Manual focus

[bigdaddy]

Hello anthonyd,

I started playing with MF lenses about a year ago. They are addictive and fun.

I'll give you a run down on my experiences.

Have a 6D with the precision screen.

Start in the 50 to 85 mm range. I find it gets a lot harder when you get into the longer focus lengths.

My first MF lens was a Pentax 50mm 1.4 M K-mount. I even bought a second. I have the most keepers with this lens.

Then I got a Zeiss Jena(Made in the DDR) 200mm 2.8 Sonar. The few shots I managed to get in focus war great. The bokeh is super creamy.

Then I got a MC Takumar (Pentax) 85mm 1.9. I can get good photos of my kids with this lens.

The last lens I tried is the SMC Takumar (Pentax) 135mm 2.5. The 6 element model. It is also a great lens, but the 135 ist just a little to long. The are some shots hier: http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=23211.0 . There are a lot of other shost from the Takumars there as well. Its not the Samyang wide open, bit it only cost 90 Euros.

To try to get around my short comings with the optical view finder I tried a LCD loop similar do this one: http://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Foldable-Viewfinder-Magnification-Panasonic/dp/B004TDXMHM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428958081&sr=8-1&keywords=lcd+loop

It helps with the longer focal lengths because it has a built in 2.5 magnification. And allows live view focusing no mater how much sun there is. The only downside is that I feel like a dweeb when I use it in public.

I think the next step would be to install MagicLantern on my 6D to get focus peeking. That and the LCD loop would be pretty good. At least I think so.

Here is a great resource for the old Takumars: http://www.pentaxforums.com/lensreviews/Pentax-Takumar-M42-Screwmount-Normal-Primes-c23.html

It has ben posted before, but it really is a good source of info.

My facet for MF lenses is that it is cool and a lot of fun. But I am going to sell the Zeiss 200, one of the 50s and the 85. But the 85 is just so cool to hold and use for a 50 year old lens, that I am having doubts. The 135 is mint, and the same thing applies for its haptic and use as the 85.

You can get a good Takumar 50mm1.4 for under $100, and a helios ever cheaper. If it ends up not being your thing, you can probably sell them for what you paid.

Well I hope this helps a little.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

MF gives you fewer acceptable shots, but more dead on. A typical quantity vs quality dichotomy. MF forces the photographer to think about where the focal plane should be.

I remember the winning photo one year of a BBC wildlife photographer: a jumping dolphin at an angle towards camera, all out the water filling the frame. Certainly a great shot. However, focus was in the middle of the body, not on the eye. Clearly an AF problem at wide open f-stop.

If you are telling me that a manual focus shot would have been on the eye of the dolphin and perfect, I'd be a skeptic.

What is takes for a winning photo is the subject, not laboratory grade focus accuracy. You can have perfect focus and a lousy photo.

 

[Tinky]

MF gives you fewer acceptable shots, but more dead on. A typical quantity vs quality dichotomy. MF forces the photographer to think about where the focal plane should be.

I remember the winning photo one year of a BBC wildlife photographer: a jumping dolphin at an angle towards camera, all out the water filling the frame. Certainly a great shot. However, focus was in the middle of the body, not on the eye. Clearly an AF problem at wide open f-stop.

If you are telling me that a manual focus shot would have been on the eye of the dolphin and perfect, I'd be a skeptic.

What is takes for a winning photo is the subject, not laboratory grade focus accuracy. You can have perfect focus and a lousy photo.

The photographer can also decide where the plane is by using one shot AF and the appropriate focus point over the desired mark... dolphin is a bad example as a little unpredicatable, a more useful example might be prefocusing on a bend at a race track, or the brow of a hill or ramp etc. Somewhere you know the subject will definately be as it travels through your frame. With ring type USMs you can also shift the focus slightly manually from what the AF has selected, and by keeping half pressure on the shutter button you maintain focus until the decisive moment.

A dolphins eye could be anywhere in the frame. And besides unless you are getting very intimate with flipper the likely working distance will give you a bit more depth of field latitude in any case. With a dolphin elevated from the water, unless you are shooting from above, the ratio between the subject and the background will also assist seperation at all apertures.

Tools like trap focus on ML enabled cameras might help here, but there are better ways. I shoot a lot of video and I do everything manually as auto settings can really screw up. With Stills I still shoot manually, but cede to AF. It is better quicker faster than me. Especially for action etc.

 

[Zeidora]

MF gives you fewer acceptable shots, but more dead on. A typical quantity vs quality dichotomy. MF forces the photographer to think about where the focal plane should be.

I remember the winning photo one year of a BBC wildlife photographer: a jumping dolphin at an angle towards camera, all out the water filling the frame. Certainly a great shot. However, focus was in the middle of the body, not on the eye. Clearly an AF problem at wide open f-stop.

If you are telling me that a manual focus shot would have been on the eye of the dolphin and perfect, I'd be a skeptic.

What is takes for a winning photo is the subject, not laboratory grade focus accuracy. You can have perfect focus and a lousy photo.

You are missing my point. With AF you have a greater chance of getting something in focus, but lower chance of getting focus where it is desirable. With MF you have lower chance of getting anything in focus, but better chance that you get focus where you want it. AF can work in your favor, but it can also work against you. So AF is not always better.

Completely agree that there is a bit more to a good photo than focus. But an image with not spot-on focus is rarely great (unless motion blur or something of that sort is part of the communication). So while that jumping dolphin was nice, I would have never given it top rank because of the focus problem. Obviously, the jury viewed it differently, and that is fine. Just my opinion. Would the image with focus on eye not have nabbed top spot (everything else the same)? I very much doubt that, it would have been even better.