arbitrage
Well-known member
To take a picture you need 3 things:
AF on the scene
Tell the camera which AF mode
Fully Press the shutter.
This could be accomplished using 1 finger. But you must set up which AF mode you want. Single, small, large, auto, 3D, etc.
If you want to change the type of AF, you have to dig in the menus, i-menus or press the left side button while rotating the dial.
All of the above your changing/configuring the main global AF mode. When you half press the shutter, or use BBF or any other button that you program to accomplish AF-ON - which tells the camera to focus, it will use the global set focus mode, then the last step is to fully press the shutter to take a picture. That’s it! This can be accomplished with only ONE finger.
Now, lets say you want a different AF type while shooting and you want to change it instantly, you can’t wait to mess around changing the global AF mode, then you have to use Two fingers.
The two finger method.
The camera allow for a secondary AF mode which would override and take place instead of the global AF mode set in the menus.
When you half press the shutter to focus = AF-ON - You can set many buttons to AF-ON, they all do the same thing, focus with the global set focus, and you take pictures, but you want to instantly change the focus type ‘away’ from global set focus to any other focus type you wish, you will have to program a button that does just that, change global focus to another type of focus you programmed that button to do.
Now you must use TWO FINGERS, while holding the first AF-ON button, you press the SECOND button, then let go of the first button, and magic happens! The camera now instantly changes the AF mode set by the second button overriding the global set focus type and ‘Handing it over’ to the second button!
But this is a one way street only!
As long you’re pressing the second button, if you press your main AF-ON button, it will be ignored! The second button takes full priority control of the focus type you assigned to it.
To go back to global focus, you must first stop pressing the second button! Then you can press the main AF-ON again. I write ‘again’, because the camera would start focusing from scratch. It won’t remember anything from before. If its a bird far away, it would hunt for the bird all over again.
Vs. when you choose the second button, the camera won’t begin the focus run, and rather remember where that bird is and continue with the second AF type.
To sum it up.
The camera has a global focus, and a secondary override focus. AF area + AF ON
You can have many different buttons set to different overrides and hand over from the global to the override you choose.
But you can’t hand it back to global, (hand it over means the camera won’t begin the focus run again)
And you can’t hand-over from one override to another override. If you do, the camera would begin focusing again.
The 3 finger method would allow you to jump around from global focus, to override focus , and from one override to another override in a hand-it-over and dance around with focus modes. And this requires 3 fingers!
One finger: AF-ON telling the camera to focus. Which focus type?
Second finger: what ever you set to AF- area only. Dance around between them, overrides would still have priority over the global set AF type, but the camera won’t begin focusing again as long as you don’t let go of the AF-ON button.
Third finger, on the fully pressed shutter to take pictures. Its a camera! Designed to save memories
For your 1 finger method remember as per Steve's setup you can configure a different button to switch your global AF mode. Steve uses the REC button. This duplicates the function of that (impossible to reach when hand-holding a larger lens) dedicated AF button near the lens release button. Therefore you don't have to menu dive or use that hard to reach front left button.
I found using the REC button for this worked well. I also switched the AF dials so that the rear dial changed the AF mode when REC was pushed (default is the front dial). The front dial then did the AF-S/AF-C switch which I never use and disabled AF-S anyways. Then I could use index finger to push down REC and thumb to scroll through the global AF modes. Alternatively you can use the press and release setting so you press REC, release, and then use the default front wheel to change the AF mode. Remembering to half-press shutter afterwards to cancel the push and release function.
