"Trevor" writes:

"David Dyer-Bennet" wrote in message
...
Today, I can place *a chosen focus point* on a musician's eyes and count
on
AF-C to keep the eye in focus as
his head bobs to the music.

Exactly my point, you don't need 61 AF points to do that.

That's precisely the case where I *DO* need 51 AF points, or even more
(at least, I'd like some closer to the frame edges). I mean, I'm only
using a few, in the area of the eye -- but depending on the framing,
that eye could be almost anywhere, so I need AF points over the whole
frame.

How the hell do you select the right one from 51, how long does that take
you? And isn't it easier to just use a single central AF point, place it on
the eye, half press the shutter, and reframe? Works for me anyway.

Takes a couple of seconds to set up (two dimensional movement, not
one). Focus and recompose is easier for one shot, but not so clearly
easier for a series of shots.

Also, focus and recompose is less accurate; when you recompose you
rotate the camera around some point, and you end up with their being a
triangle with apex at the subject and the other two points where the
sensor was in the two positions of the camera, and those two distances
aren't identical.

Focusing just once for a series of shots works fine so long as the
subject and the camera don't move much.

Stopping down for more depth of field works fine so long as you have the
light and ISO to support it, and so long as you don't mind the
background being sharper (sometimes that's actually desirable, sometimes
it's undesirable). When shooting at f/1.4 and wider, you've got quite
limited DOF.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, ; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info