I recently learned how to use touch shutter on my Panasonic GX9. For those unfamiliar with the concept: poking the touchscreen will focus at that point, and expose.
I find it amazing. After some practice, I can get a 80–90% AF hit rate for fast and erratically moving subjects (child playing tag, etc) on a non-PDAF camera with practically non-existent tracking capabilities. Panasonic cameras focus extremely quickly for stills once they are told what to focus on, but pre-2024 models are not so good at figuring out the latter and AFC tracking is a joke. Touch shutter outsources the tracking to the user. It also works in burst, I can move the point and it keeps shooting.
Now I am wondering which brands have something similar and whether it works the same way. I know some Olympus models have this, and quick search shows that recent Sony and Fujifilm models have it. If you experimented with these, I would like to hear about it.
Incidentally, I am wondering why this is not emphasized in camera manuals. Combined with fast contrast-based focus (eg Panasonic’s DFD), it enables reliable AF for fast moving subjects for cheap older cameras.
Interesting, I knew about touch to focus/expose but didn’t realize you could it for continuous autofocus, I will need to test this out on the 2 fujis I own. Sort of like a camera with an eye sensor but it uses your finger instead
Fuji cameras do this, too. It’s how I taught my daughter to focus, as it’s much easier to grasp than holding the camera steady while manipulating buttons (hard to do as a child).
