I have already tested the Nikon Z7ii’s eye detection autofocus system with people and so I wanted to see how the animal eye detection autofocus system worked. I decided to test it with my two wonderful dogs Evo and Flora. Flora and Evo are very different looking dogs so I wanted to see if the autofocus performed equally for each of them. Evo is a small white dog with black and brown on his face. Flora is a medium sized mostly black dog. I also wanted to see how well it worked when my dogs were running around. Was the Z7ii able to keep their eye in focus when they were on the move?
Pet Portraits
One of the first things that I noticed when testing out the Nikon Z7ii’s eye detection autofocus with my dogs is that it had a much easier time finding and focusing on Evo’s face and eye. Even when he moved his head around the Z7ii was able to find eyes and switch to the other eye if needed. However, it had more trouble finding Flora’s eye. I am guessing because there is more contrast on Evo’s face than on Flora’s face and that is why the eye detection worked better.
If the camera couldn’t tell where the eye was, there would be a number of red boxes indicating where it was trying to focus. Once the Z7ii acquired focus and it thought it had a face or an eye, the box would go yellow.
When focusing on Evo I was much more likely to get the little yellow box that indicated that the Z7ii had found his eye and was focusing on it. The Z7ii often had more trouble with Flora’s face and so it sometimes had red rectangles to show where it was focusing.
If the Z7ii was having problems I could always touch the monitor on the back of the camera and the camera would find focus and lock on that eye. Or I could use the thumb pad on the back of the camera to select the focus point I wanted. If my dog moved, the camera would continue to track that part of my dog.
I also noticed that the size of the yellow box that showed where the camera was focusing changed. Sometimes it was the size of the whole head of my dog and other times it got smaller and smaller as it narrowed in on the eye. Like the people eye detection autofocus system, there was sometimes a triangle to indicate that I could use the thumb pad on the back of the camera to change the focus point to the other eye.
On the Move
How does the animal eye detection autofocus cope with fast moving subjects? In my test with people, I had some mixed results. Many of the frames were sharp but some were not.
With pets, the system had more trouble than it did with people. It had trouble finding the eye and keeping it in focus when my subject was moving quickly. Some of the images weren’t close to being in focus.
I have photographed my pets running around before using dynamic autofocus and it did a much better job. The eye detection autofocus probably isn’t build for fast moving animals. At the end of the day, I would not recommend the animal eye detection autofocus for pets moving quickly. I would stick with dynamic autofocus.
Final Thoughts
So overall, the animal eye detection autofocus system on the Z7ii is a good system when your pets are not on the move. It works well for portraits and if the system has trouble, you can always give it some help using the thumb pad on the back of the camera or by touching the point you want in focus on the camera’s monitor.
Check out the video below to see the Nikon Z7ii‘s animal eye detection autofocus system in action.
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