Nikon has released a video demonstrating the newly developed eye-detection AF capabilities. According to Nikon, this cool new feature will be implemented in the upcoming Z6 and Z7 firmware update that is accepted to be released on May 16. Explore more below.

Eye-Detection AF

Back at CES 2019, Nikon mentioned a few imaging innovations that were under the stage of R&D. Nikon said that the Eye AF (Auto Focus) is under development, and supposed to automatically detect the subject’s eyes to make attaining critical focus on the eyes easier. Furthermore, Nikon said that this feature would allow users to capture photos in which focus has been clearly acquired on the subject’s eye, which is useful for portrait, event and street photography scenarios. Happily, Nikon has released a video that demonstrates the Eye-AF capabilities in video mode, which is a piece of great news for filmmakers.

Eye AF is under development and supposed to automatically detect the subject’s eyes to make attaining critical focus on the eyes easier

Nikon

Check out those screengrabs that are taken from the video. Click on the images to get a larger view:

The video (only 15 seconds long) demonstrates that the focus is locked at one of the subject’s eye accurately even if there is an object interferes between the camera and the main object.

Watch the video below to explore the Eye-AF feature:

According to Nikon, the Z7 and Z6’s new firmware with this Eye-Detection AF and more features will be released y on May 16.

Elevation of AF accuracy is crucial for filmmakers

The leading camera company regarding AF accuracy is Canon with its state of the art dual-pixel autofocus, although some tests showed that in some situations, Sony performs better.

Watch this nice experiment below which demonstrates Sony’s Real-Time Tracking (Sony a6400) against Canon’s Dual Pixel Autofocus (Canon 6D Mark II):

In that case, Sony wins. It will be interesting to examine and compare the Nikon’s newly developed Eye-Detection AF against those two cameras. Eye detection is more accurate but harder to achieve and depends on the efficiency of the algorithm. However, this is significant progress that simplifies the filmmaking process.