Originally posted by dieselpunk I've been using the select focal point technique for most of this year after discovering it on this thread. This summer I was on a family vacation and I was telling my father (a photographer since the 1960s) about this his response was, "Why make it so complicated? Just use the face detection feature." Ha ha. I guess there's no good response to that. I thought of all people he would appreciate being accurate with focus, but his vision has gotten bad and basically relies on technology to keep taking photos. He's shooting some kind of Canon mirrorless these days.
It did make me think though. Am I just doing a lot more work to compensate for using an 8 year old camera? From a focus perspective, would my shots be easier to take with face/eye/whatever detection and I could then just concentrate on composition?
The entire camera is technology, I really don't understand the mentality that embracing this feature or that somehow makes you less of a photographer, like somehow unless you have your eye stuffed down an OVF you're not a
real photographer! ha!
On a recent pentax poll, Eye Detection came out as the second most requested feature.
Second! I'm saddened to say however how few Pentaxians realise that their cameras actually have this feature already, it's just simply called 'Face Detection', but make no mistake this mode most
definitely prioritises the
eye, in fact it will struggle to work at all if the person is wearing sunglasses. I (and others) have put Face Detection through its paces, both with mannequins as well as live subjects, even at close range and wide apertures you will see the eye is focused, every time. Now I'm not suggesting it is perfect and cannot be improved, I'm sure modern smartphones FD is far superior, but I only wish to alert this feature as an absolute choice for consideration when shooting people (and I do weddings with this mode selected). There has been many conversations I've had where a Pentaxian doesn't even know that their camera has this AF mode. I have literally reached across the table, picked up their camera and navigated to the mode and selected it for them to hear them retort "Oh... I didn't think my camera had it!"
There are many reasons I use FD a lot, typically its because I am also using off camera flash, it's hard to do two things at once and FD can assist me during these times. Also, in chaotic scenarios (such as beer festivals) I have learned its sometimes of value to not have your eye stuffed down an ovf but to have a better bearing on what's going on all around you.
Anyway, pictures are worth a thousand words and all that so I have compiled an album of where I used FD, you can check it out here, in almost every instance these were a one shot take, no focus was missed;
Portrait (Face Detection Only) | Flickr