Jman13
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Ok, I tested out the E-M5's 'Face Priority Autofocus' mode today. It's an interesting mode. In normal everyday usage, AF will work just like normal...select a focus point, and it uses that point. I have single point focus, usually at the center, but I'll use other points as well as needed. Anyway, everything will work just fine with that. Then, if it detects a face, it will override your focus point and focus on the face. If it can detect the eyes, it will focus on the near-side eye. (you can also set it to do Right or Left eye as well).
So, I tried it out today. Essentially no false positives (as in, it didn't switch to non-face subjects in normal shooting...it stuck to my selected focus point). When it found a face, though, it worked pretty darn well. I was shooting with my Leica 25/1.4 at f/1.8, so relatively shallow DOF, and I thought I'd try it out while my daughter and I were playing Moon Dough. Because her eyes were down most of the time, it did not find her eyes all that often. (though when it did, it correctly locked focus on the near eye). It did find the face, though, and lock on. When only finding the face, it tended focus deeper into the face than the near eye, in order get as much of the face in focus as possible. This worked fine for the 25mm, but may not be so good withe tight headshots with the 45/1.8...though in that case, it would likely find the eyes and focus properly right on the near eye. It hovers a box over where the face is, and a tiny box will appear on the eye when it finds an eye.
Here's a series. For these shots, it's horrible overhead mixed light from the 3 lamp chandelier directly over the table we were at, so no artistic judgments (there's lamps of two different color temperatures in the chandelier right now, so light quality is awful...the worst in my house)...The first and last shots in this series are individual shots, but all the ones in the middle were taken one after another as my daughter was mugging for the camera and rapidly changing position. The center focus point was active. As you can see, it tracked her face, and nailed it. There would be no way to get all these shots without some sort of face detection, as there was no time to focus/recompose, and you couldn't switch focus points this fast. Because it doesn't false positive much, I think I'm going to leave this on a good part of the time, though with less motion-happy subjects, I'd prefer to set focus exactly where I want.
http://www.jordansteele.com/2012/chloe_md1.jpg
http://www.jordansteele.com/2012/chloe_md2.jpg
http://www.jordansteele.com/2012/chloe_md3.jpg
http://www.jordansteele.com/2012/chloe_md4.jpg
http://www.jordansteele.com/2012/chloe_md5.jpg
http://www.jordansteele.com/2012/chloe_md6.jpg
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That actually works... ? Reeeealy?
, the 21 might be a bit bulky though 