Autofocus control options

Hi,

I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but on the DL, and I'm assuming all the *ist D range, you can change the autofocus control from the shutter release button to the OK button on the rear control dial. I found this out a few days ago, and it helps a great deal when focussing on flying birds for instance, or I guess when shooting track days, where the point of focus is going to be the same for a few shots at a time.

If you go into the Menu settings, and go to Custom Menu settings, scroll to the second page and look for "OK button when shooting" and set it to option 3. Now you can set the autofocus using the OK button, which saves the lens hunting in and out to infinity for each shot when using the shutter release button; especially useful if you want to take shots in quick succession.

You probably knew this anyway, but just in case..

Hope that helps..

Cheers

Liam

Liam,
Very useful! The *ist-D actually has a separate button for autofocus, labelled "AF".
(The OK button on the *ist-D can be used for firing the flash - great for studio setups.)

But it's good to know you can do the same thing on the *ist-DS/DL. It's one of the best features, IMHO, for kids & fast moving items.

Matt

It came in handy yesterday Mat,

We paid a visit to the Black Mountains for a photo shoot (I make that sound too grand with regards to my photography, but you get the idea.. )

There was six inches of snow on the higher ground, and I was trying to get some nice shots of buzzards, or whatever particular brand of bird of prey turned up.. and I grabbed this one of a crow, well, it's a bird anyway..




.. it flew past me about 15 feet away, as I'd just finished the obligatory tourist photo of Mrs L. It's not going to win any prizes.. no really.. but as a grab shot I quite like it, which wouldn't have happened had it focussed first.

Cheers

Liam

Aw heck! I wish I had found that out a while back! I take a lot of action shots at various running and orienteering events, and one of my biggest bugbears is unnecessary AF hunting.

On the up side, the addition of Auto ISO in the latest DS firmware has been very useful to me.