Canon 5D IV Tutorial Training | Focusing Systems | Canon 5D4

In this lesson we're going to be tackling the optical focusing systems on the Canon 5D Mark IV. What that means is through the viewfinder as we look through this eyepiece. In a later lesson we'll be talking about live view focusing which is using the back monitor. Now if you don't have your camera in hand I would definitely recommend pausing the video, getting your camera, and following along with each of the steps that I'm about to show you. The focusing systems are complex. We're talking about three focusing modes, seven focusing clusters, and 61 focusing squares. But the way I like to teach this is the how, the when, and the where the camera is focusing. If you master those three principles this is going to be easy. So how does the camera focus? When you get it out of the box the default is to push the shutter button halfway down. Anytime you push a shutter button halfway down, in fact on most cameras, the camera is going to be focusing. Push the shutter button down all the way and it takes the picture. Pretty straightforward. Next let's talk about the when the camera is focusing. This has to do specifically with the camera's focusing modes. Now there are several different ways we can select our focusing modes. Typically in the past we would do it on the top LCD monitor. We can also do it from the back monitor using the quick screen. But when you're shooting through the viewfinder I think it's going to be really useful to take advantage of the overlay in the viewfinder. So looking through the camera we are going to push the second button on top of the camera here from the left. Push that down and then we're going to rotate our primary selector. And you should be able to see all three of the focusing modes toggling. The first one shot means that when we push the shutter button halfway down the camera is going to get focus lock. This is indicated with a green circle in the bottom right hand part of the viewfinder. Take a look. Put your focusing square on something, push the shutter button halfway down, and then look at the bottom right hand corner and you should see a green circle. Something that's really nice about one shot is that as long as we're holding that shutter button halfway down we can move the camera around. And this is really great to use for a technique called to recompose. That means we get a focus lock on our subject and we change its position in the viewfinder to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Maybe we want to compose them along the rule of thirds, things of that nature. Now that doesn't really work great for wide apertures or very shallow depths of field, but we'll be talking about it more in the portrait crash course. AI servo is different than one shot in that it focuses over and over and over again. It is a continuous predictive focus and it is better for moving subjects. Maybe sports or athletes, kids running around, maybe cars, birds in flight, things of that nature. It's going to try to guess where the subject is by the time we push the shutter button down all the way. The third and final focusing mode is AI focus, which is a hybrid of the first two. In AI focus we're giving the camera permission to make the decision on whether or not it thinks the subject is still or moving. Wedding photographers, for example, sometimes like to use this simply because the bride may be standing at a doorway, now she's walking down an aisle, now she's at an altar, now she's leaving the church, now she's cutting a cake. So subjects that stop and start moving suddenly, repeatedly, is probably the best focusing mode for AI focus. So those are the focusing modes, is when the camera is focusing, whether it's one time, whether it's continuous, or whether it's a hybrid of the two. Now let's talk about the where, which is the camera's focusing clusters. We're going to talk about the seven different clusters first, and then I'm going to show you how to select the different points. Looking through the viewfinder, I want you to push the far outside right thumb button, and then you are going to push the little MFN button, the multi-function button, right next to the shutter. So we're looking through the viewfinder, push that outside button, and you're going to see a bunch of flashing squares, a couple columns of it. When you see those flashing squares, that means you can now toggle your clusters, but those four columns that are blinking on and off, those are your non-cross type focusing squares. They're not quite as accurate as the non-blinking squares, something to keep in mind. Another important point is the five center focusing squares on the middle column are dual cross type, which means they're even more sensitive if you are using a 2.8 lens or wider. It's beside the point. So to toggle through the clusters, again we're going to push this outside thumb button, and then we're going to press the MFN button, and as we push this button down, we should see different groups of squares and different clusters of them appearing. Now I want you to keep on pushing this button down until we get to something that looks like this. This is spot auto focus, which is designed to be a precision small focusing square. Maybe if you're shooting macro or you're very, very wide aperture, this would probably be the one you're going to want to use. The focusing cluster I use all the time, and again, outside thumb button, pushing the MFN. The next one we have is single square. I use this one probably 80% of the time. It allows us to choose any of the 61 focusing squares, place it on our subject, and focus. The next two focusing clusters I like to refer to as the four point expansion and the nine point expansion. Essentially what these do is it allows the camera to look for a subject of contrast in any of those squares. If it's not in the center square, it's going to peak in the surrounding squares. This is ideal for very small, very fast moving subjects such as birds in flight. Anytime you can't get a single focusing square on your subject, probably going to want to go with expansion. I personally prefer the nine point expansion. That's just me. So the next focusing cluster is referred to as the zone, which allows us to choose one of nine different groups. They're larger on the sides, just a little bit bigger than the nine point. And then we have large zone, which is either the left, center, or right focusing squares. Again, this is just a larger area that allows the camera to look in. Now the last focusing cluster is the auto cluster, which uses all 61 points. It essentially allows the camera to choose the closest subject to us and focus on that. So a lot of beginners will use that if they're intimidated, they'll just turn over the decision making to the camera. I really try to emphasize, even to beginners, to stay away from it. Start practicing moving the clusters, which I'm going to show you right now. The two clusters that I use are the second one, which is the single point, and then the nine point expansion. And I'll show you how to customize some things in just a second. So let's talk about moving our individual focusing squares and clusters. Again, we're going to push the outer right thumb button, and this time we're going to move the joystick. So once you get those columns flashing, you can move your focusing square up, down, left, right, side to side. Something else that's really cool is that if you want to return to the center focusing square, push the joystick into the camera and it will jump back. Pretty cool. So we've talked about the how, we've talked about the when, and we've also talked about the where. And now what I want to do is give you guys some really important customizations that you can do on your camera. It's going to make things, I think, a lot easier. I personally do not like having to press the outside thumb button before moving the focusing square around. So a way we can customize this is that if we press the Q button and we pull up the button customization menu right here, we can find direct control, bottom of the right hand column, second from the last one, open this up, and we are going to turn this to the direct selection. What this means is now you can just use your joystick, you don't have to press anything else before moving it. A couple customizations in the menu. So you're going to press the menu button, purple tab, start off on page four, item number three. Those are the seven clusters we just talked about. I personally only use number two and number four. So now what I'm going to do is turn off all the other ones. I'm going to uncheck them. This is just personal preference, you're going to customize it the way you want. So now I'll have two of them selected, hit OK. Now when I toggle through my clusters, I'm only seeing two of them. MFN, single square, and nine square. It's really nice. It's a really fast, easy way to jump back and forth. Another customization I definitely recommend is the orientation linked auto focus point. In here, I select separate auto focus points only. So the reason I love this customization is because sometimes when I'm shooting, I'll be shooting a portrait maybe in landscape and then I'll jump to portrait. This tells the camera to remember the last focusing square you used in either of those orientations. So you can jump back and forth without needing to change your focusing square. Another great customization on page five, the first one, I turn to continuous. This allows us to move the focusing square all the way to the left or all the way to the right without stopping. So we can jump from one side all the way to the other without needing to toggle through the center of it. Definitely recommend all of those customizations, even for beginning and intermediate shooters. Now many of you are going to get into some type of sports shooting. It may not be professional sports, maybe it is. There is a technique referred to as back button focusing. Once you get the hang of the exposure controls, your ISO, your white balance, things of that nature, and you want to start getting into specific button customization for sports shooting, back button focusing means we're going to use the AF on button to focus and not the halfway shutter button depression. To customize this again, we're going to go into the cue screen, custom buttons, first item, and we're going to set this to the middle icon. So just metering. That removes auto focus from the shutter button. So we hit okay. Now why would we do this? Well, AI servo is a continuous focus over and over again. There's no way to kind of turn it off and take a picture at the same time. What this allows us to do is to use the AF on button to control when the camera is focusing and then when we take our thumb off, it's sort of like a focus lock. A lot of professional sports shooters swear by this. I personally love it. If I'm shooting lots of sports, I'll do the same thing. So we have talked about a tremendous amount of information. We've talked about the how, the when, the where. We've talked about different customizations. We've talked about back button focus. Some of you will have a question in regards to why you don't see your focusing squares or why you can't move it. Two reasons off the top of my head is your lens switch may be pointed to manual focus. In another one, you may be on the green mode on the mode dial. So you don't want to be on that little A icon because if you do, you're going to be stuck with auto cluster. In any event, that is your optical focusing systems on the Canon 5D Mark IV and I hope you enjoyed it. If you found this video helpful, you might be interested in my new Canon 5D Mark IV crash course. I'll teach you the basics and show you how to shoot like a pro in no time. You can order it from the following link.