Back Button Focus and Other Settings for Optimal Shots

[Zhaopian]

Hi,

I have an R5. 

I experimented with Back Button Focus (BBF) the other day when shooting a football game, and most of my shots came out blurry. As others have said on here and contrary to what is on Youtube, I do believe I must keep the AF-ON button pressed until I take the shot.

But other than that, I also noticed with some experimentation that it appears that I must turn off IBIS and turn on or Enable Anti-Flicker--and this is even when hand-holding. I may need to repeat this experiment as I also know I tried a control sample of shots by just resetting my shutter to the default meter-AF-release the shutter.

However, if I am correct than why would IBIS need to be off to take better shots? How can this be? I've actually taken lots of good shots (perhaps 85 to 90 percent success rate as far a focus goes) of other sports. So, what gives?

What other settings in the R5 must be set to increase the probabilities of a sharp and in-focus image? I mean for a night shoot in a poorly lit stadium, it seems logical to turn on or turn up High ISO speed NR and to set the Lens aberration correction to the maximum settings. But then again, maybe it isn't. After all, I know I can remove noise in LrC.

Thanks.

[wq9nsc]

I know a lot of people love BBF but I shoot primarily sports and I reprogrammed that AF button to AF stop because the majority of the time I am keeping the shutter button partially depressed to let the servo AF system do what it is meant to do.  On the rare occasion where I want to focus and recompose, I will use my reprogrammed AF stop button on my 1DX III body or more frequently the handy AF stop buttons which are in an array of four near the far end of my large white Canon lenses.

I use two and sometimes three lens/bodies combos when shooting sports and frequently switch between two during the same football play as field position changes.  The last thing I want to do when rapidly switching bodies is having to place multiple fingers in the right spot to get the shot.  Shooting sports often involves decisions made in milliseconds and I don't have time to waste positioning multiple fingers when I switch bodies or even change orientation with the same body.

So try both BBF and classic setups and see which works best for YOU.

For sports, I use manual exposure with ISO set to auto and although my 1DX III bodies have a lot of AF tricks they can do, I shoot sports with a single spot AF sometimes with expansion to four additional spots enabled.  Unless you are trying to cover only a single athlete during a game, instead of covering the overall game flow, you will find a more general AF setting is what you need.  You know the game and with typical glass used for football (I use a 400 f2.8 on one body and a 70-200 f2.8 on the other, both wide open aperture) the depth of field is very shallow so you need to choose the player that you want in focus and it often isn't the one with the ball but instead a blocker or someone else critical to a specific part of a play.

As to noise and lens correction, I always shoot in RAW and make any corrections in post.

One final thought for sports, don't rely on shooting a huge number of frames at high rate to try to get the shot you want because you will get lazy and get a lot of mediocre images and few good ones.  I rarely shoot more than a burst of 3 to 5 captures and only continuously capture at high speed during a longer play and even then it is in bursts because I don't need every frame of a running back going 70 yards down a clear field 🙂

And be careful on the sidelines!  More than once I have had to jump over sliding players who come far across the sideline and I thought it would happen again last Friday because a TV sports person was standing behind me blocking that escape route.  The final shot in this play ended up with the player's head out of focus because he was within the roughly 8' minimum focusing distance of my 70-200 f2.8 glass.

I shoot football with both eyes open to stay aware of what is going on around me, a primary reason I have stayed with DSLR bodies since there is zero time lag between the viewfinder and what I am seeing through my other eye and the relatively brightness level remains the same between both.  A momentary lack of attention (like some photographers have a bad habit of trying to review photos on the sideline) can be very bad news for both you and the athletes.

Rodger

[stevet1]

Zhaopian,

If you press the AF-ON button once and let go, your camera will remain locked at that one focus point, so yeah, if either you or your subject moves, your pictures will be blurry. IF you're following the players around, keep pressing that button until you take your shot..

Steve Thomas

[p4pictures]

One tip to check if you were actually focusing when the photo was taken, and that is to display the AF points on the LCD of the camera. If no points are shown the AF wasn't active when the photo was taken.

To do this, go to the camera's play menu, find AF point disp. and set it to Enable. Now when you review an image you will see at least one red AF frame on the screen to indicate the AF was active when the photo was taken.

[Tronhard]

Hi and welcome:
Give we have only some of your configuration settings, it is harder for us to fully analyze your issues.  Let me say that turning off IBIS should not be an issue with BBF specifically, (it may be an issue with shooting on a tripod) so something else is amiss here.   I use BBF exclusively, mostly for wildlife, but also for action and some sports, which also moves and can be very unpredictable - I have no issues with it.   I will share my settings and you can compare them to yours.

I have BBF assigned to the AF-On button, but to do so, as Canon recommends and I find works, you need to set centre lock single point focus in SERVO mode.  The single point allows you to be very precise in setting the point of focus, otherwise it is a risk that the focusing system will select something closer or with better contrast.  That means you point at the subject with the centre of the EVF, and TAP the AF-ON if he subject is stationary.  If it is moving, you HOLD down the AF-ON button to track it.  Once I have locked focus I can recompose and shoot.  This is much faster than trying to move the focus point with the joystick - I don't use the touch features on my MILCs because my face keeps touching the screen and enacting a function.   This style of focus takes practice, and you need to work at it along with the custom focus settings that work for you.

However, if you have face/eye tracking enabled, then once you have tapped the AF-ON button, the focusing system should lock onto the subject and track them, as long as you don't get distractions moving between you - event that can be mitigated in the focus case screen.

If you have not done so, I recommend watching the setting from BYU on photographing football: Focus is dealt with at timestamp 11:35 and the presenter is pretty adamant about using BBF.

The video is well worth watching.

[TomRamsey]

The main reason for BBF is to separate your shutter from autofocus to keep from refocusing when you don't want to.  I use it and it's a lot better method for me, but not for everyone.  If you use BBF, make sure that the shutter button autofocus is off, on my R6ii it is set to "metering start".  

I guess you also need to look at the shutter speeds you are using to make sure your blurriness is not motion blur, but you should be able to tell.  The nose reduction and lens correction could slow things down a little if you are shooting in bursts.  

There is no reason that IBIS needs to be off, unless you are shooting from a tripod.  I don't know about the anti-flicker, unless maybe the stadium lights are a problem, but that's doubtful.  

There are probably some you tube videos for the R5 and sorts shooting explaining the settings they use, these can be pretty helpful.

[Waddizzle]

“ I  know a lot of people love BBF but I shoot primarily sports and I reprogrammed that AF button to AF stop because the majority of the time I am keeping the shutter button partially depressed to let the servo AF system do what it is meant to do. “

I also do this.  I highly recommend it for just about any type of action photography.  Using BBF does not make your images sharper.  Many users find that the technique helps them to direct the camera where to focus faster and more precisely.  Using BBF effectively requires some practice coordinating your fingers to use two buttons.

I feel pressing only the one button, [Shutter], allows one to that first shot fired much faster than pressing BBF and then the shutter.  If my AF tracking loses its subject, then a quick tap on the [AF-OFF] button resets the AF system to my Initial AF Point.  Again, tapping the one button is faster than releasing BBF and pressing it again to resume AF tracking.