Photography

One of my favorite feature of the Canon 7D is the orientation linked AF points. This means that the default AF points are selected depending on the orientation of the camera.

My base setup is the Zone AF. Horizontally (landscape mode) I use the center zone. Vertically (portrait mode), the 7D changes to the top zone (for the face.)

This weekend, I spoke with 6 birding guys, and yes there were all guys. They all had big, monster L lenses. 4 had a 500L f/4 lens, 1 had a 600L f/4 lens and 1 had an 800L f/5.6 lens (and a 500mm f/4 in the trunk of his car.) The latest buzz about the Canon 1Dx is that you won’t be able to use the autofocus past f/5.6.

With today’s technology being so advanced, it’s amazing that there are still some problems focusing. This is not just for the Canon 7D, but for all current cameras Canon, Nikon, Sony… Here are the most common causes:

The Canon 7D has 3 focus modes:

• One-Shot AF: 1 time
• AI Servo AF: continuous as long as you keep your finger on the button
• AI Focus AF: Starts as a One-Shot AF, then switch to AI Servo AF if the Canon 7D senses movement

Then there’s the selection of the area to focus on:

What’s Canon has to do with bananas? Actually a lot, and not just Canon but also Nikon, Pentax, Sony….

Many of the current zoom lenses have some kind of image stabilization. Each manufacturer has their own name:

The AI Servo tracking sensitivity is set with the C.Fn III-1 setting. I wrote about it in: C.Fn III -1 AI Servo Tracking Sensitivity. Its purpose is to direct the Canon 7D on how fast it should switch focus, when something come in front of your subject.

This is the most maligned focus point selection system. Everybody says how useless it is. It’s the default mode for Canon. Can’t be that bad if Canon sets it as the default, unless Canon wanted to sabotage the millions of dollars spent developing the 7D. The focusing area cover over 60% of the viewfinder with very few gaps.

The Zone AF is very similar to the automatic 19 points select focus point, except for the smaller area in the focusing matrix. The Canon 7D will selected the closest focus point with enough contrast.

The AF point expansion is one of the trickiest focus point selection on the Canon 7D. It’s for the AI Servo mode.

1. The AF point expansion starts in the regular single AF point.
2. As long as there’s enough contrast/detail at that point, the focus will stay there.
3. If the selected point loses the contrast/detail, the Canon 7D will interrogate the points immediately around it. Do you have it? Yes/No, then switch to the next focus point that answered yes.

You cannot control how many expansion points can be used, maximum of 4. The AF expansion points can be used on the 19 points, but at the edges, the AF point expansion will lose one direction. Instead of having 4 different expansion points around the current focus point, it will only have 3 expansion points.

Talk to anybody who’s claims to be an “expert” in photography / Canon 7D and when you ask any question about focusing you’ll be told that if you knew what you were doing, you’d be using the single point auto-focus mode.

You can select anyone of the 19 points with the joystick and use the single point auto-focus in either One Shot or in AI Servo.