In this article, we will show you how you can quickly unleash the power of back-button auto focus on the Canon EOS 6D Mark II (on Amazon). Be sure to check out our article on why everyone should switch to back-button auto focus here.

The objective here is to have independent control of our auto focus and shutter release. We want to program the shutter release to only capture a photo, and use the “AF ON” button (seen below) to activate the AF system.

Lucky for us, there is only one setting to change on the Canon EOS 6D Mark II. The AF ON button by default activates auto focus system, so no action needed here! We simply have to setup the shutter release button. We’ll want to dig into the camera settings and remove the AF function from the shutter button’s half press.

Setting Up Back-Button Auto Focus

First, turn your camera on and set to any of the following modes: C2, C1, B, M, Av, Tv, & P. We will not be able to access the custom settings menu on Full Auto(A+), Creative Auto (CA), or Scene (SCN) modes.

Once in the correct mode, press the Q button. If you shoot with the screen settings always on, you can also press the Q button on the screen. This gives us access to our shooting settings. Scroll over to the right side of the screen and select the camera shaped icon titled “Custom Controls.”

Now we can see the nine customizable buttons on the 6D MKII. When hovering over the first selection, we can see the title “Shutter butt. half-press” and the description under the title. By default the description should read “Metering and AF Start” Let’s select this icon.

We can see there are three possible selections here: Metering and AF Start, Metering Start, and AE Lock. We are interested in menu item 2 in the middle, select this item. After selecting this, you can tap the shutter button to exit the menus.

That’s it, you’re done! Now test the shutter button. When you half press the shutter button, the AF system is no longer activated! Remember, if you want to learn why activating back button auto focus is so important, check out the previous article here. (We explain why you get the best of back button auto focus in AI Servo focus mode!)

Now go shoot, it will take surprisingly little time to grow accustomed to using back-button auto focus!