Wieland writes:
>I am one of the remaining manual-focus-only users.
>What I would find a useful information (e.g. on Boz' page) is the max
>turning angle of the
>focussing ring. The new AF lenses have only a very short angle from
>infinity to minimum
>focussing distance (usually 90 deg or smaller). This small angle makes it
>generally
>difficult to focus manually.
I use a pair of 20 yr old MX's and have a manual Tokina ATX 80-200 f/2.8
(which replaced an SMC 200 f/2.5 a few years ago - sold that), a manual
Tokina ATX 90 f/2.5, and a brand new ATX 28-70 f/2.6. This last one is an
autofocus lens and I was very apprehensive about having it on the MX, but
my fears were unfounded. The manual focus grip is huge - it focuses
smoothly and has just the right amount of damping - but you are quite
right about the limited amount of travel of the focus ring. In just less
than 90 degrees of turn you go from infinity to minimum focus (in this
case a mediocre .7 of a metre) which at first I thought was pretty
unsettling to say the least.
Having played with it for a week or so now, I find that it's growing on
me. With the 80-200, to go from max to min focus I need a trained hamster
to do a 100m sprint on the top of the focus grip - laborious but I guess
it's just something one gets used to. Having said that, the 80-200 has a
pretty good min focus dist so I can't complain.
In fact the short focus travel of the Tokina 28-70 (and other AF lenses,
including Pentax - just to keep this straying post on topic...) is
turning out to be a positive feature. I find the focusing very quick,
although it requires much more input from the brain in deciding when the
focus is 'in'. I use just plain flat focussing screens, with a centre
fresnel ring, and a clear middle spot (can't remember the Pentax
designation) and I have no trouble at all. Pehaps full autofocus would
teach me to relax a little and concentrate on the image, composition etc,
but I doubt it. I would guess that autofocus saves two things: time and
embarrassment. I'm quite happy focussing the old-fasioned way.
My next camera may well be Pentax's digital 'flagship'. I've already
forsaken smelly old darkrooms for the fascination of digital image
processing (on a Mac of course!) so the next logical step is to let the
light fall on a CCD - in manual focus of course...
Cheers,
Cotty
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