what % of manual focus shots did you hit or miss focus?

I've been using mostly manual focus lenses lately, but sometimes I'd miss focus on some shots. often times it won't matter hitting critical focus, but on occasions such as missing focus on a subject's eye, it really ruins an otherwise good picture.

so I'd like to know if it's normal to miss critical focus more than 1/3 of the time (not talking about tripod shots or when you have an entire minute to compose, but real life walk around). I always use peaking focus, and only sometimes manual assist; often times if I use assist first then compose, focus may be missed, and if I composed first then use assist, the composure may differ due to other moving objects.

I think another reason why I miss shots may be because I usually shoot at wide open apertures (I use 50mm 1.8 & 35mm 1.7), thus thinner DOF & perhaps softer images (hard to tell between soft rendering of lens or missed focus). for smaller apertures I would just use the kit lens.

and since the 50mm 1.8 OSS is coming soon, I was wondering if there's a need to get it over my legacy 50mm 1.8 which costs next to nothing. I don't need OSS on this FL & I'm fine w/ MF but if it'll save all my "mis-focused" shooting from the legacy lens, it might be worthwhile.

--
http://kev777zero.artistswanted.org/
http://www.wix.com/drkevinlyu/photography

Depends on the light but I'd say I miss about a third to half of my shots. Mostly it's the same problem, shooting low light with shallow DOF. I probably need more practice out doors but both my kit lenses and the 18-200mm are so good that most of the time I use one of those as a walk around lens.

The AF works great on high contrast, light subjects against dark background. Under lowlight, indoor people shots, I find that the AF actually misses very often. It seems to want to focus on a bright subject, and detects focus on the left edge. Meaning, that the lamp behind the person is in focus, and not the person.

Most people around here wear dark clothes, that does not seem to help. The AF focus is then on the background 'at their right', not on them. The little green square is very misleading here.

AF assist light is only useful up to a few feet and it focuses 'around' the center.

Best keepers are with face-detect finding the faces, usually multi-people or full body (further away shots).

I am getting more keepers in MF than in AF with indoor people shots

Of course, outdoors, and under brighter lighting, the AF wins, even though MF would also be much easier (high f-stop/larger ODF). But since I now have to validate focus of the AF anyways indoors, I may as well use MF mode completely indoors.

It is not that difficult, really. Especially if you can get focus peaking to work on the person's eye.

As to MF keeper rates - it is entirely proportional to the time you take in composing the shot, as well as lighting, f-stop, type of subject. I seee it vary from 1 in 1 to 1 in 5 (the 1 in 5 being more of a 'rapid shooting' method). With the EVF or the Hoodman, and the right subject/lighting, I can easily get them to all be 100% in focus. They may still not be keepers however, especially with people shots (eyes closed, expression, etc)

The 50mm f/1.8 has OSS - it should give it an edge over legacy glass. However, softness due to shallow DOF or subject blur remains the same.

kev777zero said:

I've been using mostly manual focus lenses lately, but sometimes I'd miss focus on some shots. often times it won't matter hitting critical focus, but on occasions such as missing focus on a subject's eye, it really ruins an otherwise good picture.

so I'd like to know if it's normal to miss critical focus more than 1/3 of the time (not talking about tripod shots or when you have an entire minute to compose, but real life walk around). I always use peaking focus, and only sometimes manual assist; often times if I use assist first then compose, focus may be missed, and if I composed first then use assist, the composure may differ due to other moving objects.

I think another reason why I miss shots may be because I usually shoot at wide open apertures (I use 50mm 1.8 & 35mm 1.7), thus thinner DOF & perhaps softer images (hard to tell between soft rendering of lens or missed focus). for smaller apertures I would just use the kit lens.

and since the 50mm 1.8 OSS is coming soon, I was wondering if there's a need to get it over my legacy 50mm 1.8 which costs next to nothing. I don't need OSS on this FL & I'm fine w/ MF but if it'll save all my "mis-focused" shooting from the legacy lens, it might be worthwhile.

--
http://kev777zero.artistswanted.org/
http://www.wix.com/drkevinlyu/photography

Click to expand...

--
Cheers,
Henry

While AF typically always gets "something" in focus, it isn't always what I want to be in focus, without fiddling around with changing the focus point, etc. In the same time, I could have manually focused, without the mental gymnastics of realizing that the camera focused on the wrong thing.

Stop down 1 to 1-1/2 stops on your manual lens, and see if your keeper percentage doesn't jump way, way up. I think you'll find the bokeh more pleasing, too...at least I do.

Unless I take at least 5-10 seconds to focus, I get a very low hit rate; 10% at best. The only (nearly) foolproof way of quickly getting a focused shot is to use rapid drive mode and to focus through the target while shooting.

twald said:

Unless I take at least 5-10 seconds to focus, I get a very low hit rate; 10% at best. The only (nearly) foolproof way of quickly getting a focused shot is to use rapid drive mode and to focus through the target while shooting.

Click to expand...

I second that advice. We have huge capacities on memory cards today, and the NEX-5N is especially capability of very fast bursts. Of course your percentage will go down, but the number of keepers could go up. It's just more of a pain to sort out which ones to keep later, especially when I get several good shots and can't make up my mind which I like better!

Between tweaking the peaking settings and things that affect them (jpeg preview sharpness, etc.), experimenting with aperture and zone focusing, practice, and letting either the subject (or the photographer move through the plane of focus during a burst) you'll do fine.

I'm really surprised to read about low manual focus success rates. The question I have is why so low?

I can't use a camera that doesn't have a viewfinder because of my 65 year old eyes, but I still use my manual focus cameras, my auto focus film camera in manual focus mode, and my DSLRs with manual focus. The only time I have trouble is in handheld macro photography where slight rocking back and forth is enough to throw off the set focus.

Most of my cameras (including my 35mm and medium format manual focus cameras) do not have any focusing aid, except a finely ground glass in the VF. My miss rate due to poor focus is very low, maybe 1 or 2 shots in a 36 shot roll, if any.

When the Blue Angels used to perform where I worked (in some cases flying directly over us at very low altitude -- back before safety regs were enforced), I would easily track them using my manual focus cameras. The hardest thing was advancing film while keeping them where I wanted in the frame. Of course using a 2-touch zoom made things much more difficult, but with a push pull zoom it wasn't that hard, although my miss rate would be a bit higher than when using a prime. It did take some practice tracking and maintaining focus othe planes or other moving subjects while making a series of shots, but it just took some concentration. Obviously, the more a subject moves erratically and the closer it is, the harder it is to track.

tom

Tom, I think you verbalised what I was thinking, but I think the reason lies in a single word: experience.

I don't mean photographic experience in general but the experience that comes of using manually focused cameras of all shapes and sizes on all kinds of subject and situation. You learn how to focus instinctively in much the same way you learn to walk - and it only becomes simple after you spend a long time learning how to do it without falling over.

--
John Bean [GMT]

tom said:

Most of my cameras (including my 35mm and medium format manual focus cameras) do not have any focusing aid, except a finely ground glass in the VF. My miss rate due to poor focus is very low, maybe 1 or 2 shots in a 36 shot roll, if any.

Click to expand...

At what size are you viewing your shots? Are you looking at 4x6 "jumbo" prints? I know that having my NEX-5 changes the game for what I'd consider in focus. Back in the 80s when I was shooting with a Canon AE-1, I was always viewing 4x6 prints made at the corner drugstore, and back then I considered an 8x10 to be an "enlargement". Nowadays, an 8x10 would be a significant reduction in print size.

With such large file sizes these days, the game is radically changed. I view all my shots on my 27" iMac, and even then I'm not viewing at 100%. At 100%, I can see only perhaps 1/6th of a shot taken with my NEX-5. And if I can't count the individual lashes on my daughter's eyelids, I consider the shot out of focus. On a 4x6 print back in my younger days, it would have been impossible to tell... and now what many people are calling out of focus would be extremely sharp if rendered down to the small print sizes (4x6, 8x10, etc) that used to be standard.

tom said:

I'm really surprised to read about low manual focus success rates....

Click to expand...

me too

I almost exclusively use manual focus lenses, until recently on Pentax K-x, since about a month on NEX5N. I have learned to have a high hit rate on the Pentax, on the NEX it is so much easier, I wonder how one could not focus right ;-)

--
http://flickr.com/photos/kuuan/
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/andreasgriesmayr
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=kuuan

kuuan said:

I wonder how one could not focus right ;-)

Click to expand...

It's easy to mistake camera shake for focus error. Or when working with very shallow DOF, just moving the camera slightly to or fro can throw off the focus.

--
Erik

I think everyone will get better results in the Summer, when there is more light so you can stop the lens down further and focus by the scale on the lens.

How are the Australians doing?

John Bean (UK) said:

Tom, I think you verbalised what I was thinking, but I think the reason lies in a single word: experience.

I don't mean photographic experience in general but the experience that comes of using manually focused cameras of all shapes and sizes on all kinds of subject and situation. You learn how to focus instinctively in much the same way you learn to walk - and it only becomes simple after you spend a long time learning how to do it without falling over.

Click to expand...

Can you walk and focus at the same time without falling over? ;=)

If I don't wear my glasses things aren't in focus. If I do wear my glasses things are still not in focus.

Seriously, in answer to the question, if I have time to focus properly then things are sharp, but, in a hurry, and particularly with a moving subject (usually Mikey the Irish Setter) things get very iffy. Trouble is that moving subjects are my favorites.

But, as someone here has said, with good light and smaller aperture, it does get easier.

I am thinking of taking up watercolours.

Regards,
Bob

I stated earlier that I have an approximately 10% success rate unless I spend several seconds fine-tuning. If I need to shoot fast, there is no time to use MF assist and I need to rely on focus peeking only, thus the low success rate.

That said, I could probably keep many of the shots that I consider misfocused--instead of discarding them--because I hardly ever view them on a pixel level anyway. Most of my pictures never make it farther than a large screen. The few that I do print are 4x6 for a photo album.

I have a general idea of how sharp each of my lenses are under various conditions and if I find images that are less than best, I usually discard them unless they are really good otherwise. Thus the 10% figure.

D Cox said:

John Bean (UK) said:

Tom, I think you verbalised what I was thinking, but I think the reason lies in a single word: experience.

I don't mean photographic experience in general but the experience that comes of using manually focused cameras of all shapes and sizes on all kinds of subject and situation. You learn how to focus instinctively in much the same way you learn to walk - and it only becomes simple after you spend a long time learning how to do it without falling over.

Click to expand...

Can you walk and focus at the same time without falling over? ;=)

Click to expand...

Sure. Just don't ask me to chew gum at the same time

--
John Bean [GMT]

nex5guy said:

tom said:

Most of my cameras (including my 35mm and medium format manual focus cameras) do not have any focusing aid, except a finely ground glass in the VF. My miss rate due to poor focus is very low, maybe 1 or 2 shots in a 36 shot roll, if any.

Click to expand...

At what size are you viewing your shots? Are you looking at 4x6 "jumbo" prints? I know that having my NEX-5 changes the game for what I'd consider in focus. Back in the 80s when I was shooting with a Canon AE-1, I was always viewing 4x6 prints made at the corner drugstore, and back then I considered an 8x10 to be an "enlargement". Nowadays, an 8x10 would be a significant reduction in print size.

With such large file sizes these days, the game is radically changed. I view all my shots on my 27" iMac, and even then I'm not viewing at 100%. At 100%, I can see only perhaps 1/6th of a shot taken with my NEX-5. And if I can't count the individual lashes on my daughter's eyelids, I consider the shot out of focus. On a 4x6 print back in my younger days, it would have been impossible to tell... and now what many people are calling out of focus would be extremely sharp if rendered down to the small print sizes (4x6, 8x10, etc) that used to be standard.

Click to expand...

Generally 8x10 or 8-loupe on slides; some 11x14; Some scanned and viewed on a 19 (ish) inch monitor. It certainly did not seem that the OP was talking about poster size prints viewed at a distance of 8-inches. But if he was talking about posters or murals, then it would make sense. But it would be interesting to learn what he meant.

I only have a little experience trying to manually focus with an EVF (and none with an LCD - I have enough trouble trying to compose on an LCD), but I never felt comfortable manually focusing with an EVF (or setting focus on a monitor or TV). The fine detail that I concentrate on when focusing, just doesn't appear as distinct (to me) for some reason.

tom said:

Generally 8x10 or 8-loupe on slides; some 11x14; Some scanned and viewed on a 19 (ish) inch monitor. It certainly did not seem that the OP was talking about poster size prints viewed at a distance of 8-inches. But if he was talking about posters or murals, then it would make sense. But it would be interesting to learn what he meant.

Click to expand...

I just took it to mean that when he reviews his NEX shots on a monitor after downloading, that a portion of the shots end up being out of focus...

I took a number of shots of my wife at Christmas in low light, so I used a Super Takumar 55mm f1.8 on my NEX, with the aperture set pretty wide to deal with the darkness. I think I kept about 50% of the shots. The other half would have been OK in small prints like 4x6 or perhaps 8x10... but viewed on my monitor, the scale was large enough for me to see that I'd missed the focus by a hair - her eyes might appear a bit soft, etc. - so I deleted them as misses. I THINK that's what the OP was trying to discern... what % of shots are keepers when using a manual lens. With how I understand the question, I'm keeping perhaps 75% down to 50% of my manual shots.

bobmandwendyv said:

If I don't wear my glasses things aren't in focus. If I do wear my glasses things are still not in focus.

Seriously, in answer to the question, if I have time to focus properly then things are sharp, but, in a hurry, and particularly with a moving subject (usually Mikey the Irish Setter) things get very iffy. Trouble is that moving subjects are my favorites.

But, as someone here has said, with good light and smaller aperture, it does get easier.

I am thinking of taking up watercolours.

Regards,
Bob

Click to expand...

Sometimes I'm right there with you!

I agree. With manual focus there is no one to blame but yourself. However manual focusing takes some time and practice to get right. Most of the time automatic focus is good, but you do need to pay attention to what is being focused upon. As you said, the computer in the camera does not always know what you want focused.

I am getting much better with my manual focusing and the peaking colors help out tremendously. Combine the peaking feature with the magnified focusing option and there is no excuse for a poorly focused image if you have a moment or two. However those shots that are a bit more lively can be a bit more tricky to get and I seem to have about a 70% success rate. Again the peaking feature is brilliant in this, just you have to be quick.

I have noticed that focusing can be very different depending on the lens I am using. My favorite lens that I love for stills and macro work is amazing because the focus ring has a lot of travel, almost one and a half turns around the barrel. This is great for getting the focusing just right when I have the time to spend. However because of the long travel between the extremes, it is not very quick and not very useful for quick focusing. On the opposite side is another lens I own that travels only about 2/3 of the barrel. It is not as accurate as the first lens for getting really detailed perfectly focused shots, but much quicker in getting focused in a hurry.

Additionally the aperture you are using can make a big difference. If you are shotting in the 2.8 or 3.6, you have to pay a lot more attention to what you focusing.

My rule right now is that if I am just playing around and taking "fun" shots I go almost entirely with my manual lenses. However if they are shots that are more important, such as family gatherings or a wedding, I stick with the kit 18-55mm lens. I don't get too upset if the images of the flower I took are a bit off and I delete them, chalk it up to learning. However if the images are going to have special meaning, I don't want the only family picture for five years to be blurry.

jeffinsfg said:

While AF typically always gets "something" in focus, it isn't always what I want to be in focus, without fiddling around with changing the focus point, etc. In the same time, I could have manually focused, without the mental gymnastics of realizing that the camera focused on the wrong thing.

Stop down 1 to 1-1/2 stops on your manual lens, and see if your keeper percentage doesn't jump way, way up. I think you'll find the bokeh more pleasing, too...at least I do.

Click to expand...

--
Novice photobug, proud NEX-3 owner
http://davesnex-3photos.blogspot.com/