manual focus, how on earth do you nail it?

I tired using foucs bracketing when I first got my maunal lens. I quite often found that I had just missed that "moment" with one of the out of focus shots. it was very frustrating,

But my camera shoots at 3fps.

I don't think there is a right way to do it, If you can get a prefectly clear shot by balancing upside down then you should balance upside down!

Stuart
 
awp said:
My very first SLR - a NIKON F - only had manual focussing - there was no alternative - but you could tell when the image was in focus from the screen - i.e. the camera told you - it was manual focus!!
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Correct me if I'm wrong but the F had a split screen viewfinder, no electronic rangefinder or anything right, no beep or light to say your focused?
In which case the camera was designed to make it easier for you to tell when the image was in focus but the camera did not actually tell you anything. There was no light that came on or beep that sounded when the camera judged the image to be focused.
 
No light, no beep - no batteries...but the camera still told you by lining up the image in the split image rangefinder..in a way.
 
awp said:
No light, no beep - no batteries...but the camera still told you by lining up the image in the split image rangefinder..in a way.
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No, the camera's design made it easier for YOU to judge when the image was in focus.
Lights, beeps and electronic rangefinders do away with your judgement and put the decision onto the camera so the photographer is merely bypassing the af motor by turning the focus ring by hand.
 
ok - a fine line - either way - a bloody sight harder than it is today.
 
awp said:
ok - a fine line - either way - a bloody sight harder than it is today.
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Eh?
You'd rather manually focus a modern camera with no split image than an older camera with it?
Or dya mean that it was harder before auto focus existed?
 
I mean it was harder before AF - see my earlier reply in this thread below:

It was much easier with film SLRs because they had screens that popped in and out of focus - screens on today's DSLRs are not designed for manual focussing. On Nikons there is a little green dot that shows when you are in focus - but whether you have it on the right spot - that's down to practice. personally I'd rather let the camera do the work - why make life hard?
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I'm not sure if its already been mentioned but you may have to play with diopter settings a bit - it could be that the viewfinder is not calibrated with your eye sight making the viewfinder all very slightly blurred with the result of it being harder to see the 'sweet spot' so to speak.
 
razor777 said:
I'm not sure if its already been mentioned but you may have to play with diopter settings a bit - it could be that the viewfinder is not calibrated with your eye sight making the viewfinder all very slightly blurred with the result of it being harder to see the 'sweet spot' so to speak.
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yep, been said before, have a scan back though -this is not the issue. The issue is that on modern dSLRs the viewfinder has more dof than the actual real life scenario theres a good link a few pages back with a visual representation of this to explain it.
 
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