Sony announced at Photokina today that they are planning on releasing 12 more Sony E-mount lenses (the bar chart implied over 2 years), although didn’t specify any further details regarding the lenses.
However, what was a lot more interesting is that Sony also announced and plans for their amazing Eye AF that is currently limited to detecting human eyes, to also detect the eyes of animals. They gave a short demonstration of this working on birds and mammals, but provided no further details on whether or not it would be limited to certain types of animals.
They also did not specify whether Eye AF for animals would be introduced with new camera bodies only, or via a firmware update. I’m guessing it will depend on how much extra processing power is required for this to work. If the current processors can handle it, then I’d imagine they will take the firmware route. If not, then it may only be introduced with new bodies.
No concrete date was given for the support of Animal Eye AF. However, Gordon Laing mentioned that it is coming in early 2019. See this post for new details on Animal Eye AF.
As a wildlife shooter myself, I’d really love to see Eye AF working for animals. I’ll often manually focus to be certain that I’ve got the eye in focus, so being able to rely more on the AF nailing the eye would be fantastic!
Are you a wildlife shooter? Do you think that you would make use of Eye AF if it worked for animals? Let me know in the comments below.
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