Ok I feel like I am going a bit crazy and wondering if anyone can help or at least corroborate my findings. I have an OM-3 I have been testing out as my dad-camera, as well as travel, poor weather etc. It has been great. Paired with the 20 1.4 the image quality is shockingly good!
My main issue I am trying to figure out is continuous AF, specifically when using subject detection. I am finding that bird detection works surprisingly well, and will lock onto a bird perched or in flight with little effort. I can NOT for the life of me though, get this same kind of accuracy for any other subject. When using human or dog/pet subject detection...it just sucks. It is almost always focused about 12-24" behind a moving subject.
For example if my dog or one of my kids are approaching me, the c-af will consistently focus a tad behind them like it can't keep up for some reason. I can see whatever is in the background immediately behind them is razor sharp, while their face is a bit out of focus (this is with high shutter speeds as well, so I do not think it is a motion freezing issue). When tracking my dog running around, if she is approaching me the c-af will get her tail in razor sharp focus but her face/eyes are not. Like I said it just seems like the c-af is consistently behind the subject...but I do not have that issue with birds at all! I feel like if I can track a bird in flight then it should be able to track my 2 year old moving in a relatively predictable fashion.
I have tried every combination of lenses (various OM pro lenses as well as PL), c-af settings in the menus, focus box sizes, etc that I can think of and at this point just driving me nuts. If anyone has suggestions to try please share!
Interesting. I'd love to hear what others have to say about this. I'm seriously considering getting the OM-3 but may think otherwise if this is a common issue.
Do you have your focus box over the subject before you press the shutter halfway? That usually helps, and holding the button halfway until you have composition, and then fire off a burst usually works well for me with my OM1, which has the same AF system as the OM3. I find the cross pattern to be a good place to start, and then just move that around so it's near where my subject is in my frame.
However if the subject is super close, yeah, the focus cannot always keep up. That said, at least 99% of the time, it tracks crazy good.
I've also found AF+Tr to work well, and sometimes better than subject AF.
petersm59 wrote:
Do you have your focus box over the subject before you press the shutter halfway? That usually helps, and holding the button halfway until you have composition, and then fire off a burst usually works well for me with my OM1, which has the same AF system as the OM3. I find the cross pattern to be a good place to start, and then just move that around so it's near where my subject is in my frame.
However if the subject is super close, yeah, the focus cannot always keep up. That said, at least 99% of the time, it tracks crazy good.
I've also found AF+Tr to work well, and sometimes better than subject AF. ...Show more →
Thank you for the follow up and I did omit some of that info. I am using the focus on box ON my subject to acquire focus (and I have the setting enabled that shows the green box(es) to give a visual confirmation of where the camera is focusing. I am holding down focus and then continue to hold focus as I shoot in burst mode and I can visually see the camera telling me where either is focusing. I also have the setting enabled that will allow c-af to continue outside of the original focusing box, once it is focusing on a subject (so it will continue to focus on that subject even if it leaves the focus box/area). It is focusing, or attempting to, on a human face/eye but man its just always behind them. If my son is running towards me for example and I shoot a burst of him...maybe 10% of my shots are focused on his face/eye, the rest are about a foot or two behind him.
A good example: yesterday I photographed him coming down a slide at the park. I was shooting at ~1/1000-1/1250 shutter speed and f2.8-f4 mostly on the 20 1.4 lens. The first couple shots were in focus before he came down the slide but as soon as he started coming down, I could see the sharp focus on the slide itself about a foot or so behind where he was currently at.
This is also while focusing on them at a reasonable distance away, not super close. I will say that it does not identify a subject in the frame until my son or my dog is filling up about 20% of the viewfinder which is also a bit odd to me, my Nikon Zf for example will ID a human/dog when they are a very small portion of the frame and lock onto them as they approach with no problem.
Dr_Fishy wrote:
Thank you for the follow up and I did omit some of that info. I am using the focus on box ON my subject to acquire focus (and I have the setting enabled that shows the green box(es) to give a visual confirmation of where the camera is focusing. I am holding down focus and then continue to hold focus as I shoot in burst mode and I can visually see the camera telling me where either is focusing. I also have the setting enabled that will allow c-af to continue outside of the original focusing box, once it is focusing on a subject (so it will continue to focus on that subject even if it leaves the focus box/area). It is focusing, or attempting to, on a human face/eye but man its just always behind them. If my son is running towards me for example and I shoot a burst of him...maybe 10% of my shots are focused on his face/eye, the rest are about a foot or two behind him.
A good example: yesterday I photographed him coming down a slide at the park. I was shooting at ~1/1000-1/1250 shutter speed and f2.8-f4 mostly on the 20 1.4 lens. The first couple shots were in focus before he came down the slide but as soon as he started coming down, I could see the sharp focus on the slide itself about a foot or so behind where he was currently at.
This is also while focusing on them at a reasonable distance away, not super close. I will say that it does not identify a subject in the frame until my son or my dog is filling up about 20% of the viewfinder which is also a bit odd to me, my Nikon Zf for example will ID a human/dog when they are a very small portion of the frame and lock onto them as they approach with no problem. ...Show more →
"I also have the setting enabled that will allow c-af to continue outside of the original focusing box, once it is focusing on a subject (so it will continue to focus on that subject even if it leaves the focus box/area)."
that answers my question.
does your son wear eyeglasses?
i shoot different formats. i can't remember which is which but one doesn't do face/eye detection very well at all when eyeglasses are involved...the other does just fine.
The question that comes to my mind is if the 20mm 1.4 just can't keep up? Does this happen on other lenses as well? I've never used it, but seems that's not it's strong point?
Pwdrhound wrote:
The question that comes to my mind is if the 20mm 1.4 just can't keep up? Does this happen on other lenses as well? I've never used it, but seems that's not it's strong point?
It also happens with other lenses I use including the 12-45 and the 12-40...all of which, including the 20 1.4, should be more than capable of keeping up. It is especially odd that it keeps up just fine with birds (with birds even my old 14-150 kept up fine which was a nice surprise), but not other subject detection modes.
