Autofocus settings questions

[Matblack]

Hello

I am struggling a bit to find information on my cameras autofocus settings, its a canon 300d and as far as I can see it has three settings

OS - One shot? - In this mode I can select a focus point or multiple focus points and get the camera to lock to one of these by depressing the shutter halfway, once I have it held there I can move the camera and the focus will be held.

But I have two other settings

Ai - This seems to do the same thing as OS

SE - I call this one Elmer Fudd mode because it does a lot of hunting but never pulls the trigger, it just refuses to pop up that focus lock icon and stops the camera firing when I depress the shutter all the way.

With all of these I can move the focus points around which seems useful, I suspect if I want to take a landscape with some one in front of it I could move the focus point to the point they are standing and get the camera to focus there, not sure why I wouldn't use the halfway focus lock and move to create the composition but I think thats what it does.

Please can someone explain the difference between SE and OS and what Elmer Fudd mode does

Thanks

MB

 

[Paul-H]

Hi

It should have 3 settings, One shot AF, , AI Focus AF AI Servo AF

1 is for stationary subjects
2 is for Stationary subjects that then start to move
3 is for moving subjects

With 3 you dont get the focus lock icon.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

You only get AI Servo in sports mode on the 300D.

There is a description of what each AF mode does on page 123 of the manual

 

[mr_pants]

Is this because the 'hacked' firmware is installed? The 300D, AFAIK, only offered servo focus in sports mode, although, in Ai AF mode, it switched automatically from one-shot to servo when the shutter button had been held half-pressed and the shot went OOF. (there was a whole lot of discussion about how to invoke the servo operation on some forums, including plugging in an adaptor to the remote socket).

From what I remember, the hacked firmware made lots of improvements, but there was still a problem getting the camera to work properly in servo focus. I seem to remember reading about having to half-press the shutter button to get tracking focus and having to release and re-press the button to get the camera to take a shot.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

As mr pants says, if you have the hacked firmware you can select AI Servo in other modes and it will track focus but you will not be able to fire the shutter