gdanmitchell
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 Re: 5DS/R Experiences | |
Actually, I don\'t quite think that is what he is saying either. He writes \"unless we resort to live view...\" as if that is some sort of outlier, and with the presumption that being able to manually focus though the viewfinder in the old-school way is a) critically important and b) poorly executed.
I think that one could argue for b), but that the argument would apply to DSLRs in general, unless you go back to the earlier models that allowed replaceable viewfinder screens. I can understand that there could be a small number of photographers who need such a thing in a DSLR, and for them this general development in DSLRs could be viewed as a negative. For far more photographers, that evokes a big \"huh?,\" since we can\'t think of too many situations in which we think that manually focusing would be better than AF and in which we would not want to use the superior approach from live view.
For those photographers, I agree that some other camera might make more sense if this is a make or break thing. Perhaps it could be a mirrorless camera — though those also use live view as their only mode of operation. Some may implement it more effectively than Canon does in its DSLRs.
The only thing he says about live view in this quote is \"unless we resort to it...,\" which seems quite odd, since that is the primary approach to manual focus used by photographers using this camera.
Dan
snapsy wrote:
gdanmitchell wrote:
snapsy wrote:
He\'s only had the camera a few days but does make some initial observations in the article about it:
* VF not good for MF
About this he wrote (in total, as far as I can see): \"Manual focus is a disaster on both cameras; the finders are completely useless and we’ve got to resort to live view for anything critical.\"
That is one strange comment.
To me it is kind of like complaining that the film advance lever is missing from your DSLR.
On one hand, if he is referring to manual focus through the viewfinder — as we used to do back in the days of split prisms and so forth — I guess he has a point, one that is true of essentially all modern DSLR cameras. These cameras are not designed for manual focus, viewfinder shooting. There is good reason for this. Modern AF systems generally provide more accuracy and more speed than manually focusing through the viewfinder. For the most part, the best reason I can think of for wanting to look through the viewfinder, turn off AF, and manually focus would be that you did it that way back in the old days. (If that is your thing... DSLRs are probably not your best tool, anyway.)
On the other hand, if he refers to the range of ways in which these modern cameras implement manual focus, the \"disaster\" reference is nonsense. On the tripod, using live view and manually focusing, the experience is far more accurate and far more flexible that what we had available to us on older manually focusing SLR cameras. Yes, I used to use them. Let\'s review:
On those older cameras we did have focusing assistance from split prisms and the like in the viewfinder. They helped, and we could find focus relatively quickly that way — far faster than simply trying to manually focus on ground glass in the small SLR viewfinder. However, the result was generally far less accurate than today\'s AF systems and it was also a lot slower. Good AF is virtually instantaneous, but even skillful manual focusers took some time and a bit of rocking the focus ring back and forth.
But beyond that, once we got into more critical focus issues, the old manual system was far worse. If you wanted to check the effect of aperture on DOF you could (as you still can) press a DOF preview button. The viewfinder became very dark, making it harder to see the already small and somewhat dim image, and our ability to accurately gauge DOF was quite limited. However, with live view and exposure simulation, even in very dim light (including multiple stop ND filters!) we can hit the DOF preview button and still see a bright image of the scene... and we can zoom in to 16X (on the 5Ds) magnification and scroll around the screen to carefully inspect any element of the scene.
I\'ve used both systems and I can tell you with absolute certainty that what we have today is most certainly nothing like a \"disaster,\" and it is certainly much better and more flexible than what we had in the \"good old days\" of manually focusing on ground glass.
Dan
He\'s not saying LV is not an effective MF method on modern cameras, just that it it\'s a poor ergonomic experience. I agree with that sentiment - IMO EVFs are by far the best MF solution. I have strong opinions about cameras not getting in the way of the shooting experience. The idea of staring at an LCD where you see the scene rendered on the screen while also seeng the camera itself and then the true scene around the outlines of the camera ruins the entire flow of photogprahy for me. Although an EVF is digital it\'s still immersive like an OVF with the added MF benefits.
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