Canon R5 My one complaint with the R5 auto focus

[Jeff Moore]

I love my R5 don't get me wrong. I find it an extraordinary camera for wildlife. But I am continually experiencing an issue with the autofocus in the simplest conditions.
I mostly shoot a 400 mm DO lens with 1.4x for birds. When I try to focus on a bird against the sky (dark bird/white sky). The autofocus never stays locked on bird.
It goes to complete fuzz. And then I can't find the bird again. It would seem that the subject/ background is so simple, it should be an idea situation. I've tried to reduce or increase tracking sensitivity in Case 2 focus. Nothing seems to help.

Anyway, anyone else have this issue? Any solutions?

Thanks jeffmooreimages.net

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

I've been using the R5 for birds in flight for the last year and while I've experienced images in a series going slightly out of focus I've not had a focus-locked bird suddenly go completely fuzzy. That said, I'm using the 100-500mm RF with and without a TC.

It's not like you're working with cheap gear, but you do have EF glass with a TC being adapted to the RF mount and maybe that has something to do with it. Have you tried shooting without the TC to see if anything changes?

 

[Kathryn Milner]

I used to have the same problem but I have had success using eye tracking. I have my camera set up with double back button focus and when I use the button assigned for eye tracking/tracking it picks the bird out of the sky nicely most of the time.

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

Kathryn made me think of something else I didn't mention, and rereading your post I remembered my early days with the R5 and it's not that I'd lose focus lock on a bird in flight but that I would not be able to attain it. Is that what you're referring to?

I was trying to use the same animal face detect (with eye detection on) focus mode for birds in flight and I was finding it impossible. What I did is changed the control ring (which you probably don't have) to change focus modes and then eliminated all but Face Detect, Single Point (which you can't remove), expanded single point, and wide area AF. If I'm going after a BIF I will swing the focus mode to wide area and it locks in quickly and stays. I now use wide-area all the time and, like Kathryn, have my AF-ON button set to eye detect so that I can get eye detection in wide-are AF mode (something I get by default on the R7).

 

[Kathryn Milner]

Kathryn made me think of something else I didn't mention, and rereading your post I remembered my early days with the R5 and it's not that I'd lose focus lock on a bird in flight but that I would not be able to attain it. Is that what you're referring to?

I was trying to use the same animal face detect (with eye detection on) focus mode for birds in flight and I was finding it impossible. What I did is changed the control ring (which you probably don't have) to change focus modes and then eliminated all but Face Detect, Single Point (which you can't remove), expanded single point, and wide area AF. If I'm going after a BIF I will swing the focus mode to wide area and it locks in quickly and stays. I now use wide-area all the time and, like Kathryn, have my AF-ON button set to eye detect so that I can get eye detection in wide-are AF mode (something I get by default on the R7).

Yes you are correct I was referring more to getting a bird in focus while flying. Once I do so the camera manages to stay focused pretty well.