Auto focusing in the dark

[drumbatter100]

I have been photographing badgers and foxes in the woods in the evenings and have been having problems with auto focusing. I use a canon 40d and settings are; centre focusing point, one shot, iso400. Even with the infra red beam from the flash dosent help. I have tried a hunting spotlite with an infra red filter but the filter is to dark to let through enough light for the auto focus to work. If anybody has any ideas on how to auto focus in the dark i would be interested to hear from you.

Many thanks

Alan

[Steven Gourlay]

Auto focus is always a problem in the dark, have you tried manual focus? I think a lot will also come down to what lens you are using as well.

[drumbatter100]

Its often to dark to see the subject, just making out the white on badgers noses, so too dark to manual focus. I normally use a sigma 120-300 f2.8 lens.

[Steven Gourlay]

Yeah its going to be very hard to do, due to the fact if you can hardly see the badgers then the camera will struggle more so.

[John Fairclough]

Hi Alan.
Can I tell you what I do in such situations, and it works.
First of all my wife is always with me on such a shoot and she in priceless.
1) Have all my gear set up and ready, including a flash gun on the camera. A flash will not spook badger.
2) As and when the badger has surfaced, allow it time to settle and then your partner will shine a torch beam on the face of the badger, you should then auto focus on the torch beam and hey presto you should have an excellent shot of a badger.
3) Well perhaps a little practice may be necassary to perfect this method, but as I say, it does work.
4) Your camera setting will be as normal for any flash work.
Hope it works for you, please let me know.

Keep on clickin

John F

[RWeb]

Originally Posted by drumbatter100

I have been photographing badgers and foxes in the woods in the evenings and have been having problems with auto focusing. I use a canon 40d and settings are; centre focusing point, one shot, iso400. Even with the infra red beam from the flash dosent help. I have tried a hunting spotlite with an infra red filter but the filter is to dark to let through enough light for the auto focus to work. If anybody has any ideas on how to auto focus in the dark i would be interested to hear from you.

Many thanks

Alan

Your settings look fine and focusing in low light has always been an issue. as with a previous post, manual focusing IS the only way since the camera cant distinguish the black on black background through the viewfinder.

How to get around this via manual focus? Having a low light lantern on you that is able to disperse a low light , enough to illuminate the badger just enough for your camera to pick up on it....

[Bryancrt]

Hi Drumbatter, I have also used a flashlight in the past, but a flashlight will spook the badgers at times,
Ps how close are you to the set.