I'm trying out the eye control feature on a new-to-me R5 II. The camera is tracking my eye well - the circular reticle is following where I look - but the camera isn't switching to the subject I'm looking at, as described in the manual.
I have the camera set to Whole AF area, subject tracking to people, and I have two faces in the scene. The camera selects the first face on its own, placing the eye AF box over one the eyes. So far so good. I then "look" at the other face and the rectile properly moves directly over the face I took at. But the camera never moves the eye AF box to the new face. The manual says to press "SET" to induce the camera to release the current face so that it will switch to the face I'm looking at - when I press OK the eye AF box border changes but the camera never switches to the other face.
Any ideas? Seems like the hard part is working fine - tracking my eye accurately - but just not acting on it as expected.
I figured out a workaround for the time being. I assigned the * button to "Move AF point by eye control" (page 999 of manual) - when pressed, the camera will set the AF point to wherever you're looking. If that's on a subject then it will also select that subject for tracking.
Eye control just means the camera tracks where you are looking. You still need to tell the camera to move the AF area to the reticle that is tracking your eye. There are several ways to do this, but since I use back-button focus, I have the AF-ON button assigned to "Moving AF point, start AF by eye ctrl" (I figured this out when I noticed that the default assignment for the shutter button is "Moving AF pt, meter, AF by eye ctrl", but I change it to "Metering start" which is the essence of back-button focus). I have the SET button assigned to turn on/off Eye control, and it appears that when eye control is off, the AF-ON button starts AF similar to how "Metering and AF start" would, but when eye control is on it moves the AF area to where the camera thinks I'm looking and starts AF there.
vbnut wrote:
Eye control just means the camera tracks where you are looking. You still need to tell the camera to move the AF area to the reticle that is tracking your eye. There are several ways to do this, but since I use back-button focus, I have the AF-ON button assigned to "Moving AF point, start AF by eye ctrl" (I figured this out when I noticed that the default assignment for the shutter button is "Moving AF pt, meter, AF by eye ctrl", but I change it to "Metering start" which is the essence of back-button focus). I have the SET button assigned to turn on/off Eye control, and it appears that when eye control is off, the AF-ON button starts AF similar to how "Metering and AF start" would, but when eye control is on it moves the AF area to where the camera thinks I'm looking and starts AF there....Show more →
Yep, the manual kinda threw me off because it implied it would just move the AF point on its own, although in retrospect that wouldn't make any sense because it would mean the AF point would be always moving. I have mine configured to the AE lock button ("*"). Once you get the calibration dialed in the eye AF works remarkably well on this 2nd-generation implementation.
snapsy wrote:
Yep, the manual kinda threw me off because it implied it would just move the AF point on its own, although in retrospect that wouldn't make any sense because it would mean the AF point would be always moving. I have mine configured to the AE lock button ("*"). Once you get the calibration dialed in the eye AF works remarkably well on this 2nd-generation implementation.
Yeah, the manual does a rather poor job of explaining eye-control AF. What we need is a video from Rudy Winston.
