Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/12/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 08:58 AM 12-12-96 -0500, Marc wrote: >Charlie Love challenges my point on AF accuracy and demands proof. For >written documentation, I can only quote factory literature, which is suspect >on its face. > >I do know several pros who shoot sports events (mainly races of one sort or >the other) with Canon AF gear, and they uniformly acknowledge that shooting >with a long, fast prime (2.8/300 L or so) will lead to a fair number of lost >frames...[snip] I think there are two issues here; how well an AF camera can find the proper point in the scene to focus on, and when it does, how accurate is the focus itself. I don't doubt that many pictures (especially those involving fast moving sports figures etc)) are lost due to the camera locking in on the wrong subject. What I am concerned with is when my AF camera focuses on an object exactly 10 meters away, will the focus be as accurate as a MF camera focused manually by eye. I can't recall being surprised by an out-of-focus shot that my Minolta 9000 with 50/1.4 lens autofocused. I DO recall missing the focus with my Leica 75/1.4 at 1.4 when I am focusing on someones eyes (the depth of field being about 1/4 inch at portrait distances). Minolta makes a very good 85/1.4 (which I don't own) and I am sure that it will give me a higher percentage of successfully focused shots than my leica 75/1.4. Whether or not the resulting pictures are better or worse is another question. By the way, in the old days when pros used MF to photograph fast moving races, I am sure that much film was wasted due to poor focusing, certainly much more than today. Otherwise pros would not be flocking over to cameras like Canon EOS-1 and the new Nikon F5. Dan C.