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meerec

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I'm a little confused at this stage. Only because I haven't got enough experience with AF on SL, I have only received my 90-280 zoom this week and to-date been shooting with M lenses only in MF mode.

To make things worse, I come from the Canon platform where it was working somewhat differently.

What confuses me is the AFc vs AFs modes and then the Static vs Dynamic (Tracking) focusing.

So I can set the camera to Static AF. But still I can set it  up with AFc ... Or set it to Tracking and to AFc. There is a number of permutations on these settings.

Do you have the same problem of getting your head around it?

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I'm a little confused at this stage. Only because I haven't got enough experience with AF on SL, I have only received my 90-280 zoom this week and to-date been shooting with M lenses only in MF mode.

To make things worse, I come from the Canon platform where it was working somewhat differently.

What confuses me is the AFc vs AFs modes and then the Static vs Dynamic (Tracking) focusing.

So I can set the camera to Static AF. But still I can set it  up with AFc ... Or set it to Tracking and to AFc. There is a number of permutations on these settings.

Do you have the same problem of getting your head around it?

 

In AFc static mode you have to keep the motive in the AF center, and focus will automatic be adjusted. It means you have to move the camera for following the motive.

In Dynamic mode your motive will be tracked automatic and focus is adjusted as long as the motive is inside the green frame(s).

When you select the dynamic mode, AFc is set by the camera.

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I think the use of the term "continuous" is confusing. On other cameras I've had with this feature, it has been meant "full time", and, because it was a great way to run your battery down, I hardly used it.. In the SL it means "as long as you have your finger on the shutter button".

 

I find it great for objects moving steadily that are easy to track by hand: cars, people coming towards you.

For small randomly moving objects, like children or action sports players, it's easy to lose focus.

 

Tracking ought to solve this, in principle, but this technology is new to me and I am finding it difficult first to get the focus point to lock on to what I want, and second to avoid being distracted by the sudden jumps in focus point. It would be nice if it was smooth, but I guess that's not possible. I wouldn't reach any judgement about the SL's performance until I've had more practice.

 

And I have no experience of this with other brands, so I've no idea how Leica's implementation stacks up.

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In continuous mode, will the autofocus always immediately jump to the nearest object under the selected point?  Or is there a delay?  Think focus on a player on a field/court, and another player runs in front and briefly blocks the player you're interested in.

 

IIRC, Canon calls this tracking sensitivity and has a setting to adjust how quickly the camera give up on the thing it was tracking and move on to something else?

 

-K

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