Manual focus 5m plus

This is a follow on from my post yesterday where I mentioned I lost the ability to autofocus on my H2 (as has happened to others). Perhaps in time Ill send it back to Sony for repair but with a golfing trip to Portugal and a business trip to Australia Id rather have it on me than at the factory especially as I can still manually focus. Which leads me to the question -

Using maual focus isnt that difficult to learn especially with added help like the expanded focus and peaking utilities but is the autofocus so much better in the range between 5m and infinity. For example, say I wanted to focus on a wall 50 ft away. Using the manual focus and the added tools I come to an approximation of the focusing distance. Will the autofocus (whatever way its done, spot, multi etc)) be so much sharper. Can the same be said for an object 3m away or will the losss of quality be more evident if manual focus is not on the money

Does anyone know of how long Sony repairs take for my loss of AF problem

Cheers

Neil

It depends of the focal length. If you have wide angle the hyperfocal distance it's just a few meters away (2.55 m more exactly at f/2.8). Usually you use f/4 or even f/5.6 in good light. so the hyperfocal distance is even closer. So if you put 5 m you have about everything in focus (except one or two meters from you).

At 72 mm (full telephoto) and f/3.5 you have the hyperfocal distance at 291 m so it's more tricky to use Manual Focus.
Look here for more information:
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
--
Victor
Bucuresti, Romania
http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m268/victor_petcu/

...but as I understand the "half-press problem" you do not necessarily have to use manual focus. Just do a full-press and the camera will focus, then shoot. There will be a delay, though.
--
George B
C&C always welcome. PP and repost OK.

Ive been trying to figure it out and yes focusing just before capture does occur with a full press of the shutter but not always, especially with moving scenes - result - blurry photos. And with the flash the camera doesent always focus on time before capture is made. Still Id rather have the option of AFing than not.

GHB said:

...but as I understand the "half-press problem" you do not
necessarily have to use manual focus. Just do a full-press and the
camera will focus, then shoot. There will be a delay, though.

Click to expand...

It will focus, if it can. If not it will fire anyway and you will get a non-focused picture. That's been my experience, generally it's when someone else is using the camera, because I always half-press to prefocus.

--mamallama