7D AF modes for wildlife

If we enable all 5 AF modes we can select from

• single spot AF
  
• single point AF
  
• single point with expansion
  
• zone
  
• 19 point AF
  

Never thought of it that much, but I would think it depends on your shooting style and subject. For mammals and other critters that are a little slower, I typically use the spot or the point, and I am pretty quick with the dials to be able to select which point I want to use. This last weekend though, I was taking bird pictures and I was moving more to the zone system to give me a larger coverage area to catch birds in flight.

I find single point w/ expansion (in conjunction with AI Servo and back-button focus) works well in nearly all cases. I sometimes switch to spot if I'm having trouble locking on.

I've tried zone in certain circumstances (e.g. birds or planes against clean backgrounds) but the advantage of single point w/expansion is that you choose the target point, such as the eye, whereas with zone it just focusses on whatever is closest within the zone, which might be a wingtip.

(FWIW, the AF performance of my 7D using single point w/ expansion is significantly better than that of my 1D4 in the same mode. I think with the 7D you have to get a lock with the selected point before it will hand off to the assist points, whereas it seems that the 1D will use any of the enabled points to get an initial lock, making it no better than zone on the 7D).

check out this thread:

https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1138397