Do grips help with autofocus?

Hi,

Having had a pretty poor outing with autofocus on moving targets (golden eagle in flight at an experience) I found I was missing autofocus most of the time maybe a 1 in 10 hit - I tried different focus modes, ranging from versatile to instant change (I know that ones risky but tried it anyway) - tried spot point, assisted, wider - all basically the same, locks far away then looses it, usually just about the point I would really want to keep it!

I had heard somewhere that AF can be helped by a grip due to the extra power but I always just thought of it as a bigger battery store, not a way to improve AF too.

The combo in question today was the 5D3 + Sigma 150-500 OS, but I have had the same results with other lenses.

I've never heard anything about AF being sped up or otherwise improved with a battery grip.

Never heard of that either, in the film days the grip would assist with frame rate on some cameras.

The 5D3 AF is only second to the 1Dx in the Canon lineup so I would say to be patient and spend more time getting to know the ins and outs of it.

No, it would not help and there is no change to the voltage seen by the camera.

no. I have grips on mine since I shoot a lot in portrait mode in the studio and it's easier to hold the camera with a grip (and the extra buttons) for me, but AF has nothing to do with that. BIF is tricky and takes a lot of practice, also make sure to have a very fast shutter speed, at the very least 1/1000 with that big of a lens. Tripod or monopod might also help. And f8 or so.

keeper rate with BIF is usually relatively low, unless one has a lot of practice.

I have grips on all my cameras. With BIF shots I am still 0 for whatever. They don't help me.

Could the problem be body mechanics??

Could always send the camera back to Canon for them to check out too.

Thanks all - I'll take that as a no to the grip helping

It's probably the lens that doesn't focus fast enough. As a 400mm F5.6 fanboy, I'd recommend you to sell the 150-500 and get that one instead.

I used to have one but although fast the fixed focal length was too restrictive for me.

It is a good lens though.

It does take some practice doing a pan of a bird in flight, even a large one like a golden. One thing that can help is going to an intersection with a lot of truck I traffic and take pictures while panning of the info on one of the doors. Experment with settings and technique and pretty soon you'll find yourself getting the hang of it.

As others have pointed out, the extra battery power does not help with focus speed.

Check out the the sticky threads in "Birding Talk" forum for a lot of good tips on tracking birds in flight.

Thanks I hadn't thought of that, plus the keep fit part where a Brummy trucker screeches to a halt and hunts me through three counties will be exhilarating

Sound like a good tip though - I do wonder how I'm failing it though, just selecting an AF setting then holding down the back focus (while in servo mode) shouldn't need much more work you wouldn't think would you - but the number of people I've heard say practice more really suggests that its not as easy as that.

Edit: Thanks Jake, I will.

i've found a grip + extra battery along with a 32 gb card help..............shoo​t for longer and eventually i might get a sharp infocus shot !.....lol

CORPY wrote in post #16309620
i've found a grip + extra battery along with a 32 gb card help..............shoo​t for longer and eventually i might get a sharp infocus shot !.....lol

lol, cheeky so and so