This is for all those owners of 5D2’s out there like me who have experienced the frustration of not nailing perfect focus every time. I wanted to share my success with everyone on how I have achieved very dependable focus pretty much every time (providing there is no user error on my part).
I started out by reading everything I could and then talking with other photographers in an attempt to figure out why my hit rate for getting accurate focus was not up to par. I found myself losing about a 5% of my images due to focus errors (even after lens AF micro-focus adjustments). I was getting slightly better results than what I was getting my older 5D which had about an 8% loss. It seemed everyone else had similar issues.
Then I started playing with some settings. I believe these settings may seem unorthodox considering my subject matter; mainly portraiture and landscapes (fairly static subjects), but all I know is that it works and it works very well.
After shooting literally thousands of different images over many months I now can say I am getting very repeatable and consistent results. Therefore I feel confident enough to share them with all of you here.
These are the settings I use which are in the custom camera settings
C:FnIII – AF Drive (Page 172 -179 of Manual).
1. Focus Search = OFF
2. AE Lock
3. Multi Controller Direct - this moves focus operation from shutter button to the
AF-ON on back of body.
4. AF Assist Beam = Enable
5. AF Point Area Expansion = Enable
This is what else I do:
1. Set Focus to AI Focus. (Page 78 of Manual)
2. Micro-focus adjust all my lenses individually. (Page 181 of Manual)
3. Use the AF-ON focus button set-up and press it 2-3 times on my focus point.
This is important!
4. Use only center point focus and recompose if needed.
I shoot everything from 15mm to 300mm with no issues. (Page 81 of Manual)
5. I only use Canon brand lenses.
For some of you it may seem like a lot to actually push the button on the back (to focus) more than once. It takes some time to adapt but now it is second nature to me and for a guy who started with manual focus film cameras I’m not complaining.
As I’ve owned my 5D2 since it first came out and love the results I’ve been getting with it all these years I’ve decided to forego spending any money on a new 5D3 for the slight feature upgrades it offers me.
Cphoto1954 wrote:
This is for all those owners of 5D2’s out there like me who have experienced the frustration of not nailing perfect focus every time.
Just for the record, no photographer and no camera is capable of "nailing perfect focus every time" with subjects other than test charts. If that. ;-)
A huge reason to upgrade to the 5D3 is definitely for the AF. Not just a slight feature upgrade if you are getting 8 and 5 % error rate with Mark II and classic.
However, if you are getting that kind of error rate on portraits and landscapes, then it is necessary to consider operator error. On my 5D classic I get negligible focus errors on portraits and landscapes, but I don't shoot them at f/1.8. I notice on your profile that you don't have any lens faster than f/2.8. So something fairly gross is introducing the error rate when getting outside of some handy depth of field.
Monito - Acutally I discovered that most all my focus errors (on both cameras) consisted of random front or back focus issues. On important shots I would always shoot two or three re-focusing between each shot, one would always be in better focus. Now I no longer need to do that.
I rarely have focus errors on my 5D2, but mainly shoot travel, twilight landscape and cityscapes. Out of 1500 images on a recent trip (even blazed through Vancouver WA) I only had 2 OOF images and I think they were due to camera shake in low light. But you gotta do what works for you. AI Focus is not my cup 'o tea: the times I used it suffered lots of missed focus due to randomly switching to AI servo. The technic that never fails for me in tricky light to always lock AF on a strong point of contrast. If I repeatedly lock AF, I am bracketing AF on a slightly different point of contrast to vary DOF location, not because the camera missed.
Cphoto1954 wrote:
3. Use the AF-ON focus button set-up and press it 2-3 times on my focus point.
This is important!
When it rains it pours. I hadn't heard of this before, but this morning's blog post at LensRentals mentions this. Autofocus Reality Part 1: Center-Point, Single-Shot Accuracy. Unfortunately he doesn't specifically cover this topic, only mentioning that it is what he's going to cover in the next blog post :-)
I'm curious to see what he posts. Roger doesn't exactly do exhaustive studies on large populations, but I do like that he has access to multiple samples.
Rickuz wrote:
I agree! AF of the 5D3 is awesome and very nice to have. But it is a shame that this is pretty much the only reason to upgrade from the 5D2.
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The dual-card is huge for event shooters, as is the silent mode
Snoopy Lane wrote:
When it rains it pours. I hadn't heard of this before, but this morning's blog post at LensRentals mentions this. Autofocus Reality Part 1: Center-Point, Single-Shot Accuracy. Unfortunately he doesn't specifically cover this topic, only mentioning that it is what he's going to cover in the next blog post :-)
I'm curious to see what he posts. Roger doesn't exactly do exhaustive studies on large populations, but I do like that he has access to multiple samples.
Part II will be up Friday - unfortunately with repeated tests there was no benefit to the repeated button push thing. I hate that -- I was told it would help AF way back in the day, but at least on center point with test targets ont today's cameras it doesn't help a bit.
I did find something else kind of interesting, though
michael49 wrote:
Time to get a NEX and MF with focus peaking....perfect focus all the time, even with old FD glass.
Completely untrue for me, in both my NEX-5N and A77 experience with MF glass. I loved it when it worked, but I'd often be off by a couple of mm.
It wasn't a vision thing either - it's just the focus peaking wasn't that accurate. Even on close targets and 1.4 speed lenses, I'd have a "DOF" of around 4 inches (according to peaking).
I think, at least for me, I'm MORE accurate if I just disable the peaking and eyeball the focus
Jon Joshua wrote:
Are you using a zoom lens? Try this experiment.
1. Zoom out, focus, shoot.
2. Zoom all the way in, focus, zoom out, shoot.
Which was better?
Depends on the lens. This is a technique which I used in the good old FD mount days, when zoom lenses were parfocal. But these days, modern EF lenses aren't so anymore. The lens manual explicitly states this. Some lenses are parfocal - and by that, I mean some _copies_ of a lens are more parfocal than others. They can still all be perfectly sharp, but they aren't parfocal. I owned three 24-70 lenses, one of which was parfocal. When I broke it, I sent it in for repair. It came back better than new - but no longer parfocal.
So after trying it with all my current zoom lenses, they aren't sufficiently parfocal. YMMV, literally.
