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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dangerspouse" data-source="post: 786173" data-attributes="member: 46690">Tried the 3D Tracking feature of my D500 yesterday for the first time. I don't know why I've never given it a spin before. Maybe because I once saw a video calling it "garbage", and that colored my view before even using it. Up until yesterday (including my previous post), my method of taking hummingbird pics was: put the camera on a tripod, switch to Manual Focus, focus on a point just above the feeder perch, then fire a burst as the bird approached and landed. At least one shot was bound to have the head/eye in focus at 10 fps. And for the most part that worked pretty well.The downside, of course, is that you can't move the camera. Not to mention the low rate of keepers as the tiny hummingbirds just had to be a fraction off the focal plane to be out of focus.So yesterday it hit me that I was being an idiot. First of all, at shutter speeds of 2k and above, camera shake is not an issue. So no tripod needed. And one of the reasons I got the D500 in first place was because of its reputation for quickly focusing even in dim light, and holding on to focus. Why was I not taking advantage of that by insisting on manual focus? Again: idiot. When I had this little epiphany it was already late in the afternoon and the light was starting to dim. So I trained two baby spots on my feeder and sat a few feet away hand holding the D500. Sure enough about 20 minutes later I hummer buzzed in. It hovered just outside the light for a few seconds to see if I was a threat, but that was enough time to grab focus. And like the brochure said, even though it was very dim light at this point, the auto focus nailed it instantly.From there it was a piece of cake. I guess having only a single subject to follow against a plain background was the best possible scenario, but it was still impressive. I was so busy watching the focus squares in the viewfinder dance around as the bird wove and darted before landing that I almost forgot to press the shutter, lol. But I did manage to fire off a burst just as it lighted on the perch. Looked like it was waving at me, with one wing up. Of course, as soon as it heard the shutter it shot off again, and I was too slow to swing the camera and catch it. But I did get a couple of nice shots, and all of them in focus! I'll be trying that again in the next few days, but for now I'm pretty convinced that YouTube lied. 3D Tracking is not garbage.[ATTACH=full]376841[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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