GracieAllen
Senior Member
Specifically: D500, Sigma 150-600 C @600mm. I'm photographing sandhill cranes, early morning with the sun behind me so I have good light... I'm shooting from a beanbag so the camera is very stable, though my panning is ALWAYS suspect...
I'm getting a LOT (a HUGE percentage) of shots where the birds are in front of trees where the TREES are in focus. I'm having trouble keeping focus ON THE BIRDS. I'm not sure if the camera just reacts faster than I'm used to when my focus point loses the bird, or if I should be using different settings...
AF-C - always
153 points, 3D
I don't have the camera inside with me, but my recollection is there are 2 settings for the AF lock-on. One for how long the lock-on should last, the other for erratic subject motion... I believe I've left these at the defaults which were "2" and "center"...
I'm using the center focus point as the starting focus for any focus tracking...
Here's a shot from the middle of a series of shots... The one before this (a TENTH of a second ago) is much SHARPER. This one, in my opinion, has refocused on the trees behind the bird. This is what I keep seeing. The bird is large enough that I should have a reasonably good target for focusing, I even tried Nikon View NX to see if it would show me where the focus point was, but they don't show up on any of my RAW images with this camera...
The shutter speed is lower than I'd like, but I'm trying to keep the ISO at a reasonable level.
I have several HUNDRED of these from today at various times.
I don't think it's a camera or lens problem - I THINK it's a photographer problem - do I need a DIFFERENT autofocus setting? Auto area? No 3D? Is it the lock-on? Something I haven't thought of yet?
Thoughts?
I'm getting a LOT (a HUGE percentage) of shots where the birds are in front of trees where the TREES are in focus. I'm having trouble keeping focus ON THE BIRDS. I'm not sure if the camera just reacts faster than I'm used to when my focus point loses the bird, or if I should be using different settings...
AF-C - always
153 points, 3D
I don't have the camera inside with me, but my recollection is there are 2 settings for the AF lock-on. One for how long the lock-on should last, the other for erratic subject motion... I believe I've left these at the defaults which were "2" and "center"...
I'm using the center focus point as the starting focus for any focus tracking...
Here's a shot from the middle of a series of shots... The one before this (a TENTH of a second ago) is much SHARPER. This one, in my opinion, has refocused on the trees behind the bird. This is what I keep seeing. The bird is large enough that I should have a reasonably good target for focusing, I even tried Nikon View NX to see if it would show me where the focus point was, but they don't show up on any of my RAW images with this camera...
The shutter speed is lower than I'd like, but I'm trying to keep the ISO at a reasonable level.
I have several HUNDRED of these from today at various times.
I don't think it's a camera or lens problem - I THINK it's a photographer problem - do I need a DIFFERENT autofocus setting? Auto area? No 3D? Is it the lock-on? Something I haven't thought of yet?
Thoughts?
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