On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 3:16 PM, Larry Colen <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm pretty good at manual focus, but there are times when I can't see well > enough to focus, even with a katzeye, and the autofocus will work. I've seen > reports, which I believe, that autofocus consistently outperforms manual > focus. The problem being that it focuses perfectly on the wrong thing.
A focusing system that consistently locks onto something but not the thing that you want to be in focus cannot, by definition, outperform manual focus. Just locking focus on something isn't the point of a focusing system: You can do that with focusing by scale and setting the focus to any random point on the ring ... *something* will be in focus every time. Focusing on the subject that the photographer wants to be in focus is the ONLY point of interest for a focusing system. > I've found that live view, especially with zoom, allows me to focus in light > that is beyond the ability for either unassisted, or autofocus. > Unfortunately, the K-5 takes about a fortnight to actually take the shot > after pressing the shutter, when in liveview. My suspicion is that somebody > did some embedded systems programming when all they know is writing Java for > desktop computers. SLRs with Live View are notoriously slow in operation for still exposures since their systems and lenses weren't designed for Live View and have all those mechanical bits and linkages to fuss with. > When the scene is fairly static, I pop it into LV, manually focus, then pop > it out of live view. Unfortunately, if I've taken any photos, pressing the > LV button will freeze the camera up until everything has been written from > buffer into memory (see note above about embedded systems programming). The > K-5 is an amazing camera, and in many ways the one that I've been waiting to > be affordable for years, or decades, but there are so many things about the > software that are simply braindead. Almost every complaint I have about it is > with the software. Give me access to the source code and a couple of months > and I could give you a camera that is damned near perfect. Sounds like a rather problematic camera to me. I've not had an interest in one, for various other reasons, but these comments would not encourage me to be interested in it at all. The Olympus E-5 has none of these issues in my experience. One of these evenings, I would enjoy visiting one of your dance events and seeing what the shooting situation is in person rather than trying to understand it from your and Marco's descriptions. -- Godfrey godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
