I am, to some degree, losing interest in the AF 'discussion' because it seems that people are so diverse in their requirements, expectations, knowledge and techniques, that very little common ground seems to be reached on the subject. But rather than abandon the topic entirely, I thought I'd note some of my own thoughts and observations on the subject, FWTW.
Is AF mandatory?
To some people, the AF performance seems to be the most important feature that a camera can possess. To the degree, that poor performance in this areas renders a camera useless and/or pointless to them.
While I do acknowledge that there are some situations that demand excellence in this area, there are an infinite variety of situations that don't involve panning on BIFs, extreme motor-sports and scurrying rug-rats.
Indeed, with AF only entering the commercial market place in the late 70s (although patented by Leica in the 60s, whose best lenses, ironically, are MF), I guess it must seem miraculous to such people that many of the worlds most Iconic images, like Earthrise (AS08-14-2383), were able to be taken at all with such useless/pointless cameras. The Hasselblad cameras used by the Apollo Astronauts, had a three position focus switch (near, medium, far), and the selection of an appropriate f stop for the situation formed an important part of their training .
Has anyone noticed how similar that is to the blindingly fast and incredibly useful SNAP mode of the GXR and other Ricohs?
Sidenote: Training: The act of repeating an action or process so as to become familiar with or improve in the performance of that act or process.
AF on what?
My old EOS 20D and 5D both had 9 AF points arranged in a diamond pattern, with preference given to the centre point. I think the equivalent Nikon at the time had 11 areas, whereas now the Nikon D3 has up to 51 points!
So say you are shooting street, and your selected AF point is an area in bottom left third and then you see a scene that should be focussed in bottom right third. So you quickly invoke the AF point selection, choose the bottom right point, and then what... wonder what the shot would have looked like if you hadn't been so slow?
So you change your technique to one of the following:
Centre point: Focus and recompose.
Multi-point: Let the camera decide what part should be in focus
Face-Detect: Let the camera decide that a face near the centre should be in focus
Smile-Detect: Let the camera decide that a happy face should be in focus
I personally gave up on AF for anything other than snapshots and high speed action quite some time ago. Even for birds in flight I use manual focus. I actually like choosing what parts of my images to be in focus, and sometimes I miss.
Why does Ricoh hate me?
In reading some of the posts, it seems like some people take Ricohs quirky AF on the A12 module as a personal attack on them and their desire to take beautiful images.
I don't think Ricoh hates me (or you!). Everything about the A12 seems designed to deliver stunning quality high resolution, high dynamic range images, with truly beautiful DOF rendering, beating everything in its class.
X1, A12, DP1, DP2. All compact APS-C seem to have operation issues that you have to learn to overcome if the extra IQ is worth it to you. At least with the A12, you have many options for achieving focus (snap, MF + magnification, AF x 3)
If you really need more predictable AF in a prosumer compact, then Panasonic has a solution that allows better AF at the cost of a little IQ.
It's good to have the choice no?
-Najinsky
I know, it gets confusing but it makes sense if you look at how threads flow on DPReview.
