Usually, one of the first things that I do when I get a new camera is to turn off bells and whistles and make it a “plain” camera. I’m rather divided sometimes though, because as a software developer I really like computer “stuff”, including new technologies. As a photographer, I grew up with film and plain cameras that you had to load film, do all of your own focusing, understand how meters work, etc.
One of the features that I turned back on, just to see how it worked, was facial priority. With this turned on, the camera will, depending on the setting, choose left eye, right eye, near eye / face, or face as its focus priority. It’s amazing to me to hold the camera up and see, almost instantaneously, white boxes appear around all of the faces within the scene and to have the camera select the nearest face. This speaks to me on a technological level, imagining all of the computations that are happening, all of the math going on to recognize a face.
Sure, this not always what I want; however, when you isolate it down to a couple of people in the shot, this can be a shot saver, especially if you have limited time. Also, sometimes it flat out misses and will pick an inanimate object, like a plant, that looks nothing like a face, as its focal point, but that’s easily remedied by moving the focusing reticle. It’s not perfect.
I used it quite a bit while in Mexico and, for the most part, it was spot on. I had it set to prefer the face, rather then the eyes. In retrospect, a better mode would have been eyes first, then face, especially when shooting at a wide aperture – live and learn. That said, I still was able to capture things with lightning speed and little effort. What a long way that camera technology has come. I guess that I’ve embraced this. Who says that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks??? The old dog just has to want to learn the new tricks. Woof! 