View allAll Photos Tagged manual_focus
My SX-70 Sonar stopped working. Well, the nifty sonar auto focus did anyway, manual focus works fine.
I thought it would be a simple fix, and opened up the housing. Nothing looks wrong mechanically, so I guess it's the electronics.
This is 1970's electronics (just look at the big hunk of a motor), but still way beyond me. Fortunately, I know how to check for simple things like cold solder joints and all that electrojigglyjumbobooga stuff. Yeah!
4/15/16 2:25 PM
This is neat stuff if you are beyond auto mode in photography. To be ready for tomorrow I always check my memory cards and have spent a day or two charging batteries. Rather than random shooting tomorrow I need to get at least 6 good shots. Now you might think that is easy but a great photographer can take 2,000 and get one good shot. Old school photographers are used to paying a minimum of 2 bucks a piece if they developed their own film. That was with bulk loaders etc. So you would go to an event like East Bend with maybe three rolls of high speed film usually that was 108 shots unless you were backed by a newspaper and had a bulk roll and motor drive. You have spent 200 bucks if you sent them off or one long night in the dark room if you wanted your shots in the morning paper. Some of us in the group are learning photography as well as interested in Motocross. So there are sure shots and then creative shots. Photographers shooting racing can’t resist creative shots. So just within ten minutes I shot a quick example of creative vs standard. I only gave myself a quick shot. Not one where I could follow you across the track. Like I had a piece of jump I covered and couldn’t watch for a distance. I pick a focus point and hold the lock focus button even if I am on manual because Auto Focus is too slow for you guys. Shots can be called pan shots where the shutter speed is slow. The object is followed and it blurs the background. I nailed the plate on the car in a pan and blurred the woods. That car was doing 60 easy. The guys in the truck were shot with a higher shutter speed. The woods aren’t blurred as much. It was a pan shot. A photographer would say it was a hand held pan. Using a Tripod would be better but with a long lens it takes practice to do it hand held. The best can do a thing called zoom pan. It blurs the background and kind of sucks you into the photo. So I’ll mix things up a lot. I do know though that I am intentionally shooting with a higher depth of field because in a cropped shot if you are in the way background you might still want that shot even if you are a bit out of focus. You will learn to spot these things after awhile. There may be a test! And tomorrow when you are racing concentrate on the race and not hot dogging for the camera. After my initial experiment I will try to include as many as I can.
Nikon D800E + Voigtlander APO Macro Lanthar 125mm f/2.5.
This is a purely test shot, to see how precisely I could manually focus on the cobweb from a distance of about 10 feet, with a 125mm lens, wide open, without using LiveView, and how would it register on the D800E.
With its massive 36MP resolution and no AA filter, the D800E exposes even the slightest focusing errors. So I was not very hopeful of using fast manual focus lenses with the D800E.
The result here is quite promising. I took three test shots, and they all came out OK, pretty much similar to this one. So it looks like with some care, it should be possible to shoot the D800 and D800E handheld with high quality lenses that were specifically designed for manual focusing.
100% actual pixels crop below.
800_0230
For people interested in using big manual focus lenses on a Compact System Camera, here are a few of the lenses I have used on my Sony NEX 5N.
From left to right: Tokina AT-X SD 150-500mm f5.6, Tokina AT-X SD 300mm f2.8 & Tokina SD 400mm f5.6.
I can highly recommend the 300 and the 150-500 with the aid of the monopod, whilst the 400 is a good lens to handhold as it is actually quite compact.
I thought I'd try some wildlife photography.... With the manual focus Voigtlander 40mm f/1.2......
A7Riii - CV40/1.2E
Shot with Meyer Optik Goerlitz Primoplan 75mm. The experience of actually “focusing” again, of being that intentional, made everything more human.
Toady came back! Took this photo on my Canon Powershot SX120 IS (manual focus, I love you). In some ways I actually prefer this camera to my Canon EOS 350D. I guess I should explain.
Firstly, it's compact. Well... it's more compact than a bulky SLR, which means I can take it pretty much anywhere. And when your main means of transport is by bike the size definitely matters. Secondly I actually prefer the manual focus on this camera. I don't know exactly why but it might be again just because it's smaller the focus is easier to change without the camera moving because my hand is shaking because the camera isn't really heavy and I'm a small(ish) person... and, obviously, it was a lot cheaper than the EOS 350D camera and the lenses so there's that nice thought of really getting your money's worth every time you take a photo. On the downside the image quality on the SLR is much better so when the situation allows I'd always use the EOS 350D, but having everything that the SX120 has... definitely a steal.
But end rant on my crazy camera choices and more on the photo. It kind of sucks that the weather was so bad yesterday as it means the lighting wasn't the best. I took quite a few of Toad and it was a hard choice between two on which was my favourite, but my gut said this one. The other is in my blog, also linked to a larger size:
startabrandnewstory.blogspot.com/2010/09/i-didnt-realise-...
This photo amuses me every time I go in to the railway archive folder. Taken with a Voigtlander Bessa 66 in the early 1970's at Buxton. If it were a portrait the manual distance setting would be endearing. The face of the loco is in perfect focus. But on what is obviously such a dull day the F stop was far too low to give any depth of field.. Rendering the whole picture irritating to look at.
The other thing that can be seen even in Black & White is the blue paint if the loco is nothing like the correct "Rail Blue". Where did they get the paint from? B & Q?
This is a test picture I took with my new 15$ all manual Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 I got on eBay. It's probably 20 years old or so, but is it decent condition. It acts as 100mm since the sensor on my camera is twice as small as the film negatives this lens was made for. It's a prime lens, the opposite of a zoom lens, meaning its focal lenght is fixed. To zoom in you take two steps forward!
At the widest aperture the depth of field is so small that it's actually too short, as this picture shows. It's best used stopped down to f/2.8 or f/4. The wide aperture could come handy for low light situations however. I primarily bought the lens for portraits, where a blured background is desirable.
One of the downside with this lens, aside from being manual focus only, is that the EXIF lacks focal lenght and aperture information. This happens because the lens doesn't communicate electronically with the camera body. The solution would be to buy a higher end Zuiko Digital lens, but that would cost me about 500$US. Not for now! Otherwise I like this lens a lot, it gives great results, and the manual focus makes it pretty fun to use.
This is also my first Flickr picture with an ID above 200000000. Flickr crossed 100000000 last winter, so it took about 6 months to double in size, after taking two years to reach the initial 100000000. Wow.
Fooling around with MF to create some DOF. This one looks better on large as you can really see the narrow range the lens was focused on.
Trying out live view to see if manual focus can be better refined. Sorry about the ugly model lol (Zeiss 50mm f1.4 ZF2)
Taken with Canon 40D & Sigma 150-500mm OS Handheld.. Reedbeds at Bude Marshes ! a absolute nightmare trying to lock focus so had to resort to manual focus.....quite pleased with the result !
This shot was taken with Sony A7, Metabone Smart Adapter III, Canon EF 300/2.8 L IS, Canon TC 2x II and another Canon TC 2x III. Resulting lens has thus focal length of 1200mm at f/11,2. The EXIF can't record the second TC, because it is not reported. From three tested cameras -A7, A7r and NEX7 (resulting focal length in terms of FOV was funny 1800mm), the A7 capture was the one with the least motion blur. I used gimbal head and heavy tripod, but camera shake wasn't the only problem. Looking at the LCD on the cameras with focus peaking on, with lens stabilization switched off and lens switched to manual focus, I saw the focus "breathing" from sharp to very blurred.
At the first moment I was not sure what is going on, but suddenly I realized that focus breathing happened due to hot air that was comming from the passing cars in front of the focus plane. That hot air, simply blurred the image to unexpected extent.
Significant problem with A7r was shutter vibration that completely ruined sharpness, while with NEX 7, due to the extreme magnification, it wasn't possible to keep it steady enough.
CClockwise from top left: Takumar 135mm f2.5, Vivitar 135mm f2.8, Pentax M 100mm f4 macro, SMC Takumar 55mm f1.8, Takumar A 28mm f2.8, Pentax A 50mm f1.7, Pentax A 35mm f2.8
Manual Focus Samyang 85 f1.4
Breakfast time at the table, camera lurking nearby!!
SB900 bounced off ceiling,
I've been so focused on video lately that I haven't processed any of the photos I've taken while I was in my blind waiting for Whistling ducks to jump.
This photo is a good example of a situation where manual focus shines. There would have been no way to get this with AF with the bird's eye moving behind the new cypress leaves, but with manual focus it was easy to follow him and take the photo right when his eye was clear of the greenery.