Re: 35mm Eyes

["Charles E. Love, Jr." <cel14@cornell.edu>]

At 08:58 AM 12/12/96 -0500, you wrote:
>
>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, but that using the motor drive and a LOT of film ensures that some
>of the shots are dead on.  Of course, these guys are shooting for magazine
>and newspaper publication, and their shot may end up being printed in a 2"
>by 4" corner of an article, so perhaps accuracy isn't all that important.  I
>would guess the AF failure rate under these circumstances (fast, long prime
>lens, rapidly shifting point of focus, rapidly shifting target) is 5% or so.
>

There are, I think, two places where AF (mostly Canon) has totally taken over.  

One is sports photography with long lenses.  I had occasion recently to look
at some old Sports Illustrated covers, and what was obvious (to the point of
shock) was how much better photographed the current covers are.  Shots
obviously taken with long lenses and blown up to fit the covers are
incredibly crisper than their predecessors.  You can also see this in the SI
swimsuit issue, where many of the photographs are done with a 300 mm. 2.8
lens close to wide open (often hand-held)--the sharpness is incredible.  So
I think accuracy does matter to these people, and they achieve it.  Of
course they use motor drives and burn a lot of film--sports photogs have
always done that--but my bet is that accuracy is much higher with AF under
these conditions.

The other place AF has taken over, as many posts have mentioned, is one area
of photojournalism, where quick shots in fast moving situations are required
(e.g., walking backward in front of an advancing candidate).  Here again,
these posts have made clear, accuracy is greater than could be achieved with
manual focus.

Of course this doesn't really answer the question, since all this shows is
that AF may be better, more practical,  in fast-breaking situations, and the
question is about the ultimate accuracy of AF and MF (perhaps with plenty of
time to check things).   So AF may not be needed by a landscape photographer
(though the Canon auto DOF feature is sure fun).  Anyway, when it came out I
thought AF was a silly fad--and I was wrong.  There are types of photography
where it's essential, as the late lamented Eric Welsh always told us!

Charlie

Charles E. Love, Jr.
CEL14@CORNELL.EDU