I am buying an autofocus camera for the first time. How good is assist light in focussing wild life (e.g. foxes,skunks)in my back yard where there is some light from windows and a 100w bulb. I am persuming that infra red assist light would be better. I would be thankful if somebody can recommend a body and couple of lenses. Thanks

-- Ashok Grover (groverak@home.com), March 04, 2001

Answers

In my experience the auto-assist light will make all the difference between autofocusing working and not working at all in low-light conditions.

Couple of points - the Canon red auto-assist light on many Canon bodies is visible red light, not true IR. Of course, on some cheaper bodies (and sadly on the Elan 7) the AF assist light is either a blinding white light or a pulse off the body's flash unit. Horrible.

However, the animals may be too far for the AF assist light to help much. I think you can expect at least, oh, 4 to 5 metres to work,

-- NK Guy (tela@tela.bc.ca), March 14, 2001.

...pretty darn good, on my A2. (Works great for ppl in DARK bars, reception halls, etc.) The A2 uses a reasonably subtle IR assist light, but at closer range it will scare the crap out of birds (I know this from personal experience), and perhaps other animals in very dark conditions.

-- MR (reynard75@hotmail.com), March 16, 2001.