Does the number of phase detect auto-focus points affect focus accuracy in mirrorless cameras?

As with many things, the marketers have tried to convince us that bigger, more, or higher priced is always "better". Most of the time in photography quality trumps quantity.

The term AF "point" has always been a bit of a misnomer. Rather than a single discrete point with no dimension, all AF systems have areas or zones of sensitivity that they call "points".

• This is the case with dedicated PDAF sensor arrays, such as those found in DSLRs, which use microlenses to direct light from certain parts of a lens' image circle to pairs of lines on the AF sensor. Each line is either one relatively large "pixel" or several smaller "pixels" wide and many more "pixels" long.
• This is also the case with imaging sensor based CDAF and hybrid PDAF/CDAF systems used in mirrorless cameras as well as by DSLRs when in Live View. Each AF "point" uses multiple photosites (a/k/a sensels or pixel wells) to measure contrast within the area of sensitivity.

In both cases the camera is usually programmed to bring into focus the area of strongest contrast anywhere within the entire selected area of sensitivity. For many cameras and systems from all the major camera manufacturers, the areas of sensitivity for each "AF Point" are far larger than the little squares, rectangles, or dots that you see in the viewfinder. Often these "points" share different, overlapping sections of longer lines on a dedicated PDAF sensor array or share overlapping areas on the main imaging sensor. It's not at all unusual for various AF areas of sensitivity (i.e. "points") within a specific cameras AF system to be shaped differently than the others around them.

Regardless of how many focus "points" a camera has, the camera's system primarily uses one measure of contrast at any particular time to actually focus the lens. It may be an area of contrast within a single "point" manually selected by you or it may be an area of contrast inside one of a large number of AF "points" that are active based on the selected settings. If you have multiple focus points selected and more than one light up in the viewfinder, it only means that the camera is telling you that the subjects behind all of those focus points are at roughly the same distance.

What is more important than how many focus points the camera has is how sensitive the focus points are, and how accurately the camera/lens is able to move the elements in the lens to match the instructions from the camera, and how consistently it can do this from shot-to-shot. In some cases how quickly the system can do this is also vital.

How many AF points a camera maker claims a mirrorless model they sell has is based more on the way they decide to count them than about how many discrete areas of contrast sensitivity the sensor contains. It's more a marketing department decision than an engineering and design specification. Design decisions are more along the lines of:

• How much of the total area of the sensor is used, as well as how many of the individual photosites (a/k/a pixels wells or sensels) in a particular zone are used, to detect contrast to be used by the AF system
• How the total area of the sensor that is capable of detecting contrast is divided up into various zones
• How large each of the zones are, how each zone is shaped, and how much they overlap with adjacent zones sharing some of the same photosites
• How many of those zones are user selectable and how many are available to the camera's AF point autoselection routine

Pretty much all of these things can be modified later by only changing the firmware that controls the camera's hardware.

How many "AF points" a mirrorless camera has doesn't necessarily affect focus accuracy (or consistency - they're two different things), either. If your intended subject is located in an area of the frame that has no AF sensitivity, that's not an accuracy issue at all.

How well a camera can maintain AF on a specific feature of your subjects, such as the iris of an eye, as it moves around in the frame is more about the capabilities of the software controlling the AF system than it is about the sensor itself. There have been more than a few cases when various camera manufacturers have released new mirrorless cameras and then later upgraded the AF system, particularly with regard to Eye AF, using only firmware updates.

If your primary concern is getting the camera that does the best job at focusing on a subject's eye then your best course of action is to read reviews from various sources that compare the models you are considering and/or rent each of the models you are considering and test them yourself. The number of advertised AF points doesn't really affect which will be better or worse at that.

You should be able to find out how much of the entire frame is available to the AF system by looking at each camera's specs. If you like to place your subject's eyes in the outer 10% on either end of the frame and the camera advertises that "80% of the sensor's width is included in the AF area", then you know that the 10% remaining on either end will not be covered at all.

On-sensor PDAF works much more like a split prism focusing screen as compared to the DSLR's dedicated PDAF sensor. A pair of photosites (pixels), or a pair of photosite groupings, have their lens(es) biased to intercept opposing virtual images (left/right, upper/lower, or both), and when those virtual images differ in phase (angular offset/position) the image is determined to be out of focus.

The number of focus points is a tradeoff in terms of size. Due to the offset photosite lenses, on-sensor PDAF points inherently receive less light (virtual image rather than the total image/light), this can result in exposure lines/banding in an underexposed/recovered image. It is NOT necessarily less light than a DSLR's dedicated PDAF sensor receives, it may be more (max aperture AF) or less (stopped down "live view" AF). But the more photosites that are dedicated to PDAF reduces overall fill efficiency (exposure sensitivity). When there is plenty of light this is of minimal concern.

Smaller focus points can detect finer details, but that is equally more dependent on the quality (sharpness/clarity/contrast) of the image being focused. If the lens projected image doesn't have the resolution to project that fine of a detail clearly, then having that small of a focus point is essentially useless (image will still be focused as well as possible).

What is most relevant in terms of the number of focus points is the area of coverage (IMO). I would rather have a larger number of focus points because they cover a larger portion of the image area, as opposed to having a larger number due to them being smaller and covering the same portion of the image area.

The eye AF issues of the Nikon Z series is primarily due to the algorithms in use (IMO). Nikon is relatively new to the advanced mirrorless systems, and eye AF was a firmware add-on for the Z6... Sony has been doing advanced mirrorless for a lot longer.