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From: David Ruether on 26 Jul 2010 09:33

"Chris Malcolm" <cam(a)holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:8b4tvqF5k7U2(a)mid.individual.net...

[...]
> Is this autofocus uncertainty just due to the huge DoF of such wide
> lenses? Perhaps a contributor, but certainly not the whole story,
> because I find when using autofocus with both the 8-16mm and the
> 10-20mm that I'll often get a rather soft image, and occasionally a
> sharper one, indicating that the problem isn't the lens. Using manual
> focus gets me a higher proportion of sharp shots. So I usually either
> focus it manually or leave it preset at a handy hyperfocal setting for
> the kind of distance ranges I'm encountering.
> --
> Chris Malcolm
> Warning: none of the above is indisputable fact.

Back in the days of FF cameras while some still had very sharp
VFs (Nikon F/F2/F3, F100, FA/E/M), I could easily manually
focus lenses down to 8mm, but with AF came many VFs that
favored brightness over contrast and ease of use for manual
focusing. Eventually, good AF arrived for most lenses, but
I didn't bother with using it with the very short FLs since
they could be scale-focused so accurately - and I continued
to use this method for focusing superwides once I had established
that their were no mechanical errors in their focusing and with their
focus scales (but there often were such error, unfortunately). Using
a DSLR with enlargeable rear screen image for manual focus (as
you mentioned doing earlier) would appear to offer some
considerable advantage...
--DR


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