Continuous Auto Focus

Hello,


I am having trouble tracking the birds in flight.
I have the following settings:


51 focus points. 3d focus set. AF-C set.
But still when I look through the viewfinder, I can see only one focus point.
I think I can track the subjects if I can see more focus points and place on the subjects.

Any pointers on what I am doing wrong or any suggestions to improve?


Thanks in advance,
Vineeth

vinikrish said:

Hello,

I am having trouble tracking the birds in flight.
I have the following settings:

51 focus points. 3d focus set. AF-C set.
But still when I look through the viewfinder, I can see only one focus point.
I think I can track the subjects if I can see more focus points and place on the subjects.

Any pointers on what I am doing wrong or any suggestions to improve?

Thanks in advance,
Vineeth

Click to expand...

In 3D Tracking mode you need to initially focus on the subject. The camera will do its best to track that subject using as many of the available focus-points as it needs to. But that won't happen until you tell the camera what the subject IS to start with. Once the camera understands what you want to track the 3D Tracking can take over. When it does you'll see other focus-points light up in the viewfinder as the camera uses them to track the subject across the frame; until then, you'll only see the one focus-point illuminated.

See this article that better explains all the different Auto-focus modes: DSLR Autofocus Modes Explained
...

I have found that 3D tracking does not work that great for me. Try the single point or the 9 point with the Af-C I shoot a lot of birds and have tried every mode at one time or the other.

Howdy Vineeth and welcome to Nikonites!

Don and Paul both gave you excellent advice. I hope that helps, and let us know how it works out for you.

Hello and welcome................

Don Kuykendall said:

I have found that 3D tracking does not work that great for me. Try the single point or the 9 point with the Af-C I shoot a lot of birds and have tried every mode at one time or the other.

Click to expand...

In addition to the excellent advice already mentioned, if I'm tracking birds, planes or my cats I crank up the shutter speed at 1/250th or higher if needed.
I usually use 9 point AF-C. If the subject is way out there I sometimes use AF-S single point.
I've never used 3D tracking. I referred to my D7100 book to see what that setting did.

Welcome aboard. Enjoy the ride.

I don't have any more to add.

Welcome to the forum. I use Back button focus and AF-c. with 9 points or single point most of the time.

Birds are really difficult to track for a camera , flapping wings , cryptic feathers etc, I like single point d51 afc so it tracks the distance to the thing that was in the box , even if it comes out from under the box momentarily,
rather than tries to grab the nearest thing in any box. You can adjust the time duration of the 'focus lock' which means if you lose the subject the camera keeps looking at that particular distance to see if it recognizes the target before giving up and doing another search, I keep this time short .. or at zero. But honestly I don't see much advantage or disadvantage using Any particular one of the modes. ( I see only the one box in black ,I didnt like the 3d mode with the moving boxes )... ( to start out , make sure your camera is set on 'focus priority' rather than 'shutter priority' so it only takes a pic when its pretty sure it has the bird locked in its sights. )
So if you've got the camera set this way , you can be pushing the shutter release before it locks on to the bird, and as soon as it does lock confidently onto it , the shutter will trip. Once you get the feel for how long you need to be on target , you can set to shutter priority to get rid of the excess time lag.