Paul Stenquist wrote:
Hmmm. Well, the autofocus shots are a lot closer than the manual focus shots. Other than that, it's hard to draw many conclusions from this. I guess you should have your camera checked out. It seems to be causing you a lot of problems and aggravation. Since the autofocus shots are closer than the manual, I suppose the mirror is a suspect. Have you ever dropped the camera?
Paul
On Apr 16, 2005, at 11:46 AM, Don Sanderson wrote:
http://www.donsauction.com/pdml/50web/index.htm
This is a small gallery of 11 shots I took this morning. The last one (FocusPoint.jpg) shows the point I had the camera, in spot focus mode, aimed at. The first 5 (141-145.jpg) are manually focused shots taken with the A50/1.4 at 1/2000 and 1.4. The next 5 are taken with the FA50/1.7 at 1/2000 and 1.7. I allowed this lens to autofocus. Mounted on a solid tripod, on concrete, 2sec mirror prefire. Focus wanders all over.
Technique the same for all, hold my hand in front of the 1.7 to de-focus, allow it to focus and shoot. The 1.4 I manually de-focused, re-focused and shot. Shot as large .jpg, cropped and 'auto-levels' in PS Elements. No sharpening in-camera or in PS. Gallery created in Elements.
This seems to happen frequently with any 50mm or shorter lens, especially wide open. The problem is probably just more evident with shallow DOF.
***ALL of the shots looked sharp in the viewfinder!*** If they didn't because AF 'missed' I de-focused and tried again.
Any ideas? I thought maybe the mirror wasn't returning properly each time, throwing the viewfinder image off, that doesn't look to be possible though.
*****HELP!!!!****
Don
--
I can understand why mankind hasn't given up war. During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners - two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime.
--P.J. O'Rourke
