Previous versions of brainiac's message #7665029 « Leica M9 review in this weeks AP mag (UK) »
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Re: Leica M9 review in this weeks AP mag (UK)
kidtexas wrote:
I have a question for you brainiac since you shoot a lot of manual lenses on new SLRs. What is focusing like? How accurate is it? I\'ve thought of picking up a manual focus 50 for my SLR (new/old zeiss or a CV 58), and maybe a 28, but from playing around with my current lenses on camera, I\'m not sure I have super confidence in seeing what the heck is in focus and what isn\'t.
It\'s hard work. I shoot the Eg-S screens, and it takes all my practice and experience to get the results that I want. I keep the camera on 4fps so that I can bracket focus easily, and consequently it\'s also hard work at the editing stage, when you\'re looking for the sharp one out of 4 or 5 images. Having said all that, it does work, and I do mostly get critical focus when I need to. Sometimes, with a subject who is moving a lot I\'ll opt for one of the less perfectly focussed ones. But honestly, it\'s not much different on rangefinder, or with AF. All these methods are a struggle in low light. AF needs careful calibration and it interferes with your composition just as badly as the rangefinder central patch. The way I am most comfortable is keeping the picture composed and focussing simultaneously while constantly moving focus through the desired point and letting rip on the shutter release. Neither AF not rangefinder can guarantee results in quite the same way.
It is useful being able to switch between manual and AF at will. I set my AF-ON button to be the only AF activation button, and I use servo. With lenses like the 135 f2 which is a full-time-manual-focus lens it\'s the best of both worlds. It\'s still hard work though. In the long run I\'m excited about face recognition getting a lot faster. It seems to work very very well on the GF1. I do find focus-recompose really interferes with my framing, timing, and camera stability and that\'s one thing I think I will really struggle with if I start using a rangefinder again.
Oct 20, 2009 at 12:32 PM
Previous versions of brainiac's message #7665029 « Leica M9 review in this weeks AP mag (UK) »
