The ACTUAL BEST Nikon AF Mode.

[0:00]Hello, Nikon shooters. In a recent video, I told you that my favorite autofocus mode for Nikon cameras was autofocus continuous and to create a custom little sliver in the center of the viewfinder. And then some of you messaged me that you couldn't really figure out how to do that and it's completely my fault that I forgot to tell you, or you didn't realize that Nikon has actually three generations of their Z autofocus area modes. And it gets a little confusing of what's available in each mode. All right, so in the first generation, that's your Z6, your Z7 and your Z50, the area focus modes were very typical, uh, center focus point, something called dynamic, uh, they had a large box, a small box, and a wide area. Now, the main deal with that first generation is if you wanted to use eye detection, you had to only do it in the full wide. And in that first generation, that is the biggest disadvantage that if you wanted to focus on an object, sometimes in the wide, the autofocus would get a little confused and think that either something was a face, or it wouldn't really focus where you wanted it to because the whole area was active. So if you have the first generation, you cannot customize a small sliver. I apologize if you misunderstood in the previous video. So that's first generation. Now in the second generation, Nikon added the ability to find a face in a smaller area. So you were able to sort of use the wide area box and if there was a face within that box, the camera was able to pick up the eye. Now, what was cool about using this mode for events was if I wanted to focus on an object, it was great. That wide dude was just like a humongous single focus point and then if there was a face, I would just put them in the rectangle and grab the face. They also added a interesting sort of mode which let you activate a like tracking square. And I made a video about this, I'll link it up below if you want to see how it actually works, but you could completely live in the wide area. And in the wide area, faces, if there were faces in the wide area, they would be picked up, but if you had to focus on an object, you can activate a square and the square would act as a trekking kind of square. And that was what it was called in generation two. It was kind of like a wide area square Johnson Tracker Mama. And then enter the third generation of Nikon cameras, that's the Z9, the Z8 and the ZF. And in these cameras, they actually added 3D tracking, which was a little bit more intelligent than activating the little box or having the wide, which was the thing in the previous generation. And in this 3D tracking mode, you can grab on it has a little center focus point. You can grab on to objects, but it also is intelligent, pick up faces and birds, yada, yada. And the other thing they added was customizable focus points, which means you can make them wide, you can make them skinny. And so that is available on those cameras, the newest generation. Now, just like I mentioned in my previous video, if you have the older generation of the cameras, of the Nikon Z cameras, and you're shooting action, I think the best autofocus modes are the ones where just traditionally you have a center, either small box or you have the very large rectangle that is around what you're trying to shoot, I've found the best success with those two. But read the comments, some people have success if they shoot a particular type of photography. Check the comments and leave your comment below on what mode has worked best for you. But the cameras are getting better with their autofocus and automation. And I found when I'm shooting events now, I'm I've even shot events with the Nikon Z f and uh, you know, it's just been grabbing focus and getting great shots. So, um, I hope that helps someone out there and I'll see you guys next time.