topic Re: R5 animal AF not working on horses in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

R5 animal AF not working on horses

weltwind — Thu, 06 May 2021 14:49:26 GMT

As of April 30, 2021 with latest firmware, horse AF issue remains. In animal Eye AF, with a person and a horse next to each other, focuses on persons eye 100% of time in all subject orientations and distances. Don't know why the big name youtubers never mention that.

Re: R5 animal AF not working on horses

Waddizzle — Sat, 08 May 2021 01:15:34 GMT

I think Eye-AF and Animal-AF are just marketing gimmicks to sell cameras. And, yes, I think they work as advertised, which is [why] most people disable it for serious action photography shooting. Just focusing on the head will capture the eye in focus for 99.99% of your shots. People somehow managed to focus on a face just fine long before Eye AF came along.

As to why the camera focus on a human face, instead of an animal face when given the choice. It doesn't matter. Override it. It is the same problem as trying to focus on a bird on a branch, but the camera wants to focus on the branch closer to the camera. You overrride it, and you tell it where to focus. The camera cannot read y our mind. It does the best it can.

Re: R5 animal AF not working on horses

weltwind — Thu, 06 May 2021 17:23:41 GMT

Well, of course I have lived without tracking AF but the idea is that the head (and ideally the eye) of a racing or jumping horse remains in focus even when the rest of the body is not due to shooting wide open - it is impossible to do that repeatably using traditional AF. Yes, I have had good shots but I have missed too many. R5 promised to deliver that, that's why I bought it. It does deliver a bit better with flying birds, and I hear it delivers great with dogs. So it can be made to work, I am sure.

Re: R5 animal AF not working on horses

rs-eos — Thu, 06 May 2021 20:44:37 GMT

There was never a promise that eye-AF would work for all situations.

As mentioned above, if it fails to work for a particular scenario, revert to other methods.

Re: R5 animal AF not working on horses

Waddizzle — Sat, 08 May 2021 01:13:32 GMT

@weltwind wrote:
Well, of course I have lived without tracking AF but the idea is that the head (and ideally the eye) of a racing or jumping horse remains in focus even when the rest of the body is not due to shooting wide open - it is impossible to do that repeatably using traditional AF. Yes, I have had good shots but I have missed too many. R5 promised to deliver that, that's why I bought it. It does deliver a bit better with flying birds, and I hear it delivers great with dogs. So it can be made to work, I am sure.

How far away are you from the subjects? If you watch the goofy YouTube videos of people testing Eye AF, you will see that the camera does not pick up the human eye from a distance. I would assume Animal AF would behave similarly.

You are relying on an automatic mode of operation and getting unsatisfactory results. I view this as being no different than using a "Sports" mode on a camera, and getting unsatisfactory exposures. Like I said above, don't use it.

Just focusing on the head will probably bring the eye, the ears, [mouth] and nose into focus within the same DoF.

Re: R5 animal AF not working on horses

wq9nsc — Fri, 07 May 2021 20:27:01 GMT

I agree with the others that none of these AI enhanced systems are going to deliver perfection under all situations. I have spent a lot of time shooting sports with my 1DX 2 and 1DX 3 camera bodies and even with their sophisticated systems, using a single micro AF point often delivers the best results. There are a lot of times when the AF "support systems" work surprisingly well but they have their limitations just like human photographers.

For the scenario you describe, I use AF Case 2 with my 1DX 2 and 3 bodies.

Rodger

Re: R5 animal AF not working on horses

weltwind — Sat, 08 May 2021 03:03:39 GMT

I photograph mostly birds but occasionally also horses. I just switched from Nikon D850 where I was using spot AF all the time. The D850 yielded good results until it broke down but t was nearly impossible to take action bird shots with it. In replacing the D850, my dilemma was whether to go with Canon R5 with 100-500 or Sony A1 with 200-600 and I chose the Canon based on its allegedly superior animal eye AF. Youtube reviewers said it was phenomenal. In my experience it is not, and horse eye AF, from any distance, is one of the issues I discovered. I find it strange that Canon's software developers missed such a prominent group of animals, hence my comment, hoping that they will address the issue.

I of course know how to use spot AF and it is as good as that of the D850 but the idea was to upgrade, not stay the same.

Re: R5 animal AF not working on horses

Waddizzle — Sat, 08 May 2021 18:14:02 GMT

How well do other camera brands lock onto the eye of a horse with a human in the same frame?

Re: R5 animal AF not working on horses

garymak1 — Sat, 08 May 2021 23:29:25 GMT

I agree. I've been using it for several months now, and occasionally it gets a human face, never birds.

Re: R5 animal AF not working on horses

Pollygrafx — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 20:00:54 GMT

How true

Re: R5 animal AF not working on horses

Pollygrafx — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 20:02:10 GMT

I've had wonderful luck with birds and cats.... don't take pics of people much, but tests for giggles have worked well. Being a landscape and wildlife photographer, it's been a fine tag-along.