> Well, no, you can not manual focus, at 8 frames a second. But, if you are only > trying to get 1 excellent shot. Then I submit not only can you manual focus, but > you are much more likely to get that 1 shot than if you were using AF.
Why? You can always turn off the hose and shoot AF in the same slow style that you would with a K1000. The hose is to compensate for TIMING issues, not for FOCUS issues. The EOS1V can AF at 8fps. My point was that at 8fps you don't HAVE to have perfect focus or timing if you are zone focusing--you will get SOMETHING that is sharp even if it is not the best possible shot. This is often more important in a professional situation than getting the best possible shot. Sports is very unpredictable, so even if your timing and focus IS flawless you might actually miss the best shot by optimizing for a really good moment slightly before or after it. I'm not sure why you couldn't MF at 8fps in a focus tracking situation. You couldn't adjust focus by eye, but you could continue to turn the focus ring as you had been turning it before you started up the machine gun. It's hard enough to adjust focus by eye at 3.5 fps. > I think, even you, Mr. Edwin, will admit you got a higher percentage of > sharp shots with manual focus. Quite simply, no. I suspect most people's opinions of AF are based on what Minolta Maxxums could do and not what the EOS1V can do, since most people haven't got the money for a 1V and many folks would choose not to carry such a thing even if they could afford it. In action situations I get a much higher percentage of sharp shots with AF than with MF, and I've had 15 years of professional experience MFing action. Even in non-action situations I get a noticeably higher percentage of sharp shots with AF, but the percentage of "stupid AF" errors or inability to find focus sometimes gets to the point where I switch to MF. AF is rarely subtly off, especially in single AF modes where the camera won't fire if it doesn't think it is in focus. With MF, it is very easy to be subtly off, especially with a subject moving a little but not a lot. > Then again I admit that occassionally a high > frame rate, AF, and a little luck will get you a killer shot you would have > missed without them. Actually, the lucky killer shots don't seem to need AF, high frame rate, etc, precisely because they are lucky. I use AF not because I get more once-a-month killer shots but because day-in day-out I get more good shots with it than I did with MF. I was losing good shots to MF error, whereas I lose very few good shots to AF error. I get great shots that I never got before because my AF will track things that in 15 years of full-time MF shooting I never managed to track well. All of my co-workers have said the same thing since switching to AF. > As with everything, it is a trade off. As a working photographer, though, what > is going to make you the most money is what you want to use, as your experience > points out. However, as Paul said, you don't need AF to get sharp shots, > millions of photographers managed to do so for over a hundred years. Then even > managed to get by without autoexposure, and TTL flash, hard as that is for the > young guys to believe. I, too, said that people were getting great action shots without AF for years. I still shoot MF sometimes, but in many situations AF simply causes a drastic reduction in the number of great shots that are not in focus. Back in the all MF, no digital preview days, you simply shot enough to be pretty sure that you would find a sharp, good frame when you developed the film. While I'll admit that I'm spoiled by TTL flash, I still shoot a lot of my stuff metered handheld. When I use the in-camera meter it's always classic centerweighted, and manual exposure. > > NO! Every sports shooter I know uses AF, and they all say it is better > > than they are--surer, faster, better tracking, etc. I shot sports as a > > photojournalist with manual focus cameras for 9 years, and have been > > shooting AF for about 9 months. I have replaced almost everything in my > > sports portfolio because AF is SO MUCH BETTER. OK, this statement was in response to somebody surmising that human reflexes and focus judgement was faster than AF and somebody either quoted or interpreted me out of context. All my first and second hand experience is that modern pro AF is faster to focus and surer to find focus than any human under most conditions. I've had a lot of award-winning sports shooters tell me this. AF is better than humans at SPEED and ACCURACY of manipulating the focus mechanism (which, of course, does not always mean that it focuses where the user intends...) It also surpasses humans in its ability to make and facilitate boneheaded focus errors. I went on to point out that AF still has limitations, and is not universally better, just faster and surer. The ability of most AF systems to focus rapidly and accurately on the wall behind the player if you miss your aim for a minute plays hell with the ability to compose a photo, and has led to a style of sports photography that is very tightly cropped because the AF works much better that way. In may non-action situations, expecially when shooting wide-angle, MF is often easier to use because you can compose without worrying about aiming the AF system, and because you can often pre-focus or zone focus which eliminates focus from the equation entirely. I stayed away from AF for years because even though early AF was probably better than I was it made a LOT of dumb mistakes, and trusting a camera to do something when it was wrong maybe half the time seemed foolish. I decided that even if I was right less often I preferred to make my own mistakes rather than have the camera make them for me, plus I could always get better whereas the camera never would. Maybe my MF has gotten better, but camera AF technology has gotten much better much faster. The error rate is down to the point where the camera can do the focusing job reliably and substantially better than I can most of the time. There are still shooting situations where MF is a better choice for me. Of course, a modern AF system has on-demand full-time MF. Except for the silly EOS 300D, AF lenses with impossibly narrow focus rings, and AF cameras with no useful focusing aids, you can still MF any AF camera with the flick of a switch if you need or want to. DJE
