What auto focus???

[Bill Pierce]

Apologies for dropping out of sight. We lost our internet router and with the pandemic rather than having a tech install a new one, had to have one shipped to us and install it ourselves. Between the shipping and our installation ignorance we were off line for quite awhile.

One of the big changes in current photo gear is the abundance of auto focus. Mirrorless cameras with autofocus off the sensor itself have the potential for greater accuracy than DSLRs and, although one hates to say it on the Rangefinder Forum, far greater accuracy than rangefinders. However, there seems to be one serious drawback to autofocus. You spend a lot of time autofocusing rather than paying attention to the subject.

Out of the box, many cameras autofocus at the center of the frame with a half press of the shutter release. Great for architecture and landscapes, not so great for subjects where you shoot more than one frame where the focus point is not dead center and you have to refocus with every frame. I see it all the time, people missing shots because they have to refocus rather than simply pay attention to the subject. And the other day I found myself doing it; shame on me. Extra shame on me because I grew up in the age of manual focus and should know better.

Most of the time I use back button focus, the modern and more accurate equivalent of manual focus, push the button and forget about having to refocus until the subject moves. Recently I didn’t realize my camera was set to focus with a press of the shutter button and took a series of pictures where the focus was on my elderly dog’s tummy (center of frame) rather than his snout (edge of frame). Fortunately, my dog is forgiving. Modern cameras offer a variety of ways to actuate focus and select a focusing area within the frame. I was wondering what you do to make focusing simple, not a distraction that keeps you from watching for the moment.

 

[Michael Markey]

I`m loathe to admit it because its rather inconvenient at times but I still tend to favour manual focus .

I do a lot of what you might call sports so AF is very useful but often I can do as good a job manually with a little thought .

 

[jsrockit]

I don’t have to refocus with every frame on my Fujis... unless my focus point moves drastically. And I use center point and refocus. If anything manual focus, outside of zone focus, made me not concentrate on what is going on. That said, I mostly only bring my camera up to my eye to make the photo. Not all people photograph the same way. I`m a big fan of good center point AF.

 

[Godfrey]

Good autofocus that works fast and hits the correct target is nice, but mostly irrelevant to my photography. I use adapted R and M lenses on my Leica CL and have hardly thought of wanting or needing AF at all, in any shooting circumstance, and find focusing manually at least as quick as most of what I find I have to do with AF.

One my Hasselblad 907x, I have two AF lenses and they work well, but speed is not the essence of what I do with that camera, and I use the touch screen to point to what I want when I need to focus ... works very nicely.

None of my other cameras even has AF as an option. Never missed it, never needed it.

What do I do to make focusing simple and fast? I practice, that's all. Use the scale on cameras so equipped when it's available and sensible, use the viewfinder on the TTL cameras, use the rangefinder on RF cameras. Nothing out of the ordinary.

G

 

[al1966]

I tend to stick cameras on multi point auto select focusing and not think about it most of the time, only if it decides to focus on something wrong will I change it. It seems to work well enough for me and with cameras that are manual focus I got into a habit where possible of using zone focus, I am not a shallow DOF photographer anyway.

 

[css9450]

Out of the box, many cameras autofocus at the center of the frame with a half press of the shutter release. Great for architecture and landscapes, not so great for subjects where you shoot more than one frame where the focus point is not dead center and you have to refocus with every frame.

That was state-of-the-art circa 1988. Today's cameras with 3-D Focus Tracking and the like are pretty seamless.

 

[charjohncarter]

I`m loathe to admit it because its rather inconvenient at times but I still tend to favour manual focus .

I do a lot of what you might call sports so AF is very useful but often I can do as good a job manually with a little thought .

I like manual too. It does depend on what type of shooting I'm doing. If I'm visiting family then I do take my AF film cameras. I still like my IIIf for accurate focusing mostly because the RF is an enlarged view. But the Bessa R is pretty nice too. I also like 35mm and 28 mm lenses so AF it better on SLR. Those lens lengths are a problem with manual focus SLRs.

EDIT: My eyes aren't what they used to be. I'm going for an annual eye exam in two weeks???
EDIT 2: Strangely, my 1969 Spotmatic is the easiest of my (35mm) SLRs to focus manually (even though I really like split prism screens).

 

[AlwaysOnAuto]

I love the auto focus on both my Sony's.
They always get SOMETHING in focus.


Just isn't always what I had in mind though.

 

[peterm1]

"Apologies for dropping out of sight. We lost our internet router and with the pandemic rather than having a tech install a new one, had to have one shipped to us and install it ourselves. Between the shipping and our installation ignorance we were off line for quite awhile."

I have been there and feel for you. Computers and computing are getting more complex not less and while the improvements in computer "smarts" can help avoid issues, it can also make it impossible to sort things out when things really go wrong. I recently had cause to use Microsoft's user bulletin board when "professionals" from MS supposedly help. Most of that "help" seems to consist of making dozens of suggestions very few if any of them work for most users (in part because their explanations depend on users having a commensurate understanding of some deep IT issues and concepts.)

Now on the subject of AF and its specific failings. Speaking personally I use both AF and MF. AF is a problematic beast in my view but I use it as it is sometimes useful, especially when I am feeling lazy - or my eyes are. I habitually use the single central focus point and shoot single shot mainly because I seldom am willing to trust a camera's multi focus point feature - when I have tried it, (e.g. shooting groups on the street) it seldom picks the subject I want it to focus on. SO I have a jaundiced view of these kinds of features as the camera cannot know what is in the shooter's mind no matter how smart it is. The only way I can use that kind of feature is to shoot multiple shots and hope one of them is OK. But that seldom works either as I only shoot when I am happy with the composition - and on the street, composition constantly changes as people move about so with my kind of photography it's not really a good option. So instead if I use AF I use, as I say, a single central focus point, recompose quickly, then shoot. Not perfect, but there you are!

BTW I recall trying a late Canon film camera (forget which one though) that had a sensor inside it to assess what the user's eye is looking at when you use the viewfinder. Then the camera selected one of its multiple focus points to match that subject on the assumption it is the main subject and the one you want to focus on. I tried it and even back then (perhaps 20 years ago) it worked perfectly and quickly for me at least and I have often wondered why it has not been tried since given it would no doubt be even better today. (I understand the same kind of technology is used in the A10 ground attack aircraft for targeting based upon the pilot's head and eye position. So I presume it has to be good).

I recently bought a Leica Q and have found that perhaps its best feature is its implementation of MF. Turn the distance ring while pressing its unlock button (which is on the ring so is quick to do) and the camera switches to magnify focus peaking. Press the shutter button to go back to normal view for composing and its ready to shoot. Its faster to do than to explain. Again not perfect but nothing in life is. If I am travelling I will usually only take one camera and two or three lenses so I will usually take AF lenses but sometimes use them in MF mode if that is needed.

The other camera I like for its MF simplicity and the good results I get with it, is my Nikon D700. The focus confirmation light inside the viewfinder seems to work pretty darned accurately even with vintage MF (non chipped) lenses. Although I still use it with the central focus point, it is one of the quickest ways I know to focus accurately - better even than most implementations of focus peaking in my experience.

Truth is though that for a lot of my shooting, especially when using m4/3 cameras is to use vintage lenses so "old school" MF is where it's at.

 

[kbb]

Today's sports photographers are able to get perfect looking mid-action shots with sharp focus and technical perfection that was unimaginable before the advent of accurate AF.
However, just as multi-pattern "smart" metering often completely fails to predict how I intend to place the scene brightness on to the sensor's range of sensitivity, AF tends to not know where in the scene I want to place the focus.
I am happy with the philosophy of "Part of the skill of successfully operating a camera is being able to operate the lens focusing mechanism."

 

[RichC]

I was wondering what you do to make focusing simple, not a distraction that keeps you from watching for the moment.

First, welcome back, and I hope that the coronavirus isn't making life too difficult.

My solution is always to use manual focus.

I started photography with digital cameras, so never used old-fashioned manual film cameras, but nevertheless quickly learnt that to get exposure and focus exactly as I intended I needed to switch to manual mode for everything.

Today, I use high-resolution state-of-the-art digital cameras (currently the Sony A7R series, previously a Nikon D800E, and would like a Phase One back but that's unaffordable!). However, I always focus and expose manually. In fact, I don't even have an autofocus lens!

Anyway, autofocus and auto-exposure are overrated! I have friends who can't understand how I keep up manually with modern cameras and their constantly altering settings. I've explained that in many situations the conditions haven't changed - such as outdoors when the weather and light stay the same for hours and you want everything from near to far sharp... So, despite what the camera thinks, there's no need for its changes as they have absolutely no practical affect - but my friends don't seem to understand that!

I guess we've got to the stage where people now assume that if a machine does something, it must be important and therefore right!

That said, I'm well aware how useful autofocus and auto-exposure are depends on your kind of photography. I never photograph people or moving objects, or in fast-changing light, and am very very particular where my focus plane is and about my exposure.

 

[Michael Markey]

I never photograph people or moving objects, or in fast-changing light, and am very very particular where my focus plane is and about my exposure.

Hi Rich

You`ve just described 99% of what I do .
Plus the people are actually on the fast moving objects 🙂
All I would add to that is ..... hardly any light .

RF`s are rather hopeless in those circumstances as a means of focus but peak focus mechanisms are doable .
I`ve just started using a CL but it only has contrast detect rather than phase so I`m finding that a little trickier

 

[peterm1]

Today's sports photographers are able to get perfect looking mid-action shots with sharp focus and technical perfection that was unimaginable before the advent of accurate AF.
However, just as multi-pattern "smart" metering often completely fails to predict how I intend to place the scene brightness on to the sensor's range of sensitivity, AF tends to not know where in the scene I want to place the focus.
I am happy with the philosophy of "Part of the skill of successfully operating a camera is being able to operate the lens focusing mechanism."

Yes I agree with this. It's kind of also what I said too. Cameras cannot read the photographers mind - and that is their shortcoming.

 

[RichC]

I`ve just started using a CL but it only has contrast detect rather than phase so I`m finding that a little trickier

I find these coloured focus patterns really distracting - regardless of which I colour select - so I use viewfinder magnification instead. Also, electronic viewfinders (Sony's EVFs anyway) have what is strictly a flaw: sharply focused edges "shimmer" - some kind of artefact. If the JPG option is set to high sharpness, this shimmer is even more distinct; that's not a problem as I don't keep JPGs, just the raw files. I find this flaw makes manual focusing quick and easy, sometimes doing away with the need to magnify the view. Hopefully, this flaw will remain unsolvable for many years!

As an aside, I can't believe how good and convenient EVFs have become - and how poor and limited optical viewfinders are in comparison, like that of my old Nikon D800E! I can remember struggling to focus with my Nikon, especially in poor light, even though it had been retrofitted with a "microprism" screen for manual focusing from a film camera, which helped. Looking through a Sony EVF for the first time was a revelation!

 

[Dogman]

My first and only cameras for many years were Nikons--F through F3. Manual focus with a center split image insert in the focus screen. Later I used Leicas--M4P through M6. Manual focus with a center rangefinder patch. And since adopting AF, I still work the same way, using the center AF sensor to focus and recompose. It's the way I've done it all along so it seems natural to me despite all the online experts telling me how this is not the way to do it.

Mainly I use Fuji X-Pro 1 and 2 cameras as well as several Nikon DSLR models. They work differently but the procedures are pretty much the same. With the Nikons, I use back button and continuous focus, locking focus by letting off the AF-ON button. With the Fujis, I use the shutter button to start focus and then lock focus with the AEL/AFL button.

Mostly I shoot with the drive on continuous high speed. With film, it was wasteful. With digital, it's insurance. I just delete a lot when reviewing images in the computer.

 

[vytasn]

For taking a photo of your dog with my Nikon Z7 I would use auto-area focus with animal eye detect, nails it every time. Eye detect is what you need for people and animal photos, unless of course you enjoy living in the past or making things unnecessarily difficult.

 

[raid]

When Canon came out with AF cameras, I was dismayed. I stayed with the FD manual line of cameras and lenses. I never liked using AF lenses. Even today. I need to control this aspect of photography. I can see the major usefulness of having AF if/ when eye sight becomes too weak for manual focusing.

 

[charjohncarter]

As I said I'm a manual man, but AF when I need it. It would have been impossible for me to make this image with my manual cameras:


Pentax K1 by John Carter, on Flickr

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Focus to touch is as valuable as back button focus.

I can't miss focus with something as rudimentary and primitive in terms of photography as iPhones. AF just works. In more advanced, non apple, phones AF is even snapping to faces.

With dedicated cameras I prefer wide lenses. It is much harder to miss focus if lens is wide. Quality of lens AF is also important. Sigma is known for crappy AF and I'm avoiding their lenses like a plague. In opposite Canon L lens AF is accurate and instant if camera is not garbage. I never had AF issues with Canon 500D and 5D. But 5D MKII AF is utter garbage. Back button AF just not working on this crap body. I had this model twice and it is same AF failures. Yet, our daughter was using it professionally for night clubs photography with 16-35 f2.8 II L, she used just shutter release button for AF and it was fine.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

As I said I'm a manual man, but AF when I need it. It would have been impossible for me to make this image with my manual cameras:


Pentax K1 by John Carter, on Flickr

For this kind of shots it is very possible. Calculate DOF and pre-focus. Once object is within the DOF, press shutter release button.
On yours image DOF is deep. Hard not to get it in focus, AF or MF.

This is how this picture was taken with M-E 220 and Rokkor 40 f2.



I pre-focused on the railings and waited just a little. Out youngest daughter was beside me. Can't wait too long 🙂.