topic Re: Migrated from R6 mki to mkii - Help with tying eye detection to af point in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

Migrated from R6 mki to mkii - Help with tying eye detection to af point

wockawocka — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 11:02:40 GMT

Soooo,

I've shot with the original R6 for 5 years now and for the most part I've sorted all the differences between the mki and mkii except for two things and I'm hoping someone here know what to do if it's do-able!

1. I shoot weddings and on my first R6 I would have a single focus point in servo mode. I'd also configure a button on the back to jump into eye detection mode.

I've enabled the same on the mkii however it's not behaving as I want it to.

When I hold the button to enable eye af it doesn't stay local to my subject. My af point is in the right place, I just want to refine it with eye detection but instead it heads over to someone else.

I was shooting yesterday and even though the af point was directly on someones face it went to someone else, missing the moment.

I've tried reducing the scan area, the type of subject to people, then the auto, then to none and it doesn't make a difference. To me and for my specific use it's worse than the mkii in this aspect.

Second thing I'm trying to resolve. If there a way to disable the action m.fn has on the on screen settings menu. You know, the one you see pop up when you hit m.fn - I still want it to pop up, but would prefer to use both dials to change these settings.

Thanks to anyone who can input!

Chris

Re: Migrated from R6 mki to mkii - Help with tying eye detection to af point

Waddizzle — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 14:54:33 GMT

“ I've tried reducing the scan area, the type of subject to people, then the auto, then to none and it doesn't make a difference. To me and for my specific use it's worse than the mkii in this aspect. “

Wellcome the Community!

What do you mean by “scan area”? If you are referring to Whole Area Tracking, then that setting needs to be enabled for Subject Detection and Eye Tracking to function.

If your AF display is just a single AF box, then it sounds like WAT is disabled. Your selected AF point is simply the Initial AF Tracking Point. You must also use Servo AF.

Once a subject is detected, then a dynamically resizing, bounding rectangle encloses the subject’s face. A smaller AF box should appear over an eye.

Re: Migrated from R6 mki to mkii - Help with tying eye detection to af point

wockawocka — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 16:16:56 GMT

Thanks for the welcome!

When I say scan area I meant that I flipped between whole area AF (info button) to see if it made a difference. Which it didn't. I'm finding the auto setting works best overall. But at a distance of about 5 metres with two people facing me with eyes open the camera ignores the person the AF point is on often enough to be a problem.

Re: Migrated from R6 mki to mkii - Help with tying eye detection to af point

SignifDigits — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 17:52:25 GMT

I think you might be conflating eye detection with one-shot and servo modes. I assume your "eye detection" button is switching between one-shot and servo mode? Eye detection is activated and set up in the menus and works in both servo and one-shot modes. Before you shoot more with your new camera more I suggest you become more familiar with the AF menu settings (Cases, etc.) and do a bit of browsing on what others in your field use for their settings and experiment with the settings until you find what works best for you. I did one search and found people shooting weddings primarily in one-shot and others using primarily servo. So, telling you "set this to X or Y or Z" doesn't seem appropriate here.

I think this will be a good guide to get you a better handle on the subject from the Canon site. The "Eye Detection" section, "Switching Tracked Subjects" https://support.usa.canon.com/kb/s/article/ART183877 can get you started, then you can zero in a bit on the R6 Mark II via the Servo AF settings in your manual at https://cam.start.canon/en/C012/manual/html/UG-05_AF-Drive_0100.html for using Cases and settings of thoes cases to pick a person and "stick" to them if that's your goal.

Re: Migrated from R6 mki to mkii - Help with tying eye detection to af point

Waddizzle — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 01:28:33 GMT

“ But at a distance of about 5 metres with two people facing me with eyes open the camera ignores the person the AF point is on often enough to be a problem. “

At what focal length, though? If you can see them from head to toe, then that’s a possible issue. Eye detection does have distance limitations. The camera must be able to cover the face with a sufficient number of AF points to recognize a face and detect the eye.

Have you tried testing the auto focus system in Intelligent Auto shooting mode, Green [A+] mode? Is the camera able to detect faces and eyes?

Re: Migrated from R6 mki to mkii - Help with tying eye detection to af point

stevet1 — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 01:15:34 GMT

wockawocka,

Is it possible that the person the focus point jumps to is actually closer to you than the person you really wanted to focus on?

If he or she is closer to you, the camera will do that. It's designed that way.

Steve Thomas