The matte screen is fine with my 50mm f/1.7 lens but I have trouble focusing my 500mm f/4.5 with extension tube on a cardinal in a beech plum tree. That's when focusing on the catchlight in the eye makes the difference between a a razor sharp image and one that's a little soft. My 1000mm f/11 reflex lens is even tougher but I've used the same technique to get some great shots.
Tom Reese Rob Studdert wrote: "OK this is really interesting, reason being is that I find it very easy almost all of the time to focus with the full matt screens and most particularly the new series with the ultra-fine matt texture. What I can say is that I believe that the lenses open aperture sharpness seems to have more to do with ease of focussing that I imagined. The reason that I make this correlation is that I find the A50/2.8 macro more snappy to focus than the A50/1.2 using the same screen and body. All my lenses are reasonably sharp primes apart from my 24-90 Zoom (which doesn't often find its way onto my camera in any case). So my question is are there certain lenses that seem more difficult to focus for you when using a full matt screen?" After I wrote: >> I have the same problem. I find it helpful to pick out a small bright spot >> in the image (catchlight in the eye for example) and focus for that as it >> tends to "snap" into focus more readily than textures or some other focusing >> point.
