taob
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I find a lot of people don't quite understand the advantages of the way Canon (and now Nikon) implement shooting priority. I started off on Canon, so there never was "another way" of doing things until I switched to Nikon, and went "huh, this is dumb!". Let me see if I can try to explain it differently here, without confusing more people!  I'm going to condense a few sentences together to illustrate my point:
Kerry Pierce wrote:
That's what Release Priority is for, it will always fire when you depress the shutter button all the way, regardless as to whether or not the active focus point is on a part of the image that is in focus.
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The camera knows when focus lock is achieved far faster and easier and more reliably than the user can know.
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Use the AF on button for focus, disable focus on the shutter button, use release priority and the d700 will behave the way you say you want it to.
Everything you say above is true. The problem on older Nikon bodies is that sometimes I want focus priority behaviour, and other times I want release priority behaviour. On the D700, toggling Priority Selection (Nikon's term) requires a minimum of three button presses, and that's if I sacrifice the first My Menu item to this setting. Otherwise it can take between 4 and 8 presses of three or four buttons, and about 1 to 1.5 seconds with my eye away from the viewfinder. That's far, far too fidgety for me. Now on the D800, toggling Priority Selection simply means pressing on the AF-ON button, or letting it go. That takes, what, 1/10th of a second? It is 10 to 15 times faster, does not require that I move my eye from the viewfinder, and I can hit the AF-ON button with 99.999% accuracy.
Again, that's the way all prior Nikons have worked. If Focus Priority doesn't mean that priority is given to Focus, then there's no need to have the feature.
It does still mean that. The difference now is that it only applies while AF is engaged, which makes sense. If I am not actively autofocusing when I shoot, then it most likely means I just want the shot to be taken, and thus release vs focus priority is irrelevant. I say "most likely" because of the trap focus scenario.
What you describe is what the Focus + Release setting is for, where focus and speed are given equal weight.
No, that's not the same. I want either focus or release priority given 100% weight each, but at different times. Focus+Release tries to balance both at the same time. Also, F+R is only available in AF-C mode, whereas I need the ability to instantly toggle between focus and release priority in both AF-C and AF-S modes.
I don't understand your statement that a Canon won't fire while it is actively autofocusing. Does a Canon have continuous focus like a Nikon? It would seem not, from your statement.
Yes, Canon has "AI Servo" ("AF-C mode" in Nikon speak). There is a C.Fn in the 1D bodies (not sure about the other models) that lets you tweak how much emphasis the camera should place on higher frame rate vs. focus accuracy.
What I was describing on the Canon side is in "One-shot AF" ("AF-S mode" for Nikons). This may have changed in newer bodies, but when I was shooting Canons, they did not give you the ability to choose between focus and release priorities in One-shot AF mode. It would automatically engage focus priority during AF (e.g., when the shutter button was half-pressed, or you were pressing the AF-ON button), and then disengage it when there was no AF (e.g., not pressing AF-ON, or lens was in manual focus mode).
Now, for people who focus using the shutter button, a Canon is effectively always in focus priority when in One-shot AF mode. That's simply because you cannot full-press the shutter button without first going through the half-press stage, obviously. But for the BBF (back button focus) people, it is an important distinction.
Nikon changed the way the D800 (and D4, I believe) behaves when it comes to enabling/disabling Selection Priority. If the camera is not actively autofocusing (i.e., AF is disabled, the lens is in manual focus, or you don't have an AF lens), then the shutter will always fire. But if AF is engaged when you press the shutter button, the camera will check your Selection Priority setting to decide what to do. Before the D800, the camera will check the Selection Priority setting at all times, not just when AF is active.
Try the above settings on the d700 and see if it doesn't work the way you want.
They do work they way I want. The problem is that there is no quick way to switch between the two behaviours, as there is now on the D800.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this. Focus trapping is a very useful feature as is the ability to prevent the camera from firing until focus is locked.
I was being a bit facetious with my last comment (thus the smiley). Trap focus is very useful when you need it, but in my case, I rarely ever need it. About the only time I used it on the D700 was to do handheld macro shots. I would slowly lean in closer and closer to the object, and as soon as it reached the exact focus distance, the camera would fire. That eliminated my slow reaction time, as well as any camera shake from me manually pressing the shutter button. I can't do that with the D800 now, but I have other ways to work around the problem (like the improved LiveView implementation).
There's no way to do either of those things with the d800 as it is now, which is a big PITA for me and anyone else that uses and has used Focus Priority on previous bodies.
I think the best way for Nikon to keep everyone happy is to add a new custom setting. There would be two settings: AF Only, Always. I would set it to AF Only, while the trap focus people would set it to Always. Done!
If the d4 AF works the same way, I'd bet that there will be a lot of unhappy pros at the coming Olympic games in London....
I don't know about that. Canon has traditionally dominated the pro sports photography world, although I am seeing more black lenses at events now. Guess what... Canon DSLRs can't do proper trap focus either! I would also be surprised if a significant number of the Nikon shooters used trap focus on a regular basis. Pre-focusing on a particular spot (e.g., race finish line, baseball home plate, etc.) is one thing, but that's not trap focus. The problem with trap focus is that the camera decides when to take the shot. It should be the photographer making that decision. I would rather have a slightly OOF shot taken at the peak of emotion or action, than one taken a fraction of a second too early or too late, but crisply in focus.
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The trap focus method relies (at least on modern AF cameras) on having the shutter button pressed all the way down. The camera will then wait until AF is achieved before firing.