> On 4 Mar 2024, at 10:16, Ralf R Radermacher <p...@uebra.de> wrote: > > >> In the video he talks about using zone focusing on the camera. > > The only times I ever see this term is when people describe the way the > Horizon panoramic camera is focussed or rather isn't. It has no focussing > control. Instead it's fix-focussed somehere mid-distance between here and > infinity and you have to stop down to get whatever you want to be sharp into > focus.
It’s a technique that was necessary before rangefinders were standard on cameras, and is still quite widely used by street photographers, using the hyperfocal distance to ensure maximum depth of field. Manual lenses are generally marked with the hyperfocal ranges for different f-stops. Some, such as the thread-mount Leica 50mm Elmar that I have, use a mark to line up focus at 10ft/3m so you can be ready to snap à la sauvette. At f8 everything is in focus from 7.5 feet / 2.something metres to 15ft/4-5m. At 3m the vertical 35mm frame covers the height of a normal door - perfect for when you’re pouting into a mirror for a full-length selfie. It might be a bit different for a half-frame camera. Old school paparazzi relied on this to get their flash-subject distance right. They set their cameras, focus and flashes in advance and pressed the button only when their target was positioned correctly in the finder. The human figure becomes the scale for all the camera settings, something I expect Le Corbusier would have approved of. -- %(real_name)s Pentax-Discuss Mail List To unsubscribe send an email to pdml-le...@pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
