Hi! I suppose it would be acceptable if I drew your attention away from recent flame wars and insult exchanges.
Having to use my manual focus lenses on ZX-L and having to mount my SMC FA 50/1.7 on my ME Super keeps my mind working around the focus issue. Once upon a time, I read somewhere on the net (probably the huge third party lenses site) that modern AF systems are optimized for 50 lp/mm. Hence, on that site they would conclude that if you have a fine lens, AF would take away most of its qualities by lousy focusing. I thought of it, and it seems total BS (BackSpace <g>) to me. Consider usual case when DOF is not too shallow. Say, I am photographing my daughter with my 35/2.8 and distance and aperture are such that DOF is a couple of meters according to the scale on the lens. Imagine then that it was an AF lens. If I were to focus it on Galia's face I suppose I wouldn't notice a difference in focus from AF and MF. The distance between her eyes and tip of her nose is say less than an inch. Oh well, it is way less than an inch <bg>. So if I were to focus on eyes or tip of her nose, I maintain that it would be very difficult to tell the difference. Now, consider DOF again. Is it right, that towards the limits of the sharp region the sharpness would be less than about the distance at which the lens focused? It would still appear sharp for human eye, right? That's what DOF is about - distance at which image is still __perceived__ sharp, right? So it boils down to two questions/points: 1. Sharpness is different across the DOF region. I mean the sharpness that can be measured, say by very big enlargement. 2. For reasonably big DOF region AF is no worse than MF. Am I right, or am I totally off again? Thanks. --- Boris Liberman www.geocities.com/dunno57
