Add support for display of Focus Points

Please add support for the optional display of focus points and image exif data in one of the sidebar panels. Currently it seems exif data can only be displayed in a popup window. Please add a sidebar table and display exif data in this panel.

Dear @duncang ,

a quick search for focus Point shows me 3 other FR’s

Maybe we can ask @sgospodarenko /Svetlana to group them together.

Nice weekend to all

Guenter

As a software developer, I did a bit of research and found that focus points are far from simple. The metadata can be in all sorts of inconsistent places and is likely to be a nightmare to keep up with manufacturers changes.

@duncang can I just ask what good seeing the points is? It’s not like it’s something you can change

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Apple Aperture could and still can show focus points. These are good (to answer your question) to see how far off target the bloody indirect AF of a DSLR is and how much the body/bodies are in need of AF micro-adjustments.

Which I managed to do well, cost me a couple of Saturday afternoons and are not missed in any way.

I can understand the wish for “showing focus points”, but with mirrorless I don’t need them as I did before. And not all camera bodies write them into the RAWs, but hey, what Apple devs could do 10 years ago… alright, I see, to continue the sentence: hwat they could do 10 years ago appears to still remain impossible today as people loose their skills by the day.

And yes when the shot is taken you can not change anything, but for analysis of “why isn’t the area sharp that I focused on” I’m still of the opinion like here Displaying Focus Points - #21 by Guenterm
And the whole FR got 32 votes

2 Likes

And did you see my reply in that thread?

Especially the bit about Nikon’s software not being able to show the intended point if no focus was obtained.

Personally, I have changed to “back-button-focusing”, where the shutter no longer activates auto-focus, meaning that you have to press the “AF-ON” button separately.

For me, it separates choosing point of focus from framing and measuring exposure so, onc I have set the focus, I am free to change framing without fear of the focus points picking up on something nearer or further.

I also set the AF mode to AC-C, which means that, should I want following focus on a moving object, all I have to do is hold the back button down instead of releasing it for static shots.

Well, it works for me but it did take me a few weeks of practice to get the hang of it.

Yes I’ve seen, but you know there is your truth, there is my truth and there is the truth :innocent:

And I wrote also

A few month’s ago I’ve got photos from my nephew taken with Nikon equipment, an he was asking me why the photos aren’t sahrp. No chance in DXO to see where the focus point was by taking the photo.
So I have to install Capture NX-D to got this information.
So I understand the request by azkaz

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What has back-button focusing to do with the display of focus-points in a RAW-converter? I also use BBF, but that doens’t help me

  • memorizing which focus point I used
  • to check if the used focus point lead to a properly focused image
  • to check if my camera has a problem with front- or backfocus

I also don’t understand the point of

And because some manufacturers are incapable of giving focuspoints a nice place in metadata, we should also forget about them? :wink:

There’s a difference in size of Nikon D7xxx, D8xx focus points to D5xxx. Made me realize, that focuspoint is a completely misleading description, it’s more of focus fields - no pinpoint focusing therefore.

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Nikon, Sony and Canon’s own software is all able to show the focus points/area.

Strange to me that anyone needs to ask why anyone would want to see what focus points/area was used. Kind of obvious I would have though.

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As manufacturer they exactly know what they are doing.
Everybody else has to study the metadata included in the files and learn to interpret what it means. Some things are obvious, some are less, some are even unknown as it is know-how protected by the manufacturer ( not described or explained on purpose).

So yes it would be “nice to have” but it is not (always) as easy as it seams.

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I completely agree showing the focus points are helpful in the culling process as well as “why did it miss” analysis. The god news is modern cameras don’t miss nearly as much as older cameras, but still, having this information is helpful. And while there may be nuances particularly with some brands of cameras, or some brands may even make it difficult, I believe it can be listed as a feature support on some cameras in some modes, and if camera XYZ doesn’t support it at all or in some situations because, Nikon (as Joanna states) doesn’t save the information if focus isn’t obtained, then that’s a problem for Nikon shooters and Nikon’s problem to fix.

Anyway, I voted for this one, as well as the others.

I suppose my thinking is based on only ever using a single spot for focus, since there can only ever be one distance at which an image is truly sharp - unless I am using the Scheimpflug Principle to lay a plane of sharp focus from under the camera to infinity.

Matrix focusing can, at best, only average where an algorithm thinks the point of interest might be, which is more than likely why I only ever use single point and it is usually fairly obvious which bit is sharp without software to tell me.

Unless you set the camera up correctly to give you such.

My Ebony SV45Te…

SV45TE

… doesn’t save anything because it doesn’t even have a battery, but I still get eye-cuttingly sharp images, printed up to 2m x 1,6m :nerd_face: :sunglasses: :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :laughing:

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I know… you remind us all the time.

Since we’re now in the museum department (again), I just did not run Aperture to find some examples for the use but scrolled through a couple of old screenshots. Just to see, what programmers can do if they don’t declare something as too complicated or too many different manufactures use too many different whatever tags…


Good example for the random mode of Nikon DSLR AF which I cannot switch off.


Another sample, this time from a D5100 with far smaller focus fields.


And what could tell Aperture about focus mode and distance… 11 years ago that was already possible.
But go ahead and fiddle with your field camera, by the time you set it up and got the Scheimpflug of a street or an ocean (very entertaining subjects, while Scheimpflug is a bit useless for non plane objects) from under the camera to infinity, I have my focus stack ready.

And I simply run out of walls to put all the 3×2 m prints to, but it saved wall paper… :joy: no focus points as I think, it was exported from DxO PL… :disappointed_relieved:

:grin:

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I use Fast Raw Viewer which has Focus Peaking to show what is in focus which is much more useful to check which areas of your photos are in focus. Focus Peaking users wedge detection to show focus. FRV is cheap and extremely quick on your actual raw data rather than embedded jpg.

Any eye-cuttingly sharp images of birds in flight ?

Are you saying the manufacturers do not provide the RAW file specification to DxO to allow them to develop their RAW processing engine and that they have to reverse engineer it ?

Yeah Capture One has a similar capability. It’s a good feature. Still, occasionally when the camera has “missed” it’s interesting and informative to see where the focus point was.

I would love for Photolab to have a focus peaking capability.

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Yes.
Our files include a so called “Maker note” part, have a look what the creator of Exiftool says:
Boldly Go where No Man has Gone Before…