Canon Auto-Focus Explained – 2025 Update

NOTE: This is not an official Canon USA show. This is a podcast first and foremost, available in both audio-only or video, and the video is also placed on YouTube. My hope is that by going through all of the AF options one-at-a-time, in extreme detail, you will be able to get more out of the camera system you have. My first show with Rudy Winston, a Technical Marketing Consultant for Canon USA, was back in February of 2022 for "Canon Auto-Focus Explained", so almost exactly 3 years ago. To date, it's still one of the favorite shows that I've done. I find that as photographers our relationship with auto-focus isn't always a great one. It's so easy to say "the camera missed focus", or "it front or back focused". The problem is that's not the case more often than not. Don't misunderstand me, these issues are real - that's why micro adjustments exist. Cameras and lenses are not perfect, and the software that runs anything today can have issues, but focus issues often relate to the end user not having the AF system configured correctly, or not understanding how the system really works. That's how the first show with Rudy came to be, and to say that was popular is an understatement: To date it’s had roughly: 453,000 views on YouTube, in addition to all the views in the video and audio-only podcast feeds. But when we recorded that show the R3 was brand new, and it wasn’t widely available. So I used my R5 for the menu examples in that show, and while we did talk about the AF settings unique to the newer R3, I almost immediately had people asking for an updated video. Since then, we’ve seen the R6 Mark 2 and the R5 Mark 2 come out, and again, lots of people have requested an update to cover all of the newer Auto Focus features. My thing is, it doesn’t make sense to do a video specific to each camera model, there’s too much overlap, so I wanted to wait until the R1 had actually been released - and it was in November of last year, it started hitting stores in Nov of 2024. So today, we are going to do basically the same thing that we did 3 years ago, we’re going to go through all of the AF menus, and describe every single command and option for you in detail. For this show I am going to use the new Canon R1 for the menu examples, which needs a little explanation. When I used the R5 last time I had some people complain that I was using a body out of their price range, while others complained I wasn’t using the R3. So, let me try to explain my decision making process… The higher end bodies have features the lower end bodies don’t - but they also have most, if not all, of the features on the lower end bodies - so to cover as many settings as possible, spanning bodies in all price ranges, the best choice is the higher end body, which today is the R1. Unfortunately, I don’t own an R1… so a HUGE thank you to Canon USA for getting me one to use for this show. Now, if you’re not a Canon shooter.. DON’T RUN AWAY! While we are using the Canon EOS R1 for the examples today, whatever brand you use: Nikon Sony Panasonic Etc Most of today’s cameras will have some equivalent to the settings we talk about… AF option names will change between brands, and even between models in the same brand, some may be more or less granular, or in different places in the menus EVEN for the same brands, but understanding these AF concepts will still help you get the most out of your camera, regardless of the brand. One last disclaimer: I also had some people comment on the last video that they wished I had inserted some B-Roll showing the features in action through the viewfinder, so you could see the AF moving and changing for something like a person running, or a bird in flight etc. Thank you to everyone that made suggestions, but again, with this video, I have made an intentional choice to not do that. There’s a few production reasons for that choice, but the biggest thing for me is that I want this video to be as generic ...