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Focus peaking v. magnification

Started May 4, 2014 | Discussions thread
William Porter
William Porter Senior Member • Posts: 1,877
you're right: magnification is more useful

You just started using focus peaking while I've had it available (and have been fiddling with it) for years, but my considered conclusion is the same as your first impression: magnification is more useful than peaking.

I use peaking only when I'm shooting with a manual-focus only lens and I'm shooting stuff that moves too fast for me to keep up with it. In that case I'll want to stop down the aperture to get more depth of field (to give myself some margin for error). But I don't shoot like this very often at all. I generally reserve my manual focus lenses for portrait work where I'm in no particular hurry about focus. And then I use magnification. With magnification, I can nail the focus on the subject's eyeball every time.

If I've got an autofocus lens and the subject is moving and I don't want to focus manually, I get better results letting the camera take care of the focus than I do using peaking. And I have to confess something. After being a manual focus guy much of my life, the E-M1's face detect autofocus is so good I'm starting to reconsider.

My experience, for what it's worth. But if somebody else gets good results from peaking, that's terrific. It's nice to have both options!

Will

 William Porter's gear list:William Porter's gear list
Panasonic LX100 Sony RX10 IV Fujifilm X100V Fujifilm X-E3 Sony a7 III +12 more
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