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Wednesday, November 23, 2011

AF assist tool v3.0 – complete | adrian's domain

AF assist tool v3.0 – complete

November 20th, 2011 Leave a comment Go to comments

It's done!

Version 3.0 of my AF assist tool is complete.

Taking a step back, I should explain why I needed this tool.There are really 2 reasons I built this:

1. When photographing concerts or clubs, or any other venue where light is at a premium, the AF sensor in the camera can only do so much to give accurate focus. I am using off-camera flashes most of the time now so I am not relying on the ambient light to paint my scene; that's what the flashes are for, but I still need to focus. No remote flash trigger to date has had a AF assist light built into it. I use a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 trigger and Flex TT5 receivers to trigger my flashes, along with an AC3 zone controller (which allows power control of 3 flash groups). So with a flash trigger in the camera's hotshoe I loose my AF assist light, which normally I would get from a regular flash.

2. DSLR cameras (that I've looked at) don't do AF assist in AI-Servo mode. They don't allow you to track a subject in the dark, by continuously adding the light from the AF assist lamp on flashes to help the AF sensor in the camera continuously maintain focus. You get One-Shot focus, and once focus has been acquired, the light goes of. But if I want to track a singer as the move on a stage, like one would track a moving person or a race car during the day, you're stuck. You can't. This AF assist solves that problem but allowing full control of the AF assist light to be projected as long as you're focusing (focusing is done by 1/2 pressing the shutter).

How am I addressing those two shortcomings?

Read More...
http://adrian.onsen.ca/2011/11/af-assist-tool-v3-0-complete/

Interesting Stuff!:) Plenty of Pics on his Site... 

Don

List of previous posts leading up to this final build:

AF Assist tool v3.0 – schematic
Disecting the 550EX AF Assist module
AF Assist tool v3.0 – laser pointer trials 2
AF Assist tool v3.0 – laser pointer trials
AF Assist tool v3.0 – more info
AF Assist tool v3.0 – line laser
AF Assist tool v3.0 – more testing
AF assist tool v3.0 – testing
AS assist v3 project update: The light source
AF Assist tool v3.0

And for referrence, AF Assist tool v2.0 log

Auto-Focus assist hack
Auto-Focus assist hack keeps improving - Hack a Day
AF assist tool v3.0 – complete | adrian's domain

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