Questions about using Touch Autofocus and ATW Lock

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Denniscasey

Well-known member
So far I have been shooting with HMC40 in full auto (my inexperience combined with panning fast moving race cars and "one chance to catch shot"). Camera primarily does great job but occasionally notice two problems: (1) camera will very briefly lose focus than snap back into focus--happens as I pan from race cars coming towards me, close by me, then going away from me--seems to lose focus momentarily as cars go away from me): and (2) color shifts as I pan which I attribute to camera changing white balance while I am in Auto Tracking White balance mode.

To reduce loss of focus occurrences and still utilize auto-focus for fast moving objects I plan to try Touch Autofocus and have center of picture as focus zone--keep cars in center of picture as I pan. Is that a good approach until I figure how to manually focus on fast moving objects?? Also Barry's link to a depth of field calculator has been helpful in trying to figure out if I have enough DOF to try a fixed focus point.

To reduce color shift occurrences plan to either do a manual white balance or give camera time to "find" best Auto White Balance (ATW) and then use ATW lock to hold that setting during panning. What do you think??
 
Dennis if you want the best from the HMC-40 or any camera go all Manual.
Focus : Focus manually the point where the car will be, then zoom out , now from that point to you will be in focus while you zoom.
White balance use a gray card for accurate measurement .
 
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Felipe, Fully agree about best performance in all manual. However, until I gain more experience I have been nervous to try full manual at race events which I would characterize as run and gun type conditions --action (off course excursions) can happen anywhere (near or far, focus) in shade or sun (exposure) and only have one chance to capture scene. So I have been trying to maximize "automatic" performance of HMC40. I will however experiment more and more with manual settings to gain level of experience I need. And thinking more about what you and others have said it seems manual focus manageable if I pay attention to DOF (iris and zoom) and manual white balance best to use--leaves only exposure as issue as cars zoom through sun into shade and out into sun again (on many courses).

Regards, Dennis
 
Manual for someone pretending to be a good photographer is something you can not postponed , You have to face the world in manual now.
 
Manual is the goal, still using technology of camera as appropriate (for instance scene file settings you have demonstrated in previous posts; or focus assist features; etc) to either capture my idea of actual look of scene or modify reality to create a particular look. Full automatic is maybe another way of saying I rely on Panasonic's idea of what settings will best capture their idea of reality. Neat thing about HMC40 is flexibility it gives you.
 
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