would be to show as an example of a poor bird photograph with the exif intact, you may find that it's not your AF that's the problem.
 
I'm still very much a beginner at bird photography but I always use a single point for auto focus.
 
The bird will probably be quite small in the frame, and the camera may focus on something behind the bird.

You are always better to move the single focus point to the approximate position you would like the bird to be in the image, then focus on the bird, recompose if necessary, and then take the picture.

hth.
 
Say if you are shooting portrait of someone outside. You generally want to place an AF point over one of their eyes for best focus. According to how you want to compose the photograph if will affect which AF point you want to use.

For sports for example, you want not a lot of ground in the photo, so may opt to point the camera high, necesitating the bottom AF point.

The centre AF point is the most accurate\sensative so I would use center when shooting a bird, then possibly recompose.
 
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mjb123 said:
Ok I seem to be struggling with my af points! Is it best to stick to automatic and for what reasons would you choose centre point or any of the other 9!! When I take pictures of birds I focus on the birds eye but surroundings seems to come out sharper than the bird!! Am I making sense??
Click to expand...

If you're allowing your camera to pick the AF point, you've handed over the most important part of the creative process to the camera*. The camera has no idea what you're trying to photograph.

You need to select your AF point either by picking the point that covers the important part of your subject or using centre point and focus and recompose.

It does make me smile though that most of the advice in technique threads is to use the centre point -as it's the best. Then in the gear threads - cameras get slagged off for having too few AF points:lol:

*caveat - On high end cameras, we can choose methods of AF point expansion where we select a point and then the camera will track the subject using information from other AF points - useful for sports, but kinda Auto selection by the camera
 
I always use the centre AF point and recompose if needed.

Am I correct in saying it's the sharpest point, or are they all the same?

Thank you.
 
happygolucky said:
I always use the centre AF point and recompose if needed.

Am I correct in saying it's the sharpest point, or are they all the same?

Thank you.
Click to expand...

On your camera it's the only 'cross type sensor', in short - Yes, it's the best for you, particularly if you're using fast lenses.
 
I use AI servo when taking photos of horses in action. Generally use the centre point but also make use of the top centre focus point esepcially for larger jumps. This then means that the horse will be in the upper part of the photo and I can get the whole of the fence in.

I am happy to change the focus point to suit my subject.
 
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