Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/05/14

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Follow focusing (WAS: Thanks!! OT Nikon F5)
From: Harrison Mcclary <harrison@mcclary.net>
Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 11:46:05 -0500

once upon a time Simon Lamb wrote:

> The focus Lock-On on my SLR will not refocus if something comes between the
> camera
> and the subject (at any focal length).  It stays focussed on the subject as it
> knows
> from the distance information provided by the D lens that you do not want the
> intruding element to be in focus.  It sounds iffy but it works superbly.

This I do not know about...to shoot with AF after shooting with MF requires
you to learn how to shoot all over again as you have to become aware of
where your focus point is, if you are doing this focus lock thing then know
when to engage it and such...one question on the focus lock...if shooting a
rapidly erratically moving subject as a football player how do you know
where to lock focus to?  I know on the older lenses when shooting
professional baseball I would sometimes pre-focus to 2nd base a set the
focus stop there then when a play happened there all I had to do was spin
the focus till it stopped and fire...is the focus lock the electronic
version of the old focus lock?  if so I do not think that would work for
something like football or wildlife, of course I could be totally
misunderstanding the focus lock thing you are talking about.

On my EOS cameras I have the focus to activate when I press a button on the
back of the camera, not the exposure button this helps to control when and
how the camera focuses and keeps everything from being dead center frame as
I can focus and recompose....of course that does not work on sports.

> Thank you for sharing your experience.  One last question - how do you scan in
> your
> images to look that good.  I use a Coolscan LS30 and I cannot get that
> quality.

I use a Polaroid Sprint Scan.  I scan at top resolution then drop it back
for web publishing.  Those images were compressed using PROJPEG plugin, now
I use Fireworks for web images.  The Deion shot may have been a Photo CD
image, but my Polaroid gives better results than the Photo CD does.

Oh and only the net cutting photo was made with Leica and that was an R6 and
180 elmarit.  The others were all shot with an old Canon F1 and 400 2.8L FD
version...still the same principals apply to manual focus as it would with
the R8.  I used to use an R8, R6 and lenses but had so many problems and
such a poor response from Leica on the problems that I went back to Canon.

- -- 
Harrison McClary
http://www.mcclary.net

Replies: Reply from Simon Lamb <s_lamb@compuserve.com> (Re: [Leica] Follow focusing (WAS: Thanks!! OT Nikon F5))