Based on the results of test 3 – I tried AF Tracking Large. When shooting the ducks in the harbour I found this to be slow to acquire focus and went back to Expand Flexible Spot as the alternate focus mode. The default focus mode remained Zone.
As well AF Tracking Sensitivity was set to 4.
It looks like the settings are pretty well stabilizing for the harbour – I suspect Florida and small birds in trees will have variations of these settings.
As Lightroom is too slow to import 1000’s of Bird in Flight images – I use FastRawViewer(FRV) to preview the images right from the card prior to import.
Only images flagged (by using Stars or colours) in FRV and then selected in FRV are imported. FRV flags are imported into LR along with the images as per normal.
Insert Card – right click image and Open FastRawViewer. Preview potential images for input into LR then flag them using ‘1’ for one star.
At the end of the flagging process, select all of the flagged images: Command+’ and choose the flags used such as ‘1’.
Useful shortcuts are also:
Press 1-5 6,7,8,9 or 0 for none
Finally = select all the rated images by rating label Cmd+’ and choose ‘1’s etc. Only those selected will be imported by LR.
If there are not too many shots on the card: Run Program LR (Option R) – Lightroom will display all images but only those selected by FRV will be check marked. Select LR destination then import.
If there are a lot of shots on the card: Shift + C
The following video demonstrates what AF tracking is like. Settings are recorded in the beginning of the video. Green boxes indicate use of Zone with Red marker indicating actual focus point. Red only indicates use of Flexible spot expand only. The duration of the owl flight was 18 seconds, thus my tracking ability was tested beyond the limits. Better keep practicing.
Video: Owl 2021-02-09