I either use the selective point with continuous focus or recompose with the AF Lock in Servo focus. I have the D300 which does have many more AF points but it works for me.

Don't forget the focus points are aligned and mainly centered for continuous AF following subjects and not lined up for "the rule of thirds". Personally I crop for the rule, but I rarely shoot for it.

I'll stick to DSLRs, adam. Thanks for the advice, though. ;-)

for all of You who doesn't like the AF on dslr, I have one simple solution - use hybrids aka bridge cameras, and You'll be happy :) but seriously, is this really such a big deal, I'm using center AF point on all of my cameras and just recompose or use manual override if I can't put the focus in one of the 1/3 corner - it takes less than a fraction of second to do it.

when you look at shots taken with dslr do you think they are horrible? then you shouldn't have upgraded.

I use rule of thirds or golden rule most of the time, although I am flexible, sometimes I compose right in the middle (a sprinter running straight at me for instance).

Just because your centre of focus isn't on a 3rds point, doesn't mean where your eye naturally travels to isn't. I always have eyes as tack sharp and rarely have them bang on the thrids intersection. You also have far more points to choose from on higher end cameras.

Practise makes perfect.

It's even worse than this, iD, at least in my experience. The further from the center you get the less reliable the focus sensor, or at least that's what I noticed with my D300, which actually has coverage closer to the edge than what you show here. It's for optical reasons, though, and it can't be helped as far as I can tell.

With the D300, I found myself usually just using the center spot in single-point AF. I'm interested to see how much more reliable the AF sensors on the edge are on the D7000.

yes in terms of rule of thirds the points of that 11 fp distribution is off by a bit but not much(there is focus point close to the thirds rule points) however the rule of thirds is just an approximation of the better rule "the golden rule" aka the golden proportions. and the focus points match those !!!

iDunno said:
Notice how they all fall on the rule of thirds intersections. I never had to focus and recompose.

Boy, did you hit the nail on the head! I am continuously focusing and re-composing my frame to position my center of interest or my subject's eyes at or near a rule-of-thirds intersection (actually, more like a "rule-of-fifths" for me). You're absolutely right! There really should be AF points at or near the rule-of-thirds intersections! Never realized this simple fact until you pointed it out!

Quite agree with the OP on this one. The comment on breaking the rules is pointless, you need to be FREE to do it, not forced to.

I often have troubles in focusing the subject (especially portraits) at one of the corners of the frame. Of course, the solution is clever management of AF and AE lock. Watch out for shifts in exposure while holding the AF.

The only camera I think would be "enough" is the D300. Notice how on the D700 the AF points are the same, but packed in a 1,5 times narrower place, so again the corners are not covered.

Learn the rules and then break them, that is the name of the game.

I've had my first dslr for about a week, and one thing that annoys me is how the AF points are distributed.
On my old bridge camera, it had 9 contrast detect points like this:

Notice how they all fall on the rule of thirds intersections. I never had to focus and recompose.

But on most (all?) DSLRs, they are distributed near the center like this:

Which means it's missing the corners. It feels like a step backwards for me... I guess I'll just have to get used to it?