Do you need fast autofocus?

[Jamie Pillers]

I tested out the new Nikon 1 V3 camera yesterday at my daughter's lacrosse match. These were all hand-held, shutter-priority at 1/500, focal length between 200 and 300mm (35mm equivalent). I'm super happy with this little camera. I made about 150 exposures and ZERO were out of focus! Focus is essentially immediate... no lag at all. 😀

 

[jky]

The faster the better imo. Glad you're enjoying the V3.

 

[Al Patterson]

Yeah, even with glasses manual focus lenses are too slow. Thankfully, newer cameras have excellent autofocus.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Not on my M9.

Cheers,

R.

 

[thegman]

I do struggle to focus my TLR quickly, but was always pretty quick with a range finder. My type of photography does not really require it though.

I think if you want to catch quick moving scenes at f/0.95 close up, then that's going to be tricky, but manual focus at a distance, stopped down a bit, you get a huge amount of margin for error.

 

[cmc850]

I have shot a lot of lacrosse - these look great - but it can be a forgiving sport - nice bright day, small apertures and fast shutter speeds - and much of the action at a fixed distance away from the camera on a big field. Can get tougher as the daylight fades, too. For indoor sports - basketball etc - focus is far more critical as you are often wide open, and maybe close to the action. I do think the Nikon mirrorless cameras are known for fast focus. My EOS M - known for poor focus speed. Fortunately, for moving subjects I have an EOS 1D with a big chunk of glass on it.