I spent some time testing my Nikon D810, D500, and D5 using the Nikon 300mm PF lens at f/4. All three cameras have the latest firmware. The D810 worked as expected. The D500 and D5 did not work as expected, but they seemed to act similar to each other. Using D25 area, the D500/D5 seemed to work roughly correctly. Using the D72 area, the D500/D5 seemed to work roughly correctly (although I think they may have switched focusing distances a very tiny bit sooner than I would have expected). Using D153, things were definitely messed up. Using D153, if I moved the camera vertically, the focus switched immediately. Using D153, if I moved the camera horizontally, the focus switched roughly around the area where you would expect it to for D72 (I hope this makes sense). I tried this multiple times on multiple targets. My A3 settings for the D500 and D5 were – block = 3, and motion = normal.
In summary, for the D500 and D5, I found that dynamic area autofocusing was not working correctly using the D153 area, but working reasonably well for the other areas (i.e., D72 and D25). Btw, my recent thread: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1476039
was shot using dynamic area D72 on the D500 camera. For that afternoon, I had very few out of focus images (although I did have some where the focus was on the wing tips and not the eyes (most likely due to user error)). While I may be somewhat skilled, I am not skilled enough to keep a single AF point on the eyes of a fast moving owl. There was brush behind the owls that would have come into focus had the dynamic D72 area not been working roughly as promised. I know this is anecdotal, but this is not the first time that I have had good success with dynamic D72 area: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1466192
That time I used the D72 area of the D5 camera.
Steve, thank you very much for bringing this issue to our attention! Nikon needs to fix this.
Sincerely, Keith Williamson
Mar 01, 2017 at 01:41 AM
Previous versions of kwilliam8's message #13942361 « UPDATE - Nikon D5/D500 Dynamic AF Issue »
