Chuck Norcutt wrote:
>Thought I had but apparently didn't make it clear. My focusing problem
>is expemplified here: <http://www.chucknorcutt.com/party.php> This shot
>is lit with two studio flashes bounced off the ceiling of the tent and a
>Sunpak 522 on the camera. Before the flashes fired the only light in
>the place was from the "christmas tree" lights above making it near
>impossible for humans or cameras to focus. This particular shot
>probably only worked because of the tremendous DOF of the A1. The A1
>manages to catch a lot of stuff when it's too dark to focus by keeping
>the effective fl under 50mm and the lens manually focused at 2 meters.
>
>
Great photo, and tough to make. The A1 is clearly a good choice, The
deep DOF of small sensors is sure a blessing for some things. In the old
days, of course, one would simply scale focus an MF lens at the smallest
f-stop possible and take several shots at slightly different focus points
>A friend has a 20D and 28-135/3.5-5.6 IS lens. I haven't so far but I
>need to try them together under dark conditions. It will make a good
>test case to see if I really need to spring all that dough for 2.8
>glass.
>
I just got around to looking at the Jan. Pop Photo that landed around
Christmas. They review the 17-85 and are impressed. The title is
"Stellar Step Up". They say it considerably outperforms the older 28-135
in both SQF and IS. So if you test the 28-135, do it only for low light
focus performance, not image quality. Of course one of the winners in
the Pop Photo contest was taken with the 28-135, three with the 18-55
"junk" lens, one a very delicate close-up using a CU lens, and 1st.
place in the Archetecture category with the 17-85.
>There's more than money involved too. I've used his 70-200/2.8
>briefly and it's like carrying a ton of bricks after awhile.
>
>
I looked into the 70-200 models. Even the slow one is too heavy for
everyday duty for me. Like the 300/4.5, it would only go out when I had
a plan to use it. The f2.8 IS would mostly just sit around on a shelf
and look pretty around here. A great lens that doesn't get used doesn't
make great images.
>I hope to never have to focus it manually at all. I want it to
>autofocus in the (near) dark.
>
Of course, that's what we all want. The question is, how dark is dark
enough for you? -0.5 EV is pretty dark, but only hands on will tell.
>I have two or three Zuiko 50/1.4's but I
>don't think they're suitable for the type of work in the link above.
>But maybe they are. I've never tried it.
>
>
Depends a lot on how bright the flashes are. With iso 800 and bright
flash light, you should get pretty good DOF. So then you either scale
focus or viewfinder focus and just leave the focus alone. At an event
where you can test ahead of time, you could even test the focus and
aperture, just tape them fixed and forget about them. Then you don't
even need a fast lens, as focus can be set with lights on. The setup you
have in the posted sample looks like it's pretty fixed. If you have more
than one such location, just tape lenses and mark the tape for each
location.
All just ideas I haven't tried. I know many old photojournalists did
things like that, though. If it works, it would certainly be freeing.
You could just wait for the right moments without worrying about focus.
Could even do the same thig with an AF lens. Get some fool to go out
into the roght depth in the scene and shine a flashlight on their face,
focus, and turn off AF. 8-)
There really are situations where AF just slows things down at best and
screws them up at worst. Shooting landscapes with some closer branches,
etc.? Just set the AF P&S to the little image of the mountains. Instant
focus and no misfocus. Sometimes I even remember to do that. Even better
is when I remember to set it back to AF before going on. :-)
Moose
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