SL2 Single Point AF Accuracy

[michali]

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The SL2 has come in for some criticism in that its AF is not up to the speed with the competition etc. 

I was sitting with my SL2 in the garden yesterday watching a Masked Weaver building his nest; spring is 4 to 6 weeks away. Then purely by chance I noticed one of my cats hiding in a bush waiting to ambush one of the other cats -image #1. Her behaviour was no different to any of the big cats in the wild, concealed & waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting victim -image #2.  Watching her in that situation reminded me of how difficult it is to lock focus onto a wild animal hiding behind foliage, and even more so when trying to use AF. 

 

I asked myself how will the SL2’s AF deal with this kind of situation & what will it eventually focus on? I picked up the camera, set the AF to Single Point and aimed at my cat’s eyes through a small gap in the bush. The AF locked focus exactly where I pointed it, on the cat’s eyes, accurately and with no hunting and no mis-focus on the leaves. 

 

What’s even more satisfying is that the lens wasn’t an L mount, I had the Canon 200mm f2.8 USM ll & Canon 1.4x teleconverter mounted on the camera with the Sigma MC-21 adapter, which focuses slower and possibly less accurately than a native L-mount lens.  In the past I've tried this in the field with several other cameras and most often ended up with hit and miss focus all over the place and 90% of time ended up using manual focus.  Up until now I’ve always considered AF just about useless in these situations, very pleased with the outcome of this exercise.

 

SL2 & Canon 200mm f2.8 & 1.4x TC

 

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Sony A7r & Leica R 280mm f4  APO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[sillbeers15]

The AF system of most cameras struggle under suck a situation where there are just multiple layers of subjects ( to the AF sensors). The contrast detection will be called to place focus accurately by phase + contrast detection hybrid AF of most other makes so the Leica SL/2’s contrast detection AF will be no less accurate. Rather the user selected AF sensor size and sufficient subject exposure level factors are more critical for the AF to work well.

The SL/2 & S1/R AF losses out in burst speed comparison to most established mirrorless cameras on focus tracking moving subjects at only 6 fps while most can do 10-12fps. I cannot quite figure out what is the reason behind such a lack although 6fps is sufficient for my application.