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Canon EOS R6 and EOS R5 were the first cameras to be equipped with bird's eye focus. It is no exaggeration to say that their appearance has ushered in a new era of intelligent bird shooting. In the following content, I will introduce many details about "Bird's Eye Focus" to you through introduction, comparison, and actual combat. Want to know "which is stronger than smart bird shooting?" Then hurry up and read the article.
* For the convenience of narrative and user understanding, this article uses the term "bird's eye focus". For some products, this also includes the identification of birds' heads and bodies.
The meaning of "bird's eye focus"
Whether we're photographing people, pets, or wildlife like birds, we zoom in to see the eye area to determine if the photo is accurately out of focus. Therefore, making the eyes clear has become an important basis for a qualified photo. Similar to "human eye focus", "bird's eye focus" also makes moving focus points faster, more accurate, and less manual intervention. What is different is that the shooting environment of wild animals such as birds is more complicated. In addition to the small proportion of the subject, there are usually shading interferences such as branches and weeds.
In the previous antbird shooting, I fully felt the power of Canon's "bird's eye focus": just look for a relatively exposed shooting angle, the camera can automatically lock the bird's eye; then I press the shutter, and I can get a set of very clear photos of the bird's eye. The actual feeling is really as simple and relaxed as these two sentences.
▲ Antbird i photographed with the Canon EOS R5.
Photographing wild animals such as birds often has a lot of uncertainty, and it is impossible to communicate verbally like shooting people, nor can it be tried repeatedly like photographing pets. Think of it this way, "Bird's Eye Focus" not only makes the operation of selecting the focus point easier, but also makes our hard work and wait more rewarding.
▲Some photos I took with canon EOS R5 and R3 with Bird's Eye Focus turned on
Analysis of products on sale
Currently, cameras that support bird's eye focus (or bird recognition) are:
This time I found Canon EOS R5, EOS R3, Sony α1, α7IV, Nikon Z 9 for real shooting, so the following main analysis of Canon, Sony, Nikon situation. Later, there will be time to supplement the introduction of Olympus/Aoxin and Panasonic products.
canon
For animals, the camera tries to detect the face or body. When the face or entire body cannot be detected, the camera may track parts of the body.
Sony
Currently, only α1 and α7IV support "Bird Real-Time Eye Focus", and only α7IV can perform "Bird Real-Time Eye Focus" under video.
There are 3 types of face/eye shots that detect people, animals, and birds. It is important to note that:
- Animals refer mainly to cats/dogs, excluding birds;
- "Animal" and "bird" detection belongs to the "real-time eye focus", that is, only the eyes of animals and birds are detected. This means that in the absence of recognition of the eye, there is no guarantee that priority will be given to the face and body.
Nikon
The Z 9's "AF Subject Detection Options" are available in four types: Auto, People, Animals, and Vehicles, and can detect in AF area modes such as wide area AF (S or L), 3D tracking, object tracking, or auto area AF. Among them, animals include dogs, cats, and birds. If the camera cannot detect the face or eye area, the focus point will be displayed on the detected animal.
Summary: Canon and Nikon can now automatically identify a variety of subjects, can identify the body, face and eyes of birds, and photos and videos are available. Sony's bird detection and animal (cat/dog) detection are separate and can only identify the eyes, and not all products support under-video identification detection.
Actual shooting experience
To further verify the bird's eye recognition capabilities of different brands, we conducted two rounds of testing:
Indoor scenes: Cameras are canon EOS R5, Sony α7IV and Nikon Z 9 (α7IV was chosen because α1 does not yet support Birde Focus in video). The 24-105mm F4 or 24-120mm F4 lens of the original bayonet is uniformly used to identify a cockatoo in a fixed camera position and light.
▲Indoor shooting scenes, recorded screen (upper left corner) and bystander perspective recording respectively
In wide-area/auto-area AF mode (i.e. full-screen autofocus) setting, the Canon EOS R5 recognizes the bird's body, head and eyes at the widest viewing angle, showing the strongest recognition capabilities. The Nikon Z 9 needs to push the perspective closer to recognize the bird's head and eyes. Sony α7IV Even if the bird is already basically full of pictures, the focus will still fall on the branches in the foreground.
▲ Canon EOS R5 (top), Sony α7IV (bottom left), Nikon Z 9 (bottom right)
The Canon EOS R5 changes in the size of the focus frame when identifying birds' eyes, heads, and bodies.
The Sony α7IV selects Free Point to focus on the bird and then switch to wide area. By this time the camera had recognized the bird's eye, but was still distracted by the foreground branches when refocusing.
I also tested the situation in video mode. Canon is basically unchanged, the Sony α7IV performs slightly better, while the Nikon Z 9 is slightly worse than when taking pictures (scenes that can be recognized in photo mode, birds are not easy to identify in video mode, you can compare the screenshot in photo recognition above).
Outdoor scenes: Cameras are the Canon EOS R3, Sony α1 and Nikon Z 9. The original native bayonet 70-200mm F2.8 lens is used uniformly to shoot different animals in the safari park. This link is operated by three photographers separately, and it is impossible to record the screen at the same time, and the consistency is slightly worse than that of indoor scenes.
▲Sony α1, Canon EOS R3, Nikon Z 9 and original native bayonet 70-200/2.8 lens
After actual shooting and analysis, I think that Sony's "bird's eye detection" is very different from Canon and Nikon in learning data or algorithms. Sony's "bird's eye detection" seems to rely more on pupil recognition. In the snow owl shot below, for example, when the pupil is not obvious (in fact, the eyes are not completely closed), the focus area of the Sony α1 jumps back to the traditional mode.
▲ Sony α1 after closing its eyes in the face of the snow owl, the bird's eye detection stopped working.
The Canon EOS R3 and Nikon Z 9 have a high chance of recognizing bird's eye even if they don't detect a clear pupil. If you can't detect the bird's eye, you can also "step back" to continue to detect the bird's head and body.
▲ Screenshot of canon EOS R3 for bird eye (left) and head (right) inspection
▲ Nikon Z 9 recognizes both eyes (allowing manual switching).
The difference in detection capabilities between the Canon EOS R3 and Nikon Z 9 is not only reflected in the fact that Canon can recognize a smaller proportion of birds (which has been verified in indoor shooting), but also in the fact that when birds are back to us or combing feathers, Canon also has a high probability of recognizing the bird's head.
▲ When this kestrel is back to us, the Canon EOS R3 can still focus on its head continuously.
Summary and Outlook
Although we are talking about "bird's eye focus" in the whole text, from the actual shooting and feedback from netizens, the identification of birds' heads and bodies is also very important. This naturally represents a greater amount of data learning, but only in this way can it provide a smarter and more accurate shooting experience.
From the actual shooting point of view, Canon EOS R6/R5/R3 represents the best level of "bird recognition" at present (EOS R5/R6 can be described as the peak of debut), which is the best choice for smart bird shooting. The Nikon Z 9 also has a big breakthrough in the richness of subject recognition, but there is still a lot of room for improvement in "bird recognition". In general, I think Canon and Nikon are more reasonable in the direction of bird recognition technology, while Sony's design of only detecting the eye has great limitations, and I hope that the firmware after α1 can make significant improvements in this regard.
Bird recognition technology can improve the success rate, reduce the threshold of entry, so that more people, especially young people with fast pace of life and less leisure time, can also experience the fun of bird watching and bird shooting. Whether photographing birds or other wild animals, there are high requirements for camera performance and lens specifications, which is an area that is difficult to reach in mobile phone photography. The growth of this kind of subject shooting crowd helps the digital camera industry to maintain its vitality, so the subject detection technology represented by bird recognition has a profound impact on the entire digital camera industry. Therefore, I believe that with the passage of time, more and more products will support bird identification, and the recognition ability and recognition range will continue to increase.
Finally, all the tests and conclusions in this article are aimed at "bird eye focus" and "bird recognition". The success rate of the focus in actual shooting is also inseparable from the camera AF detection frequency and the performance of the lens focus motor, and the ideal system is naturally strong in which part.
P.S. A little off-topic
For cases where there is no "bird's eye recognition" function, or "bird's eye recognition" is not easy to use in the face of specific birds and shooting scenes, we can also use more traditional tracked focusing to focus continuously. Especially in video shooting, this allows us to focus more on the composition and keep the focus on the bird's head as much as possible. Sony Micro Single* In camera mode, after selecting the focus area with "tracking", the "real-time tracking" function can be activated by pressing the shutter halfway, but in video mode, tracking can only be started by touch.
Whether it is using a deck, a monitor, or wearing gloves outdoors in winter is not easy to touch and operate, I personally feel that it is best to retain the setting of tracking focus through buttons and joysticks like Canon** and Nikon.
* α6400 and later products
** Taking the Canon EOS R5 as an example, after setting the multi selector (joystick) in the "Custom Button" to directly select the focus point, press the joystick to track the center of the picture.
@Esot Technology is composed of several old cannons who do not want to lie flat, the main content includes mobile phones, computers, photographic equipment, digital Coldplay, looking forward to your attention and interaction.