Andy8
newbie
Reged: 20/07/2008
Posts: 2
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Hi,
I have recently bought an E-510 with 70-300 and have an occasional problem with the autofocus hunting throughout its entire range when I go to photograph a distant plane (or bird for that matter). The camera is already focused at long distance and when I half press the shutter it will 'hunt' all the way to near focus (so I loose track of the plane/bird I was following) and then back all the way out again to near infinity.
I did the simple switch to a fixed Manual focus point but then if the plane/bird comes in close (eg Red Arrows at Farnborough) its out of focus (so I would rather make use of autofocus).
What I want is a setting on the Olympus E-510 that tells the camera logic just to 'fine tune' the focus slightly (that's all I would manually need to do).
Any one know if this is possible? Or did I buy the wrong camera for these kind of subjects? I am very pleased with it otherwise and it only does this occasionally - probably when I am tracking a fast moving plane/bird and the subject is not dead centre when it tries to focus. Yes I have tried Continuous Focus and its no better. I believe an improvement was noticed when I just used one focus point dead centre and not let the camera auto choose (with auto it had a penchant for focusing on the closer trees and not the distant plane beyond them) - but still about 1 in 15 did this focus hunting over the FULL range and a shot was missed.
Thanks for any help offered,
Andy..
P.S. Otherwise very happy with this camera / lens combination, my first venture into digital SLR.
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beejaybee
Marvin
Reged: 18/07/2007
Posts: 4967
Loc: Really Here In Name Only
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Quote:
Or did I buy the wrong camera for these kind of subjects? I am very pleased with it otherwise and it only does this occasionally - probably when I am tracking a fast moving plane/bird and the subject is not dead centre when it tries to focus. Yes I have tried Continuous Focus and its no better. I believe an improvement was noticed when I just used one focus point dead centre and not let the camera auto choose (with auto it had a penchant for focusing on the closer trees and not the distant plane beyond them) - but still about 1 in 15 did this focus hunting over the FULL range and a shot was missed.
If you're getting 90%+ success then the autofocus is working as well as it is likely to on any camera/lens combination. Setting the centre focus point works best on everything I've tried.
Some lenses (from Canon, maybe others) do have a "range limit" switch which reduces the hunting range & speeds things up, but it's not worth ditching your kit for a small improvement. Just accept that some shots are going to fail. It's not as though you're wasting film!
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El Sid
Going potty
Reged: 14/04/2003
Posts: 9463
Loc: Sussex-by-the-Sea
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I've had similar problems following action with my Canons so the 'problem' is not confined to Olympus.
The smaller the object is in the finder the more accurate you need to be following it's motion and the less reliable AF focus is likely to be. Frankly if it's so small in the frame that the camera struggles for AF lock then it's probably not worth photographing anyway. Wait/look for a closer subject that the camera can get a good lock on and is large enough in the frame to more than cover the AF point in use (and the centre one is always the best) as this helps if you are a little wobbly in your panning technique.
I'd agree with BJB too, 14 out of 15 frames successfully tracked is pretty good performance for a non-pro spec camera...
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Nigel
Completely BSRIPN 
ElSid Gallery
A camera in the hand is better than one in the cupboard........
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Andy8
newbie
Reged: 20/07/2008
Posts: 2
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Thanks for your encouraging comments. Maybe if Olympus are reading this they will consider a 'range limit' option in one of their firmware upgrades. I remember reading online somewhere an interview with an Olympus senior exec and he mentioned they were working hard on autofocus as they were new to this not having done auto focus on their film cameras. He was then talking about the E300 or E500 I seem to think ~ can't remember for sure.
Maybe they have it in one of their 'scene' modes - but then you hand over all control to the camera.
Thanks for your helpful comments,
Andy.. 
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Photocracy
The Great Pretender
Reged: 18/11/2006
Posts: 625
Loc: Sunny South Coast
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Quote:
Thanks for your encouraging comments. Maybe if Olympus are reading this they will consider a 'range limit' option in one of their firmware upgrades. I remember reading online somewhere an interview with an Olympus senior exec and he mentioned they were working hard on autofocus as they were new to this not having done auto focus on their film cameras. He was then talking about the E300 or E500 I seem to think ~ can't remember for sure.
Maybe they have it in one of their 'scene' modes - but then you hand over all control to the camera.
Thanks for your helpful comments,
Andy..
Sometimes, you can reduce the risk of this happening at the critical moment by roughly pre-focussing on something at the same or near distance you're expecting your subject to appear. The less travel the lens has to perform to focus, the less the risk of it wandering off altogether. Also, I'm sure this isn't your problem but check anyway; clean the lens to body electronic contacts. I thought my camera was broken once as it hunted so much with all lenses and cleaning the contacts (gentle wiping with a soft cloth) transformed it back into excellent, snappy performance.
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Rob
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