Vicintheshed
Member
Excuse my newbieness, but what’s this ‘handing off’ focus thing I keep seeing.
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Can you post a link to an example or something with full context?Excuse my newbieness, but what’s this ‘handing off’ focus thing I keep seeing.
Ah, OK. Never heard that before. I will sometimes achieve approximate focus with manual and then go to AF. Especially if my camera seems to be hung up on the background.It is a term referring to the ability to achieve focus with one type of AF mode and then "hand off" that focus to another type of AF mode. For instance, achieve focus with Wide-Small and then handing focus off to a different AF mode.
I just read your response quickly, but it appears to me that you are "handing off" focus from Wide-Small mode to 3D focus mode. Same thing I do with birds....... And yes, it does work.Okay, now I am really confused. I thought this was the big deal with the issues with FW 3.0, that the handoff wasn't working correctly.
Wasn't there a thread on this yesterday as well? I can't find anything today so I posted pretty much the same info today.
This is how I understand the handoff and again I will speak on shooting track and field this weekend. I use a small custom AF area mode with subject detection on, I can position a specific athlete under that area and my Z9 will find the face/eye of the targeted athlete, the problem is I have to maintain the athlete in that custom AF area mode to maintain focus on that athlete. I have a lens function button programmed for AF on + 3D so when I have identified the chosen athlete using the custom AF mode and the face/eye focus point is established, I can hold the lens function button and 3D focus point will lock onto the already established face/eye focus point. Now under 3D focus mode I don't have to worry about the athlete leaving the custom AF area mode.
At least that is the way I think it works, but I might be totally wrong.
Not if you set the AF persistence setting to Auto. By doing this you are directing the camera to continue the AF tracking from where you left with the earlier mode. Let’s say you use wide-S and acquire your AF, say eyes and now you want to do a hand off from wide-s to 3D or Auto area AF so that the camera can track the subject throughout the moment you press the over ride button to which you assigned 3D/Auto AF, the latter will take over the AF point from where the wide-S left instead of starting the AF acquisition/ tracking from the scratch.AF-On will start AF all over again.
It’s possible to handover without AF-On, I believe
So, when the Z9 was launched, many of the early users had a problem when using Auto area AF or 3D tracking because the AF modes were looking for subjects to acquire AF throughout the frame. Consequently there were lot of instances where the AF would lock on to background or other distractions instead of the subject. So we figured a work around for this issue and used an AF mode with a smaller AF box (‘like wide-S or L) to let the camera limit the area within which it should look for subjects or eyes. Once the AF lock/ eyes was acquired successfully, we then switch to auto/ 3D modes so that the camera can now track the subject throughout the frame instead of limiting to smaller boxes. This term was referred to as hand-off/ hand over and has now become almost an official definition with the Z9 users lol.Excuse my newbieness, but what’s this ‘handing off’ focus thing I keep seeing.
You mean you just have a button programmed for another AF area mode only instead of ‘AF-ON+AF area mode’? I’m not quite sure what happens because all the AF overrides I have set up are “AF-ON+AF Area mode”. If you use AF-ON as a dedicated function and then use only AF area modes with other buttons, I guess you will have to press both the buttons to lock focus. Not 100% sure though as I have never used this option.And what if I’m not setting the latter to AF-ON? What would happen?
Strictly applied, Handing Off the Autofocus describes the custom setup of the Nikon Z9 to initiate AF on the shutter button, and Hand over to a different AF mode on AFOn or a Fn button. As said already, it's to help the tracking grab the right subject.