gdanmitchell
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
mahimihi wrote:
I agree Sony lenses suck.
Perfect thing to write... if you don't want to be taken seriously.
- - -
Regarding the inclusion of things like hybrid viewfinders... ottokbre wrote:
Consumer demand seems to agree.
I think that is true to an extent regarding a camera like the X100v, at least for now.
However, I don't think there's a lot of evidence that the XPro3 has been a huge seller, and I think that a XPro4 would not be all that successful against the Fujifilm competition from the XT5 and XH models. That's a whole lot of cameras in roughly the same price range.
- - -
More generally...
Manual focus shooting is not faster than shooting with a modern. AF camera... unless you use the old school technique that we used to rely on... of setting to about f/8, guessing that our subjects might be about X feet away, pref-focusing to that distance, then shooting without adjusting focus.
It worked, However, in those days, of course, the standard was that street photography prints were usually small — 8 x 10 was considered kind of large and it was unusual to see a lot of 11 x 14 prints. So the slight OOF quality of those images was acceptable. (If that is still acceptable to you, then what you say about accuracy seems pretty irrelevant.)
Or, the alternate technique (mastered by very, very few and perhaps no one here) of learning the focus ring settings so well that you could move the ring to roughly match your instantaneous _guess_ about the distance without looking at the ring.
Which is still... not as fast as using AF.
Nor as accurate.
As to accuracy, there are situations in which manual focusing can be more "accurate" than AF, though actually it is more of a mater of it being better able to account for some complex issues. I prefer to MF when doing landscape photography from the tripod. Here I usually have much more time to consider focusing options — WAY more than in typical street photography — so. I can do things like use the live view at 16x magnification and zoom around the image with the DOF preview switch pushed in, allowing me to verify how well the chosen focus point and aperture cover the subject... and make subtle adjustments if necessary.
The notion that manual focus — especially in the quick world of street photography — is more accurate simply doesn't hold up. If you tell me that, instead, you are OK with its inaccuracy (and slowness) and are fine with a lower standard of sharpness, that's an entirely different thing.
And... if you do prefer, as I do now, to use AF by default for shooting street and similar subjects...
... you can still manually focus your AF lens in the rare situations where the advantages may be worth it — extra time, stationary. subject, complex focus issues, etc.
As to the (to use the usual hackneyed description) "jewel-like quality" of old-school MF-only lenses, I get it. I feel that little bit of joy when I handle the old lenses I was brought up on. Their lovely, tight, old-school construction is attractive and brings back fond memories... in the same way that I get that feeling when I see a tricked out VW van that reminds me of the one I owned so many decades ago... or the feeling when I see wooden cross-country skis like those I used in the 1970s... or the warm feeling when I remember my first PC in the early 1980s...
... but I don't drive a VW van any more, I don't use my Splitkein skis (though I still have them in the garage), and I'm not using my original IBM PC to type this. ;-)
However, if you do like to use MF gear because the appeal of the old stuff works for you, that's absolutely fine. Just say THAT is the reason... rather than trying to tell those of us who had to use that stuff back in the day (and were glad we had it) that the new stuff can't make equally good or better photographs.
Edited on Sep 29, 2023 at 12:05 PM · View previous versions
|
