EOS R5 Focusing Issues in Rain

[abnyc]

Question about the R5 with a very specific use case: photographing sports in the rain. In the rain, I have found that the R5 has difficulty maintaining focus on the subject, particularly when panning with a relatively fast moving subject at a medium distance (though it also happens with slower-moving, close-up subjects). In these cases, focus often seems to lock onto the rain between myself and the subject, or, initially locks on the subject but then drifts to focus on the rain while panning. Here are my specs / settings:

R5 with firmware version 1.5.0

RF 70-200 lens

H+ drive mode
Servo shooting
Servo AF settings:

- Case 2 (Continue to track subjects, ignoring possible obstacles)

- Tracking sensitivity -2 (locked on)

- Accel Decel tracking 0

- Focus area: Behavior seems the same whether using spot, 1-point or expand-area-around

Wondering if there are other settings I've overlooked -- or a different combination of these settings -- which could help focus lock on the subject and stick.

Thank you!

[shadowsports]

Greetings,

One of our resident experts who shoots a lot of sports recently did a soot in the rain.

I've asked him to look at this thread.  It might be helpful if you could post one or two shots from a recent shoot.

[abnyc]

Thank you very much

[Waddizzle]

What are the more advanced AF settings like subject recognition and Eye AF?  What does the AF point display look like when you are shooting?

I would disable the advanced AF features to the point where the display resembles a DSLR, a lot of small boxes. 

[abnyc]

I don't use the focusing modes that employ eye autofocus or subject recognition -- only spot, 1-point or expand-area-around. I believe I tried zone and that was no better, perhaps worse, as one might expect. If anything were to work I would expect it to be spot (smallest focus area) but that does not work well.

[Waddizzle]

I’m not sure what effect th the Case settings would or should have when you are using a single AF point, or even the 9-pt AF 

modes.  I’ve always thought that they only mattered in the Zone AF modes. 

[wq9nsc]

Your AF setup looks reasonable and with tracking sensitivity at -2 in Case 2, even if you aren't keeping the subject perfectly aligned with the focus point it should continue to track unless the subject is moving erratically.

I use 1DX III bodies but the Case numbering/profile is very similar.  Because of the variety of sports I shoot, I generally am in Case 1 (versatile/multipurpose) or Case 4 (subjects accelerate/decelerate rapidly).  Case 2 is very nice with its ability to maintain AF track when the subject is momentarily lost or blocked but it doesn't work well for when you rapidly need to switch subjects (i.e. football, soccer. lacrosse).  But if you are trying to track a specific player for a period of time then Case 2 is excellent and your overall setup looks good. 

I have AF priority "people" enabled but I don't enable face/head priority because often I want to begin tracking a player whose face/head is blocked at that point in a play.  For the same reason eye priority is not useful in many sports situations and typically with the distance involved in sports shooting, even a wide aperture telephoto is going to provide enough depth of field that if the head or most of the body is in critical focus, then the face/eyes will be also.

I have photographed football and soccer in some pretty horrible weather and I haven't run into any issues where it impacted AF but maybe there is something specific to the lighting or rain behavior (i.e. sheets of rain blowing in the wind) that created problems for you?  Was there also fog mixed with the rain?  I shot a soccer match once in extreme fog where you couldn't see either goal from the midpoint of the field and that did create slower focusing behavior at times when players were nearly invisible in the fog but even our own eyes have problems with fast focus in those conditions.

Photos below were shot during a football playoff last year during horrible conditions (mid 30s, pouring rain, high wind) and I never noticed a difference in camera AF performance compared to nice conditions.  The first 2 images are samples from a long QB touchdown run that covered close to 50 yards and were captured using an EF 400 f2.8 and the entire sequence was in perfect focus.  AF was set to Case IV and single point AF. 

The last 3 are samples from a TD pass sequence and were captured with an EF 70-200 f2.8, the QB faked me out and I thought the pass was coming to my sideline so it would have been better shot with the other body and lens but the 70-200/1DX III combo had no problem capturing and keeping focus in the rain.  AF set to Case 1, single point with 4 point expansion.  ISO varied from 12,800 through 20,000 for these 5 captures, the field lighting wasn't great.

I had no particular reason for setting one body to AF Case 1 and the other to AF Case 4 for this event, this was just the setup from some prior events from a mixed soccer and football season.  I have found that Case 1 and Case 4 both perform extremely well for these sports and I have no strong preference for one over the other for football or soccer.

MAYBE there is some oddity in the Case 2 algorithm that is thrown off by rain so try Case 1 or 4 also next time to compare results.

Rodger

1DX III EF 400 f2.81DX III EF 400 f2.81DX III EF 70-200 f2.81 DX III EF 70-200 f2.81 DX III EF 70-200 f2.8

[abnyc]

Thank you so much for this very detailed and thoughtful response -- I really appreciate it!

The subjects I am photographing are actually race horses, so the movement is smooth and predictable. I think the problem is that given the distance we are photographing at, when it's raining even moderately, it can be quite a bit of rain that is being photographed through. I had convinced myself that I needed to be in Case 2 lest the rain be interpreted as "another subject" moving through the frame. But given that you've gotten such great results with Case 1 and Case 4, I will give them another try next time the opportunity presents itself. Perhaps counterintuitively, it's not Case 2 that's ideal for rain. I suppose it's also possible that the R5 focusing algorithms don't fare as well as the 1DX III in the rain, but I will hold out hope that one of the other Cases will give better results.

Thank you again!

[wq9nsc]

You are welcome and good luck!  I think Case 1 would do a great job at the horse track.

Rain isn't pleasant for photographers but it is worse for the athletes even though it does create some fun photo ops 😂

Rodger

1DX III EF 400 f2.81DX III EF 400 f2.81DX II EF 24-70 f2.8