Old Eye controlled focus may be returning in mirrorless

See https://www.canonnews.​com …us-for-mirrorless-cameras for details of a patent filing.

I loved the system on my Elan IIe so will watch for this offering, hopefully.

Meh. I hated it in my EOS 3

The problem I would have is that I am rarely just looking at the subject of the photo, I will scan around to other areas to see how the whole frame looks. Perhaps this system only kicks in when you hit the AF function (half press or rear button), so when you are ready to AF, you just have to look at the subject before the shot is taken.

However again, when I am shooting sports with AI servo, tracking players etc, I am actually looking at the contents of the whole frame, and sometimes I use my other eye that is off the camera to see even more of the situation at hand. So that won't work for me in that situation even if this is fired off when I use an AF-related button.

If I remember correctly, didn't the Elan have only three focus points? (might be 5, don't remember) and all eye focus did was choose one. Not sure how it would handle today's cameras with many, and in some cases hundreds, of focus points.

I loved my CANON EOS 50E 35mm SLR FILM CAMERA with 3 ZONE EYE CONTROL FOCUSING. I am sure it could be used to great advantage in modern digital cameras.

K Soze wrote in post #18906020
Meh. I hated it in my EOS 3

The EOS 3 had 45 focus points but when the eye-controlled focus (ECF) system was calibrated you looked at four positions, both horizontally and vertically, then pushed a “store” button. So eight areas were calibrated in total. Like the Elan IIe, you could also do this for three distinct scenarios; I had one stored for my “bare” eye, one with contact lenses, and one for my wife. As you used these settings, the camera learned and improved the focusing.

I always found the system to work very well but admittedly when you see comments it is a love it or hate it relationship with not much in middle ground. I often felt people didn’t take the time to set the ECF up properly, perhaps from not understanding it well (some blame there on Canon). For instance, I knew I could not use my “bare” eye setting if I was using sunglasses. It wasn’t a major issue as I could remove the glasses temporarily. If I was spending the entire day outdoors shooting landscapes I would simply recalibrate that single setting (two minutes).

The cameras of today (and tomorrow) have amazing processing power so perhaps the feature will be improved. There was always an ON/OFF switch