back button focus<\/a>” on my two Canon 7D’s for years but it doesn’t come set up that way\u00a0by default on a new Canon camera – settings must be changed to use it.\u00a0 When it’s set up properly the focusing task is removed from the shutter button and\u00a0assigned instead to a rear button that is activated by the photographer’s right thumb.\u00a0 All the shutter does is wake up the camera with a half-press and fire\u00a0the shutter with a full press.\u00a0 Back button focus is a matter of preference for the photographer but I like it and it’s thoroughly engrained in my muscle memory.<\/p>\nLike virtually all new DSLR users\u00a0I changed a variety of settings on my Mark ll and thought I had done so correctly with back button focus.\u00a0 Because of lack of both opportunity and birds I hadn’t given the new camera much of a workout with birds in flight until yesterday morning when I headed southwest into remote Tooele County looking for raptors.\u00a0 I was shocked to see on my screen that most of my flight shots were noticeably\u00a0soft.\u00a0 I didn’t figure out the problem until\u00a0arriving home when I discovered that I had left the autofocus function assigned to both<\/em><\/strong> the\u00a0shutter button and\u00a0one of the back buttons instead of just the back button alone.\u00a0 The camera apparently became “confused” by the conflicting commands and was unable\u00a0to\u00a0effectively track birds in flight.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
![\"rough-legged](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/rough-legged-hawk-0967-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark ll, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, shot and processed in JPEG, wire removed, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nOne of the victims of my stupid mistake was my first\u00a0Rough-legged Hawk of the year and naturally it was a\u00a0handsome and strikingly colored male (sexes are dimorphic in adult plumage).\u00a0 This shot is one of my sharpest images of the morning because I prefocused on the bird and it took off laterally to me so the plane of focus was about the same soon after take-off as it had been perched.\u00a0 It’s not a quality image because of its slight softness and the bird is slightly past me but I thought some might be interested in seeing this beautiful buteo.<\/p>\n
Needless to say my error in setting up back button focus has now been corrected.\u00a0 No more excuses.\u00a0 Now all I need is some birds and some decent light for shooting but the forecast for the latter\u00a0does\u00a0not look particularly promising…<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I found my FOY (first of year) Rough-legged Hawk yesterday morning but largely blew the photographic opportunity because of a rookie mistake in setting up my new 7D Mark ll.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,358],"tags":[2306,534,2280,211,269,276,2272,1357,311],"class_list":["post-27806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-rough-legged-hawks","tag-back-button-focus","tag-buteo-lagopus","tag-canon-7d-mark-ll","tag-male","tag-rough-legged-hawk","tag-sexual-dimorphism","tag-st-george-utah","tag-tooele-county","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/rough-legged-hawk-0967-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7eu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}