If your responding to my post, I was being silly but yes. I know the differences in the different focus modes and use them accordingly. I was saying I could use a more advanced af system of the newer/higher end camera not that there was something wrong with mine.
Sorry, I missed the point earlier. I need a D3, s or x as well.
What is your lock-on setting? With lock-on active the entire af will slow down. I have read that the 3D 51 pt tracking was optimized for fleshtones. I tried it once, but it was so slow I went back to 9 pts with lock-on off.
I use it a lot with my D300 mostly for subjects with erratic movement. Many times I leave it on and it works well for situations with less movement. I'm finding it works well for almost all my shooting. I don't use it for tripod-mounted studio shots. That would be silly!
Spent the day shooting Gulls and Sandhill Cranes. Working on my birds in flight skills for an upcoming trip. Tested 51 3D in auto area AF detection and Dynamic area. Neither performed as well as Dynamic area (set on back of camera) and 51 point (not 3D). I would generally select the center AF point, track the bird to the best of my ability and hope the camera would continue to track the bird when it moved outside of the selected AF point - which it did quite well. The 51 3d modes seem to acquire focus slower and loose focus faster, particularly when the bird was relatively small in the frame.
Camera was a D3, and although the D300 has identical settings, their AF performance (at least the ones I own) are noticeably different.
So far I have not had a problem with 51pt 3D tracking, but I know that it starts tracking the subject under my chosen AF sensor. A lot of people do not realize that and come unstuck because they did not have that chosen sensor already on the desired target when they initiated the AF. This is quite different from the Auto Area AF which has a mind of its own and also utilizes colour metering to help it select and track a subject, with a bias towards choosing flesh tones.
Another way to come unstuck in 51pt mode or any other dynamic area mode is to move the camera too far off target so that none of the usable AF sensors are on the subject. In that situation the camera will choose and then track a subject of its own. With a full frame camera it is that much easier to run out of the AF sensor range because it covers a smaller part of the viewfinder image area.
To the best of my knowledge there is no direct link between the AF mode and WB settings, but if you use Auto WB then it could independently make a change at any time according to what it sees regardless of the AF mode. Obviously the ramifications could be more significant if you are shooting just jpegs instead of raw but the sample shown above seems more like a glitch than a valid WB change. The accurate auto WB range is fairly limited but in my experience it is more likely to err a little towards tungsten light (lower kelvin temperature) than way off into the tungsten lighting range. None of my AWB shots have come out a bright blue.
I used 3D tracking everytime. Works fine with me. I found myself pressing AF-on more than half way on the shutter release. I 've also set the shutter release to ON instead of focus-release so that if i didn't get a clear picture the shutter won't snap.
It gets unreliable when its in low light and if the subject is too far away.
My best luck was this fly which wings were buzzing and going a mile a minute from leaf to leaf and in the air used 3d tracking and got him in a few frames my best luck. It seems to work the best with a color that's different from the background or things around it.
It definitely works and works well, but the CAM3500 AF engine does have advanced-enough (and complicated-enough) features that you need to spend some time testing and learning its different modes enough to know which will serve you best and when. I use the 51pt/3D sometimes at airshows, so I can track and recompose during a maneuver without losing focus. But most of the time with such difficult subjects I need to drop down to 21pt group dynamic based on the center AF point.
However, as some have stated the 3D tracking is (a) processor-intensive, (b) color-targeted, and (c) based on the content of the selected AF sensor when tracking. So it works best on subjects with very different color from the background, and works the camera hard so that truly challenging situations can exceed its capability. If it's not totally reliable in the situation you're in, then fall back to 51 or 21 to reduce the computational overhead and you'll increase AF accuracy and speed.
I've seen that kind of blue frame a few times before, too. In my case, usually during partly-cloudy days when suddenly we were under the shadow of a cloud for a second or two, and the sun's light was gone so we were only getting hit by blue light from the sky. Since I was shooting short bursts and holding the shutter down half-way to maintain settings, the WB was locked onto the same value and then the light changed. Pretty simple problem to get, also to fix if using RAW.
Rodolfo Paiz wrote:
It definitely works and works well, but the CAM3500 AF engine does have advanced-enough (and complicated-enough) features that you need to spend some time testing and learning its different modes enough to know which will serve you best and when. I use the 51pt/3D sometimes at airshows, so I can track and recompose during a maneuver without losing focus. But most of the time with such difficult subjects I need to drop down to 21pt group dynamic based on the center AF point.
However, as some have stated the 3D tracking is (a) processor-intensive, (b) color-targeted, and (c) based on the content of the selected AF sensor when tracking. So it works best on subjects with very different color from the background, and works the camera hard so that truly challenging situations can exceed its capability. If it's not totally reliable in the situation you're in, then fall back to 51 or 21 to reduce the computational overhead and you'll increase AF accuracy and speed.
I've seen that kind of blue frame a few times before, too. In my case, usually during partly-cloudy days when suddenly we were under the shadow of a cloud for a second or two, and the sun's light was gone so we were only getting hit by blue light from the sky. Since I was shooting short bursts and holding the shutter down half-way to maintain settings, the WB was locked onto the same value and then the light changed. Pretty simple problem to get, also to fix if using RAW....Show more →
Rodolpho, I think you hit the nail on the head. The WB locked when I was panning on continuous. I might have missed my focus target which can happen with fast moving subjects then recomposing.
The next series of shots were fine.
Anyway I'm not using it again, I'll stick with 9/21.
I wrote to Nikon and they need original NEF, which I don't have (converted everything. I don't think it was an equipment problem, I think it was the nut behind the camera.
Rodolfo Paiz wrote:
Pretty simple problem to get, also to fix if using RAW.
Maybe... maybe not....
I have another experience I would like to share. Saturday I shot a surf contest in Santa Cruz CA. Usually you need really long reach and I was set up with my D90 DX, 200/500mm + 1.4X. As luck would have it I found a cliff where I could use the 200/500 & my D700. So I did. I can't see the shots in the LCD but my histogram told me they were in range.
I shot 150 with my DX and 400 raw snaps with the D700.
When I opened them up in Picassa3 all the D700 shot were blue. I checked the WB setting and found I was on incandescent (from the shoot talked about above) Portrait mode - 400 raw images...I didn't check my camera settings...UGH.
I tried a fix in Picasso to no avail. I figured I might have better luck getting into the cam settings with Nikon product (I don't use Capture NX)
I deleted the first card from Picassa & shut it down, then downloaded with Transfer to get to View NX. View has a menu that allows WB change I picked auto calculation & damn if it didn't work. So far ...so good.
Picassa3 picks up the files when opening. When Picassa picked up the files they ignored the View changes and loaded the blue images.
The non destructive bias of View is allowing Picasso to pick up the original file.
I've gone around in a couple of circles so far. So easy to fix in raw? maybe... maybe not
YMMV 
