CJC.org

From this DPReview.com post, you can set up trap focus as follows:

• Camera should be in autofocus single-area
• “Pencil” menu items should be set so that 03 AF-AREA is “Single” and 15 AE-L/AF-L is “AF”

With these settings, the shutter release button doesn’t trigger autofocus anymore: item 15 tells the camera that the AE-L/AF-L button should trigger autofocus.

Once this is set, and if you or the focusing target move so that it’s out of focus, you can hold the shutter release all the way down, and continue to hold it. When something is in focus, the camera will fire off (in a test, you can back away from the subject after hitting the AE-L/AF-L button to get focus, and then come back in while holding the shutter release button down). This trap focus technique is typically used by, say, sports photographers who set focus on home plate, and then wait for the runner to slide home: the camera reacts faster than the human.

Neat trick: I had no idea the camera could do this.

Posted on Thursday, August 19th, 2004 at 11:02 am and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.