A New and Useful Feature

Face Detection enabled and Eye AF selected.

In photography, there are some very basic rules to follow. Yes, rules can be broken at times but there are simply some which should never be broken. The rule about where to set your focus is one such rule. 

For photos of people, the rule is to focus on the eyes. In particular, you need to focus on the nearest eye. Whenever I miss this focus, the photo is culled and goes into the trash can. Quite simply, if that nearest eye is not in focus, you misfocused and ruined your shot.

When your subject is up fairly close to you, focusing on the eyes can be a fairly easy task. On the other hand, when your subject is a little farther away and especially if your subject is moving, this tasking can quickly become a very tall order!

You have these little, tiny focus points overlaid onto your camera's screen... you need to ensure the one point that focuses is the one over the eye when the shutter release button is pressed. This can be tough to do especially if you are using all your focus points which is not recommended most of the time. The camera will typically choose the focus point that shows the most contrast and focus that point. I find that when I allow my camera to choose the focus point, it rarely focuses exactly where I wanted my focus.

Until now, I always set my focus to "center point" focus so I can control what is in focus. I know my camera will then just use that center point to set proper focus. I place that center point over the nearest eye... half press the shutter release button to lock focus... move the camera to frame the shot (compose) correctly (you don't want that eye in the very center of the frame so you move the camera to frame it correctly)... then press the shutter release button fully to capture the image. This can be tough to do in a lot of situations but especially with any amount of distance and even more so when your subject is moving. 

One of the cameras that I bought before Christmas has a feature called "Eye Auto Focus". This camera is, without a doubt, the best camera I have ever used in my life but I couldn't figure out how to enable this useful feature... couldn't figure out how to use it... confused it with another menu item called "Eye Pre-AF" or something like that... in short, after asking around, I was told that my camera could not do "Eye Auto Focus" without a different type of lens. So, I just dropped the thoughts of learning how to use this feature and went back to my old technique.

Just this morning... about 10 months after starting to use this amazing camera... I finally figured out that my camera can indeed use "Eye Auto Focus" with my current lenses! It turns out that my camera was already set up to do this very thing right from the start! 

When I have "Face Detection" set to "On", a big green rectangular box lights up around the faces in my photos. I could even set my camera to focus on only certain faces by having the camera memorize those faces... then, it will only focus on those faces if that is the feature I want to use. Otherwise, face detection detects all faces.  

So, this morning, I pointed my camera at a photo of Sheila on my big desktop monitor... a big green box lights up around Sheila's face (that's good... Face Detection is working as it always has)... then, using my thumb, I press the "Center" button in the middle of the cursors on the back of my camera and a small green box lights up on Sheila's nearest eye!  "Wow... it works!"  Then I press the shutter release button to capture the photo.

No matter where I placed Sheila in the frame, pressing that "Center" button always instantly placed the focus on Sheila's nearest eye. "Awesome!"

Now, when I am struggling to focus on the nearest eye... especially when I am trying to get shots of the grandchildren out playing... I can use this new feature to help me. 

I just wish it hadn't taken me ten months to figure this out!