EOS R5 How to improve autofocus for birds

[luciano]

I have a Canon R5 and took this photograph of a Great (Parus major) this morning in dull conditions. Camera focused roughly on the branch at the red square rather than the bird.

Any autofocus settings I can use that would make it more likely the camera would find the bird in this sort of photo? Does camera have digital zoom to make bird larger in frame so that there are less twigs to distract the autofocus?

[Sorry, but our system won't let the bird's proper name be typed out.  We substituted it with its scientific name.]

[Tronhard]

Hi and welcome to the forum:
My first question would be what autofocus method are you using?   If you are using the default setting, the camera will tend to focus on the nearest object with sufficient contrast, which was probably the branch in this case.
I shoot a lot of birds in dense bush conditions and, for me, the best method is single point focus locked to the centre of the Field of View.  I have focus removed from the shutter button and assigned to the AF-ON button on the top right of the camera back.  This allows me to precisely select the eye of the bird, lock focus, recompose and take the shot.  This is explained in videos on Back Button Focus: (8) back button focus canon - YouTube.

By the way, I also use single-point exposure, again assigned to the * button (to the right of the AF-On button): there is no guarantee that what you want to focus on will have the 18% reflectance that a camera sensor expects, so I want a different control for that from focus.   I select a mid-reflectance value somewhere in the image, lock it, then do the focusing procedure above.  Once you practise it for a while, you get very, very fast with this and the combination are game changers for wildlife and sports photography, especially with the fantastic eye tracking of the R5.

The following image, although not of a bird, what shot with this technique, through extremely dense foliage within which the reclusive Red Panda was sitting. It was about 10-12m (38-45ft) away from me at the time.
Red Panda @10m: 600mm, f/9, 1/500sec, ISO-6400

The following two are taken in conditions similar to your example. Again spot focus allowed me to choose the eye of my selected subjects - in the case of the second image, the middle bird.
247mm, f/5, 1/125sec, ISO-3200   277mm, f/5, 1/125ec, ISO-6400

[luciano]

Thanks for useful reply. Does the back button focus work best for subjects that are stationary? Birds like the Great (Parus major) in my photo above are constantly on the move.

[Tronhard]

The two images of birds, like many small ones, are constantly on the move - they don't stand still for long at all - I suspect this is a protective behaviour as large ones are more static.   This works for me and, like John, I do use eye tracking for birds, it's just that I use single point to lock onto the bird of choice first.

[rs-eos]

DSLRs and MILC cameras do not offer digital zoom.  Unless you can get physically closer, you'll want to look at longer telephoto or super telephoto lenses.  The longer the focal length, the narrower the angle of view, so that will help with eliminating much of the surrounding and distracting elements.

[johnrmoyer]

There is a magnified view offered by the camera for some focus methods, but not others. https://cam.start.canon/ky/C003/manual/html/UG-04_AF-Drive_0050.html#AF-Drive_0050_7

Magnified View

To check the focus when the AF method is other than [

+Tracking], magnify display by approx. 6× or 15× by pressing the 

 button (or tapping [

]).

• Magnification is centered on the AF point for [Spot AF], [1-point AF], [Expand AF area: ], and [Expand AF area: Around] and on the Zone AF frame for [Zone AF], [Large Zone AF: Vertical], and [Large Zone AF: Horizontal].
• Autofocusing is performed with magnified display if you press the shutter button halfway when set to [Spot AF], and [1-point AF]. When set to AF methods other than [Spot AF] and [1-point AF], autofocusing is performed after restoring normal display.
• With Servo AF, if you press the shutter button halfway in the magnified view, the camera will return to the normal view for focusing.

Caution

• If focusing is difficult in the magnified view, return to the normal view and perform AF.
• If you perform AF in the normal view and then use the magnified view, accurate focus may not be achieved.
• AF speed differs between the normal view and magnified view.
• Continuous AF and Movie Servo AF are not available when display is magnified.
• With the magnified view, achieving focus becomes more difficult due to camera shake. Using a tripod is recommended.

[Waddizzle]

Photographing a bird on a branch is one of the more challenging shooting scenarios.  It is a genuine test of the photographer, not the camera gear.

[johnrmoyer]

I also use EOS R5 to photograph small birds far away. I have set eye detection enabled, priority to detect animals, and Face + tracking , and servo AF. I do not use back button focus, because the eye detection and tracking works for me. I would use single point focus for birds on my EOS 80D, but do not use it on my EOS R5.

If the camera cannot find the eye of a small bird far away, then I use 1.6x crop mode and that usually helps.

For this photo, the camera could not find the eye of the bird until I switched to crop mode. I have the C3 settings on the camera saved as crop mode.

• F Number 11.0
• ISO 2500
• Shutter Speed Value 1/512
• Focal Length 800.0 mm
• Camera Temperature 25 C
• Focus Distance Upper 18.82 m
• Focus Distance Lower 15.17 m
• Lens Model EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM +2x III

Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) in cattails (Typha angustifolia) at Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, United States on February 9, 2024

[luciano]

1.6x crop mode might be what I need - this is basically digital zoom right? Can I assign it to a single button that will enable/disable it?

[Tronhard]

1.6 or 1.3 crop modes simply reduce the area to be shot and boost the image in the viewfinder (depending on configuration), so you lose pixels.  I do use this myself, but only to boost FoV performance, but it comes at a cost of reducing your pixel count by a factor of 2.56, thus the 45MP will reduce to 17Mp on a 1.6 crop.
I don't see this as being effective in location of the focus point.  If focus is set to area focus, it will still seek the closest point within the FoV.  Eye tracking would normally override this, but occasionally vegetation or other objects can fool the system and there can be issues if more than one bird is present: hence my personal solution.

I have not been able to assign crop factor to a single button on its own. You might be able to set this up as part of an overall configuration, and store that to one of the C modes.