Beginner Real World Back Button Focusing?

I use BBF on both an EM1iii and also a Canon 5Div. Interestingly it is a bigger reach on the Olympus which sometimes catches me out when I change cameras.

On the Olympus you have to set it up for C-Af and S-Af separately. I hardly ever use S-Af, so I leave that on the default, which is handy if you have to pass the camera to someone else - I just switch it to S-Af.

I didn't like it on my first attempt, but later I tried it again and have used it ever since.
 
I tried it on both canon and Nikon bodies and didn’t like it . Never yet bothered on Olympus but there is a very significant difference the shutter button on a oly mkii or mkiii is a hell of a lot lighter in action and gives far better control over the half press and keep it tracking . You have seen a lot of my b.I.f shots joe if I for one minute thought that BBF would improve things I would change .
But I will look into it and try it now out of curiosity and let you know. In due course . As you can see here the jury is out on this
 
the black fox said:
I tried it on both canon and Nikon bodies and didn’t like it . Never yet bothered on Olympus but there is a very significant difference the shutter button on a oly mkii or mkiii is a hell of a lot lighter in action and gives far better control over the half press and keep it tracking . You have seen a lot of my b.I.f shots joe if I for one minute thought that BBF would improve things I would change .
But I will look into it and try it now out of curiosity and let you know. In due course . As you can see here the jury is out on this
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Fair enough mate & your right it certainly doesn’t seem too effect any of you brilliant shots... But yeah that would be interesting to see what you do think, so I’ll await your opinion aha :)
 
Craig1912 said:
Tried it on my Sony, maybe I didn’t give it long enough but just couldn’t get used to it.
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It certainly does seem to be a subject with 2 very different opinions aha, I think really it’s just one of those things that comes very much down to personal opinion; it works for some, it doesn’t for others :)
 
All this talk of BBF intrigued me enough to set it up on my Fuji. It's very easy to do. I quickly worked out that you really need to de-couple the focus from the shutter as well. I could see it being interesting in some situations, but really I'd be hard pressed to think of an application personally. Although, it does make switching between your focus check and actual focus a lot easier, being side by side.
 
As I explained above I have BBF set up in my 5D4. I have just taken delivery of a Sony A6600 and have been setting it up. However, I have not yet decided whether to use BBF. TH focusing system on this new camera is very fast, uses face and eye recognition as well as tracking. So I will give it a try with the default half press of the shutter for a while before deciding. The decision may not just be about personal preferences but also depend on the camera and type of photography. I can see me using the A6600 for photographing my granddaughter.

Dave
 
I'm a 6d user.
From the very first time I set it up for back button focus it just felt right.
I could never change it back.

Gaz
 
I have been trialling it on my Olympus for a few days ,with t.b.h a huge surge in failed and o.o.f shots , I think the main problem is the Olympus has a extremely sensitive shutter button and using two controls instead of one tends to knock it just out of synch .. now switched it back to shutter only ..I have no problem at all with a gentle half press to follow and lock focus .. each to there own just use what works for you
 
I use BBF or MF, in the real world once you have bent your head and fingers round it, you will find it helps get you the shots that you would miss otherwise
 
mike weeks said:
I have tried it on several cameras and it is not for me, having a camera like the Nikon D6 coupled with the latest 70-200 it focuses so fast that there is nothing to be gained.
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For me, its the the way it let's you shoot in AF-C AND AF-S modes at the same time, by just releasing the AF-ON button. Dead handy if you are recompiling, or jumping between static and moving things.

Agree that the latest 70-200 is extremely quick to lock on, on my D5 it's almost zen like
 
As you can gather from the comments, BBF is very much a personal choice, there's no right or wrong. I will admit that when I first tried it, I couldn't get on with it and reverted back to focusing with a half press of the shutter release button. After a few weeks I tried again, this was predominately for wildlife and BIF, I persevered and got confident with it, now I wouldn't go back, it's become the most natural thing to press the button for focus, re-frame, or follow a BIF. The only way to find out is to try it, but give it a fair chance to become natural for you. Its served me well for around 8 years now.
 
mike weeks said:
I have tried it on several cameras and it is not for me, having a camera like the Nikon D5 coupled with the latest 70-200 it focuses so fast that there is nothing to be gained.
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It's nothing to do with the speed of focus. If you are shooting pro football and you have another player pass between camera and the goal being scored at the other end of the pitch the camera will automatically shift to the player passing between. If BBF is used one just lifts the thumb of the button and presses the shutter with the finger and gets the shot of the goal being scored in focus.
I know not of any sports photographer that has not disengaged the shutter from the focus.

Having a Nikon D5 and not using BBF could mean you do not have the right camera for your needs. :)
 
I switched to it a few years ago, took a short while to get used to it but since never looked back, so much so on my D500 I have the joystick programmed for BBF Single point and AF-ON for BBF Group, can keep up with birds in flight etc with group and If something lands and has foliage around it I use joystick for single point and works so well
 
[QUOTE="shapeshifter, post: 8829291, member: 70290"

Having a Nikon D5 and not using BBF could mean you do not have the right camera for your needs. :)
[/QUOTE]

funny that, 3D tracking can follow a horse around an arena with jumps getting in the way without issue without BBF so the camera does what I need how I use it and BBF would not make that any better so the D5 is the right camera for me
 
With the Canon R5 you can use BBF using the AF-on and set up the joystick to move the focus point around , then have the eye focus to come on using the star button to the right, that way with birds in flight or anything moving fast you have the option to use eye focus or the bbf and joystick if the eye focus is slipping away from eyes if the subject is getting far away.
 
I don't use BBF, never have, half pressing the shutter button to track birds in flight seems to work fine for me.

Reading through this thread makes me think how I've ever managed, I have to wonder what I might've achieved if I could have only 'got the hang of it' ;)
 
Phil-D said:
I don't use BBF, never have, half pressing the shutter button to track birds in flight seems to work fine for me.

Reading through this thread makes me think how I've ever managed, I have to wonder what I might've achieved if I could have only 'got the hang of it' ;)
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Yes this kind of reminds me of the OCF argument about using manual exposure only (TTL is the devils work), they think because they use it it must therefore be the way of the master race and then they can't abide people who get images any other way - guys if it works for you then great and if it does not then that is great as well, always worth trying different techniques but everyone is free to do what works best for them

Mike
 
I use it for AF-S on mine, shutter button does AF-C Tracking/Eye. So works well.
 
mike weeks said:
Yes this kind of reminds me of the OCF argument about using manual exposure only (TTL is the devils work), they think because they use it it must therefore be the way of the master race and then they can't abide people who get images any other way - guys if it works for you then great and if it does not then that is great as well, always worth trying different techniques but everyone is free to do what works best for them

Mike
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I couldnt agree more so i think you completely missed my point

My dig was at the comment, 'some dont get the hang of it'
Like BBF is the only way to track a moving subject!
 
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Phil-D said:
I couldnt agree more so i think you completely missed my point

My dig was at the comment, 'some dont get the hang of it'
Like BBF is the only way to track a moving subject!
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no I totally got your point, I was just making a similar example of photographic nonsense as in manual exposure is the only way to use flash
Mike
 
I use BBF all the time when out photographing wildlife- its so easy to get the hang on IMHO :)
 
With my previous NIkon, I used back button focus and found it to be a great feature, I now have a Fuji X-T20 and cannot use back button focus as it just doesn't feel right because the camera is so much smaller so I think it largely depends on your camera...
 
I only started using BBF in May when I got my EM1 MkII.

I set it to the Fn1 button and it seems to feel natural.

The iAuto sticks to the regular half press which is great for when my wife grabs the camera to shoot something. She doesn't have to remember I have it set differently than she is used to; she just turns the dial and takes the shot.
 
+1 for not using it. Most of my photography over the last few years has been rugby, and I found myself with a sore thumb using the back button because of the funny angle I needed to get it into. Most other photographers I met did use it for sport, but I find it more comfortable with the half-press of the shutter.
 
I think my main problem lies with the fact I have a artificial tendon in my right thumb . So it’s probably not got the same sensitivity as most people . I have learned to live with it for the last 70 years . But could be one of the reasons I can’t adjust to BBF
 
Hope I can offer a slightly idiosyncratic perspective. I confess I'm trying to decide whether I am a luddite or a control freak.
I try to avoid the camera doing too much for me. I have come back into photography from film making where you pretty much have to turn off all of the auto settings in case the exposure/focus/white balance/auto gain control suddenly changes in the middle of what you're filming. I also started in the days of manual 35mm film cameras.
Back button focus with a fixed central focus point is about all I can tolerate! Otherwise I'd be looking to shooting mf lenses - except I'm on a camera with a fixed lens that I can't change: an AF lens. That said, I do use zone focus quite a lot.
A very personal view, but I feel strongly that I am composing the shot rather than a team of engineers in an anonymous building on the outskirts of Tokyo! I guess, I don't get paid for my shots so I can be picky, I don't have to take any of my shots so I can enjoy the challenge of taking them, it's more fun than the phone that way.
I might feel very differently if I was working on a daily basis, but I hear that many photographers who earn their crust by their pictures like back button focus too.
It's lovely to have such flexible tools so it might be worth a try for a while and see if it works for you - there are so many ways to work these days.
 
Lez325 said:
its so easy to get the hang on IMHO
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It was designed to be easy Les, that's the point.......people use it because they 'can't get the hang' of half pressing the shutter button to focus :angelic::naughty:
 
I use it all the time, the only one I can't get used to it on is the little Canon M5 because it doesn't have a dedicated button and the only one you can assign it to is in a slightly iffy place.

Can't see that it would be much use for macro though, I think a lot of people use manual focus for that (I do anyway)
 
I use BBF on any camera I have used, why? I think was your question. The "normal" camera operation is that when you press the the shutter release for the first part of the action the camera will obtain focus, and when you complete the press the shutter will operate and take the picture, you then release the shutter release button and the camera resets; fair enough that what it does. If you then find a new subject to take a picture of, you frame the picture and press the shutter button again, focus and then shutter release, as you can see the focus occurs during the first part of the press, but what happens if you are tracking a subject?, say following a player in football or an animal moving about this is a very unsatisfactory state of affairs, the camera having to refocus each time. What BBF allows you to do is to keep a continuous focus on the subject and when you press the shutter release the image is captured, but importantly the subject focus is maintained so each time the shutter is pressed an image is taken hopefully in focus. It is the subject tracking capability of BBF which makes it most appealling to a lot of users.
 
I've used BBF since I first heard about it in the mid 00s... Mike54 gives one example, but even shooting portraits and nudes, I find it more intuitive - I used to find that once the AF locked, that if you used shutter-button AF, the camera would try to re-focus and sometimes lose lock completely and hunt for a second or two, causing me to miss the shot. This was particularly noticeable in low light/low contrast situations - such as when photographing nudes indoors in ambient light as there wasn't always a convenient high contrast area within the selected AF node's target area. Even using multi-area AF didn't always catch it in time. With BBF you set focus and as long as the subject isn't leaping around, you maintain lock indefinitely.
 
Pardon my ignorance, but has back button focus replaced predictive auto focus tracking?
 
Winslowe said:
Pardon my ignorance, but has back button focus replaced predictive auto focus tracking?
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Depends on the light and subject. In some lighting conditions, even PAFT isn't infallible.
As others have alluded to, there's no one solution to all situations - you pick the right tool for the job as it presents itself.
 
Arkady001 said:
Depends on the light and subject. In some lighting conditions, even PAFT isn't infallible.
As others have alluded to, there's no one solution to all situations - you pick the right tool for the job as it presents itself.
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I got my first AF camera and lens about 7 years ago, so had formed no preference one way or the other. I still have no bias - both PAFT and BBF are easy to get used to, and I find one to be as convenient and accurate as the other.
 
Winslowe said:
Pardon my ignorance, but has back button focus replaced predictive auto focus tracking?
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No, horses for courses. Predictive (may be a new feature) Auto Focus tracking still has the possible issue as discussed previously. When the shutter release is pressed fully the image is captured, end of cycle, finished. To re-establish focus the shutter release needs to be pressed to the half way point, from that point the auto tracking will again follow the subject, but as Arkady001 says regaining focus in less than perfect conditions can be awkward, low light, low contrast, flat surfaces etc, etc.
 
Winslowe said:
I got my first AF camera and lens about 7 years ago, so had formed no preference one way or the other. I still have no bias - both PAFT and BBF are easy to get used to, and I find one to be as convenient and accurate as the other.
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Maybe you just haven't yet found yourself in situations where they're not...?
 
Mike54 said:
No, horses for courses. Predictive (may be a new feature) Auto Focus tracking still has the possible issue as discussed previously. When the shutter release is pressed fully the image is captured, end of cycle, finished. To re-establish focus the shutter release needs to be pressed to the half way point, from that point the auto tracking will again follow the subject, but as Arkady001 says regaining focus in less than perfect conditions can be awkward, low light, low contrast, flat surfaces etc, etc.
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It's an old feature, actually. If it's mentioned in my Df guide, I haven't seen it.
 
Arkady001 said:
Maybe you just haven't yet found yourself in situations where they're not...?
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The AF sensitivity is what it is - the focus mode doesn't change it, at least with my Df tests..
 
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