Has back button autofocus outlived its usefulness?

[SrMi]

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5 hours ago, matted said:

Regarding the initial question, unfortunately my SL2-S has developed an issue with the joystick (either from wear, or as a result of a bath it took last year) which has turned it into a toggle switch; once depressed to activate cAF, it does not deactivate AF when released. One must depress it once to activate AF, and depress it again to deactivate. Although it still sort of works as intended, it is not nearly as smooth and seamless switching back and forth between continuous and single AF as I am accustomed to doing which is a shame, and I have adapted to manually switching between focus modes using a function button as necessary.

One of the firmware updates turned the joystick press into a toggle. I do not know if that happened with SL2-S as well, but check the joystick press settings and whether there is an option like hold vs click.

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[Pelu2010]

On 4/24/2024 at 5:33 PM, Robert E said:

I never could understand why some like this method?  I tried it for a while and did not care for it at all, why create a second step just to focus? It's so much easier just to push the shutter button down half-way, after all, your finger is already there. Why create more movement back and forth doing a two step process just to focus? Still seems silly to me, but that's just my opinion. I much rather use the shutter button half way, after all, that's why they put that feature into the camera, to make focusing easier. 🙂

Try to focus a car at night when it travels from right to left with 20 cars surrounded. The af starts to hunt for cars and the af is all over the place. But with bbf and lock I can lock the plane in which the cars drive. This is very useful indeed and it works for everything that move in such a way. And to me this is essential. It’s much more fun having the focus in the right plane than having it hunting around. 
 

 

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[matted]

1 hour ago, SrMi said:

One of the firmware updates turned the joystick press into a toggle. I do not know if that happened with SL2-S as well, but check the joystick press settings and whether there is an option like hold vs click.

Oh really? I must have missed that. I had gone through the settings a few times to see if it is something that is customizable but never found anything. I shall try again with renewed vigor! Thank you.

[Ken Abrahams]

1 hour ago, Pelu2010 said:

Try to focus a car at night when it travels from right to left with 20 cars surrounded. The af starts to hunt for cars and the af is all over the place. But with bbf and lock I can lock the plane in which the cars drive. This is very useful indeed and it works for everything that move in such a way. And to me this is essential. It’s much more fun having the focus in the right plane than having it hunting around. 
 

 

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I really like the movement with the car shots. Not unlike some movement shots I have made. Are you saying the auto focus helps you to create ICM like images?

ken 

[Pelu2010]

1 minute ago, Ken Abrahams said:

I really like the movement with the car shots. Not unlike some movement shots I have made. Are you saying the auto focus helps you to create ICM like images?

ken 

Hi Ken, I started with only af on the shutter. but the hunting of the af made me crazy. Then I switched to manual focus. But to focus in pitch darkness with all this movement is challenging. Then I started using the  back focus button. And still I have shots that are unsharp but the keeper rate is much higher and I can concentrate on the motion and the cars. it's much more relaxing to get the images I like. I also switch between cameras > Sl2s and Q3 af and M11M and M240 manual. 

These are from the last travel to Sardinia: 

 

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[matted]

13 hours ago, SrMi said:

One of the firmware updates turned the joystick press into a toggle. I do not know if that happened with SL2-S as well, but check the joystick press settings and whether there is an option like hold vs click.

Well! Wow, thank you for getting me to revisit this. My button is indeed fine... but seriously, who thought a good name for this functionality is "Button Lock" ("Press and hold" vs "Double press")?!? Button lock is usually something entirely different, and I thought this was to essentially deactivate the joystick. A rare miss for Leica's usual simplicity and intuitiveness of the menus and UI, at least for me... I just tried to reconfigure my old Fuji after it forgot all of my settings and wow, what a nightmare. So many menu items that are not self evident at all!

For anyone else who has this issue, it can be configured in Menu-->Customize Control-->Joystick-->Button Lock, with "Press and hold" behaving like classic BBF, and "Double press" behaving like a toggle switch for off or on.

BBF is back! Long live BBF, at least for me!

 

 

Edited November 19 by matted

[SrMi]

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10 minutes ago, matted said:

Well! Wow, thank you for getting me to revisit this. My button is indeed fine... but seriously, who thought a good name for this functionality is "Button Lock" ("Press and hold" vs "Double press")?!? Button lock is usually something entirely different, and I thought this was to essentially deactivate the joystick. A rare miss for Leica's usual simplicity and intuitiveness of the menus and UI, at least for me... I just tried to reconfigure my old Fuji after it forgot all of my settings and wow, what a nightmare. So many menu items that are not self evident at all!

For anyone else who has this issue, it can be configured in Menu-->Customize Control-->Joystick-->Button Lock, with "Press and hold" behaving like classic BBF, and "Double press" behaving like a toggle switch for off or on.

BBF is back! Long live BBF, at least for me!

 

 

Glad it fixed it :).

I remember when the firmware with this new feature came out, a lot of people were confused because the default was different than before.

[Oxfordian]

A great thread which has answered a few questions I didn't know I had, my knowledge of the focusing aspects of my SL2 has now been improved dramatically. Thank you.