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AF Tracking Duration (stills and Movies) 167

You can see just what this feature does by doing a quick test:

1. First, set the Exposure Mode dial to MOVIE and set this setting to
HIGH.
2. Set the focusing mode knob to “C” (Continuous) focusing.
3. Now alternately point the camera to something far away and then to
something close, and notice how long it takes for the camera to start
readjusting its focus.
4. Set this setting to LOW and repeat Step 2 again. The camera will take
almost twice as long to start refocusing.
The setting for Stills theoretically does the same thing; however this same
test doesn’t show the same dramatic difference. However I have witnessed
this doing the right thing in the photo sequence in Figure 5-27.

Figure 5-27: AF Tracking Duration tells the camera not to react too quickly if
something runs in front of the subject you've been tracking. Here's a situation
where it did what it was supposed to do.
This feature can be useful in sports events where the main person holding
the ball will periodically have people running in front of them, and you
don’t want the camera’s AF to be so easily distracted. In all other
situations I keep both of these settings set to “High”.