object/eye detection on Q3 43 is just a bunch of random blinking boxes

[setuporg]

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In contrast to the Q2, my new Q3 43 shows a bunch or random boxes in Photo mode.  Some are green, some are yellow.  Sometimes there's a weird Minecraft style square with square eyes on a person, or a cat, or a dog.  A dog might get an elongated horizontal box around it.  But so can a thick branch of a tree.  If the yellow box purports to track a primary person it doesn't really, jumping all around.  At a soccer game good luck tracking a player.  Like @Smogg described it in another thread, this tracking seems primitive compared to better ones.  I don't have anything that tracks people, so Q3 43 is the first, and it isn't good.  Also, apparently, the AI is made by some Japanese lab, as is the lens (by a different Japanese lab).  The lens is amazing, and the AI is not so much.  So far, I revert to the Q2 mode with spot focus and recompose.  There's also iAF and AFc.  What kind of AF settings do folks actually use for video?

Edited April 21 by setuporg

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[Le Chef]

I never use eye and face detect. If I want to be sure of focusing on faces, static or moving, and no more guessing: I will just put the camera into manual focus.

[Snooopy]

I mostly use Eye AF with AF-C, but only when I'm shooting portraits of a single person, it's really reliable in that case. If there are several people in the picture, I switch to subject tracking instead. As long as there's enough light and people aren't moving too quickly, the results are usually great.

[setuporg]

28 minutes ago, Le Chef said:

I never use eye and face detect. If I want to be sure of focusing on faces, static or moving, and no more guessing: I will just put the camera into manual focus.

That means an M.:)

[Le Chef]

27 minutes ago, setuporg said:

That means an M.:)

I do that with both Qs. Don’t own an M.

[keithlaban.co.uk]

47 minutes ago, Snooopy said:

I mostly use Eye AF with AF-C, but only when I'm shooting portraits of a single person, it's really reliable in that case. If there are several people in the picture, I switch to subject tracking instead. As long as there's enough light and people aren't moving too quickly, the results are usually great.

Ditto.

[bobtodrick]

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3 hours ago, Le Chef said:

I never use eye and face detect. If I want to be sure of focusing on faces, static or moving, and no more guessing: I will just put the camera into manual focus.

Agree 100%.

I also use (horrors) manual exposure.

[Le Chef]

The Wayne Gretzky quote comes to mind. “I always skate to where I think the puck is going to be.”

[Simone_DF]

14 hours ago, Snooopy said:

I mostly use Eye AF with AF-C, but only when I'm shooting portraits of a single person, it's really reliable in that case. If there are several people in the picture, I switch to subject tracking instead. As long as there's enough light and people aren't moving too quickly, the results are usually great.

Same here. I use it a lot. Eye/face works well only when there’s maximum two people in the frame. Worst case scenario, I switch back to spot AF and AF-S.

Other brands have better implementation. 
But there haven’t been major firmware updates yet, so perhaps it will improve over time. 

[Smogg]

16 hours ago, setuporg said:

In contrast to the Q2, my new Q3 43 shows a bunch or random boxes in Photo mode.  Some are green, some are yellow.  Sometimes there's a weird Minecraft style square with square eyes on a person, or a cat, or a dog.  A dog might get an elongated horizontal box around it.  But so can a thick branch of a tree.  If the yellow box purports to track a primary person it doesn't really, jumping all around.  At a soccer game good luck tracking a player.  Like @Smogg described it in another thread, this tracking seems primitive compared to better ones.  I don't have anything that tracks people, so Q3 43 is the first, and it isn't good.  Also, apparently, the AI is made by some Japanese lab, as is the lens (by a different Japanese lab).  The lens is amazing, and the AI is not so much.  So far, I revert to the Q2 mode with spot focus and recompose.  There's also iAF and AFc.  What kind of AF settings do folks actually use for video?

Trust the random 😄

[setuporg]

21 hours ago, Smogg said:

Trust the random 😄

“Fooled by Randomness”:)

[JoshuaR]

What I hate most about eye AF is that it obscures the face and eyes of the subject.

Even when it works, it's incredibly distracting.

I wish there were an AF system that used subtle cues to show where focus was falling. Maybe gently shaded boxes, or a slight increase in brightness compared to the rest of the frame. Something it's possible to inspect, but also look past.

It's one of the things I really like about the M system: the rangefinder patch and framelines are relatively unobtrusive. In fact, when rangefinder focusing is achieved, the patch almost disappears; the images line up and all that's left is a slightly brighter rectangle. Whereas with AF eye detect, what you end up with, when it's working, is a bright green box right over the subject's face.

I wish one of the big manufacturers would innovate in this area.

[Aram Langhans]

I have the Q3-28, which I assume has the same system of eye AF included.  I, too, am not a fan.  Too many boxes jumping all over the place and if it does lock on someone and you want someone else you need to fiddle around with the bake of the camera to move the box and the moment is gone.  Maybe I need practice, or maybe not.

As an aside, many years back didn't Canon have a system where the camera would track your eye through the viewfinder and focus what you were looking at?  I seem to remember something to that effect.  I don't know why the scrapped it.  Perhaps it did not work.  I wonder with today's computing power if it would work better?  No more jumping boxes.  Just move your eye to a different place and bingo, focus and shoot.

[Stuart Richardson]

3 hours ago, JoshuaR said:

What I hate most about eye AF is that it obscures the face and eyes of the subject.

Even when it works, it's incredibly distracting.

I wish there were an AF system that used subtle cues to show where focus was falling. Maybe gently shaded boxes, or a slight increase in brightness compared to the rest of the frame. Something it's possible to inspect, but also look past.

It's one of the things I really like about the M system: the rangefinder patch and framelines are relatively unobtrusive. In fact, when rangefinder focusing is achieved, the patch almost disappears; the images line up and all that's left is a slightly brighter rectangle. Whereas with AF eye detect, what you end up with, when it's working, is a bright green box right over the subject's face.

I wish one of the big manufacturers would innovate in this area.

Yes, this is my objection to focus peaking as well...or even enlarging the frame for manual focus. I find the only things that never really bothered me were just a straight up ground glass, a rangefinder, split image/microprism or single point AF. I stick with those as much as possible. Enlarged view for manual focus can be very useful for static images on a tripod, but for anything dynamic it is quite distracting. In the AF realm, I think just single point with the smallest box possible has always worked best for me.

[Simone_DF]

13 minutes ago, Aram Langhans said:

As an aside, many years back didn't Canon have a system where the camera would track your eye through the viewfinder and focus what you were looking at?  I seem to remember something to that effect.  I don't know why the scrapped it. 

Yes, from 1992 to 2004. I think that it was dropped because with the years, the number of focus points increased drastically, and the cameras were not capable of such level of granularity and accuracy. In other words, it worked well when the focus points were 3-5, but when they started to be 30-50, the camera was no longer able to select the focus point the user was looking at, because the points were too close to each other. 

[FlashGordonPhotography]

32 minutes ago, Simone_DF said:

Yes, from 1992 to 2004. I think that it was dropped because with the years, the number of focus points increased drastically, and the cameras were not capable of such level of granularity and accuracy. In other words, it worked well when the focus points were 3-5, but when they started to be 30-50, the camera was no longer able to select the focus point the user was looking at, because the points were too close to each other. 

The new R1 and R5ii both have eye detect AF. For those who get on with it (me) it works incredibly well. But about 50% of users still have trouble with calibrating the system. Which is what happened on the EOS3 and EOS5 years ago.

The current system is really interesting. You look at the subject you want and once it locks it will track from there. I don’t know if they’ll get it to work for everybody though.

Gordon

[Simone_DF]

12 hours ago, FlashGordonPhotography said:

The new R1 and R5ii both have eye detect AF. For those who get on with it (me) it works incredibly well. But about 50% of users still have trouble with calibrating the system. Which is what happened on the EOS3 and EOS5 years ago.

The current system is really interesting. You look at the subject you want and once it locks it will track from there. I don’t know if they’ll get it to work for everybody though.

Gordon

Thanks, now that you mentioned it, I remember reading about Canon revamping this feature, although I haven’t tried this new version.