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 p.1 #2 · Mirrorless to Rangefinder transition | |
What lens(es) do you have in mind? Ease of consistently hitting wide open focus with rangefinder cameras become progressively more difficult the longer the focal length.
I don't know how good the Nikon EVFs are compared to something like the first SL, with which I found I could pretty consistently hit correct manual focus with fast lenses ~50mm and longer without use of any focusing aids (this was strictly based on spending ~1 hour with an SL trying my various rangefinder lenses).
Hitting wide open focus with a rangefinder is not only dependent on how well you can see the rangefinder patches align, due to your eyesight, it will also depend on the calibration of the camera and the lenses. From my experience after ~9 years with an M9 and M240, it's nearly impossible to have the camera and all lenses perfectly calibrated. Instead what usually happens, at least for me, is I learn each lens's 'quirks' with the camera. For example, if a lens consistently back focuses, I do focus bracketing test shots at various distances intentionally front focusing in small increments (based on the coincidence of the rangefinder patches), checking the results in-camera and then remembering what the 'offset' of the coincidence was whenever I'm using that lens. This might seem like a hassle, but in practice I've found it works pretty well. Some advocate the use of eyepiece magnifiers, particularly with 75mm or 90mm lenses. I've tried this too, but didn't really find it helpful. Unless you dedicate one camera to one lens, if you're like me and switch lenses a lot while out shooting, it's a considerable hassle to screw and unscrew the magnifier to/from the eyepiece. I found getting the correct eyepiece diopter for my eyesight was much, much more helpful at achieving consistent focus.
With a fast lens, such as a 50/1.4 at portrait distances, I'm pretty confident at getting correct wide open focus, if the point of focus is centrally located. The 90/2 AA is a bit trickier, but it also has a reputation of being very difficult for Leica to correctly calibrate across its full range of focus. If you like to consistently place your subject off center, it gets more complicated with a rangefinder camera because of the tilt/shift of the plane of focus whenever you focus and recompose, particularly at closer distances and with wider angle lenses. Complicating this will also be the field curvature characteristics of each lens. For example, due to the 28 Cron v1's plane of focus curving away from the camera the farther from the center of the image, I would always have to front focus it (relative to correct rangefinder coincidence) for correctly focused off-center subjects when shooting relatively wide open.
Where I have found the rangefinder focusing system the best of any focusing system I've tried so far, is more so with lenses ~35mm and wider. I could never be confident of correct focus of wide angle lenses by eye with SLRs and also found that SLR/DSLR AF systems were often frustratingly inconsistent the wider the lens. It's one of the primary reasons I got the M9 back in 2010 and in this respect have been very happy. Another aspect is that the degree of alignment of the rangefinder image gives you a very fast ballpark idea of how near or far off focus is at any moment. Therefore, if you're shooting wide open, you will work harder at getting correct rangefinder coincidence. But if you're shooting stopped down, you know that depth of field will cover minor focusing errors. This can help in fluid situations because you don't have to stress about perfect rangefinder coincidence yet you will have a very clear idea of how close you are to perfect focus. IMO, this is where mirrorless has disadvantages when shooting stopped down, in that it's very difficult to discern where the exact plane of focus is in the EVF image, especially without use of magnification.
My mirrorless experience is considerably less than with DSLRs or rangefinders, but so far I've found that focus peaking is almost worthless with wide angle lenses and/or when shooting stopped down, because nearly everything in the image ends up swimming in peaking artifacts. Focus magnification is too time consuming if trying to photograph non-static subjects... so I can appreciate where you're coming from. In that respect, if non-static subjects are a good portion of what you photograph with mirrorless, I'd probably stick with native AF lenses.
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