Manual VS Auto

sir-les-mp · 18 Jul 2011 at 01:53

ok im new to DSLR camera's etc but i would like to find out from the patrons of OCUK what they prefer

Manual Focus VS Auto Focus

Firstly we have old style Manual lenses where focus and apeture/timing has to worked out per shot ( and a huge saving )

OR

Autofocus

where the camera works out you focus DOF leaving you to decide the aperture and timing (with a servere dent to thy wallet )
Now i do know from a little play with a canon DSLR that using manual focus at any distance requires not only a decent (antiquie ) lens but a tripod and time to set up the shot porperly

as per the newer auto focus (image stabilization ) lenses worth the price of a good quality evenj when 2nd hand car.

depending on your budget 1 can give you pin sharp pics at long distances without any distortions and very little in mental Mathematics but depleting your funds dramatically, where as the other can also give you pin sharp pics at any distance however your brain will also get a good workout, however saving you several pounds/dollars in the process.

Auraomega · 18 Jul 2011 at 02:01

...wait are you talking about manual focusing here or image stabilising? 2 completely different things which you seem to have used interchangeably here...

sir-les-mp · 18 Jul 2011 at 02:20

Auraomega said:
...wait are you talking about manual focusing here or image stabilising? 2 completely different things which you seem to have used interchangeably here...

possibly a bit of both

ive just bought a manual focus 1:5.6 300mm M42 telephoto prime lens for £2.50 at a car boot sale. Now the lens does need a little attantion i.e taken apart and given a good clean.

Now looking at the few test shots i took with it just after purchase (prior to a good cleaning ) im looking at a very good sharp lens at great distance for very little money.

So possibly im looking at Have we become lazy depending on High Priced AutoFocus Lenses with the inventionj of good quality DSLR camera's

Ive been looking at lens prices closley recently since getting hold of my canon 400d DSLR and have noticed a patern.

The more the lens seems to help out with the shot being taken the mopre money it seems to cost.
For instnace a canon 75 - 300 mm lens can be bought for approx £80

however if you add the letterrs USM and a lower F number i.e 2.8 compared to say 4 - 5.6 then lens price more than qudruples at times.
but ive seen some Manual lenses with the same focal length and larger f stop ie 2 or 1.8 go for very l;ittle moeny as the user has to focus amually as well as work out thetiming for the shot depending on thier current DOF

asim18 · 18 Jul 2011 at 03:39

With the utmost respect, I read your posts twice and they don't make much sense. Sorry.

sir-les-mp said:
as per the newer auto focus (image stabilization ) lenses worth the price of a good quality evenj when 2nd hand car.

That's gotta be the most nonsensical paragraph ever written.

Now looking at the few test shots i took with it just after purchase (prior to a good cleaning ) im looking at a very good sharp lens at great distance for very little money.

How come it was sharper before you cleaned it? Did you clean it with sandpaper?

Good 'manual' lenses are still worth a lot of money in this day and age. I prefer automatic focus as it's just so much more convenient and possibly more accurate in time-critical situations.

AtticusFinch · 18 Jul 2011 at 07:21

There's several issues you've raised clearly auto focus lenses have a massive convenience factor and especially for moving subjects they will allow tracking of a subject through constant focus and allow you to get on with composing the shot and indeed may allow more shotsto be taken thereby narrowing the chance of a lost shot.

With old glass, the reality is that some are very good compared to today's standards of glass with "high quality" lens components. That's not say that all "modern" lenses are better, but many (especially particular prime and/or fast 2.8 zooms) usually are. There will be exceptions to this observation, but those exceptions will very rarely be found at car boot sales for £2.50.

If you're shooting still life, portraiture or landscapes then perhaps the autofocus advantage is wiped out and a manual lens is equal or better, but in many situations there's either no particular disadvantage or a positive advantage to af lenses.

The final point I'd make is that the "modern" lenses allow you to focus manually anyway and I frequently do if the situation calls for it or I feel like it. The beauty of a digital SLR os that you can use it from set and forget setting through to completely manual and everything in between.

Raymond Lin · 18 Jul 2011 at 07:34

The point is, can your lens get you the shot you need.

Money, is almost irrelevant if it doesn't get me a single useable shot in a day's shooting. Like AtticusFinch here said, it depends on what you are shooting. If you are shooting something that isn't moving then it's all fine, but try shooting something that moves with your manual focus lenses at an aperture lower than F/2, without a proper focus screen you will be killing yourself for nothing.

A USM lens costs more, but if it works, then it's worth it.

P.s. what quality secondhand cars have you been buying for under £1,000? Lol

bigredshark · 18 Jul 2011 at 13:53

It's worth saying some of the 'action' shots I'm most pleased with have actually been taken in manual focus (even with a 70-200 f/2.8), if I can predict the action and preset focus on a particular point then I don't need to worry about AF locking on.

It's mainly a habit from older bodies which had less capable AF I think but it's effective and I get a lot of keepers using that method, particularly where I have a shot in mind to capture rather than just shooting to see what comes out.

Ksanti · 18 Jul 2011 at 14:10

There's plenty of reason why the new more expensive lenses are better, and it's not just easiness.

Aperture is a hard and fast spec - it doesn't make it easier, it expands your options. An f/2.8 lens will be able to take photos that an f/4-5.6 lens could never match, no matter how skilled you are as a photographer you can't generate shallow DOF and light gathering out of nothing.

Focusing motor is again, a very important part of it. Sure you might occasionally hit a winner but you won't get it reliably.

The IS and USM lenses aren't just adding those onto the bone stock lens anyway, they generally have vastly different optical constructions allowing the larger apertures and for the most part giving vastly superior optical quality.

If you've found a £2.50 300mm lens that can go toe to toe with new 300mm primes or even the 70-300 lenses, then congrats to you, but I doubt it.

Andy90 · 18 Jul 2011 at 16:45

If you've managed to get a good sharp shot on a modern DSLR with a vintage lens then well done

They're tools and as Raymond says if it produces the shot you need that is all it needs to do.

Bigredshark makes another valid point - predicting the point at where you will take your shot and prefocussing can result more often or not in better action shots than with autofocus, which can sometimes hunt for focus missing that split second where everything comes together.

I disagree with Ksanti a little. Shallow DoF isn't the be all and end all of photography. Composition, lighting (direction, colour and intensity), technique, shutter speed (faster or slower) and subject matter all contribute to whether the photograph is a great shot or not. Some of the greatest photographers had slow lenses. Sticking a fast lens on a camera does not make someone a good photographer.

Some old lenses from Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Contax and Carl Zeiss are well worth looking out for a Carboot Sales and can often be picked up for next to nothing.

Are they better than todays lenses? Some are, some aren't I'll give you an example.

The two shots below are taken on a Canon 50D at 100 ISO. Both shots were taken with an aperture of f/8.0. One of the shots was taken with a modern Canon EF 100mm USM f/2.8 Macro lens. The other was taken with a 24 year old Tamron SP 90mm f/2.5 lens (it has an adaptall 2 mount so I popped on a Nikon Adaptall mount then got a Nikon to Eos Lens converter to mount it to the Canon 50D). Neither shot was sharpened in any way but they were altered slightly to account for a small variance in exposure and converted to B&W to hide the slight difference in colour (due to the light from the window altering).

There really isn't much between them. The first is the Tamron, the second is the Canon. The fact is old Prime lenses can be absolute cracking lenses. I would be a bit more wary of zoom lenses.

Bri · 18 Jul 2011 at 18:36

Were you drunk when you posted these? I can't make any sense of your posts

Ksanti · 18 Jul 2011 at 19:54

Andy90 said:
I
I disagree with Ksanti a little. Shallow DoF isn't the be all and end all of photography. Composition, lighting (direction, colour and intensity), technique, shutter speed (faster or slower)....

You don't actually disagree with me, I think I was a little vague.

What I meant was that things like aperture change an image in a way that a photographer's skill alone cannot. The point being that aperture is not something that makes it 'easier' (as the OP half-stated) but an extension of a lenses capabilities. It might not make the shot better but it is something that an f/4-5.6 lens would not be able to recreate exactly, no matter the photographer.

The overall idea was that he was saying that digital and new lenses just made things 'easier', the implication being that using them made us lazy as photographers, whereas my stance is that digital cameras and advanced lenses haven't made any of us better photographers, but opened up the possibilities of what we can photograph.

I.e. action, landscape, macro and sports photography were infinitely less prevalent fields of photography when film cameras and lenses made it so much less practicable or even impossible to achieve the shots, whereas portraiture, street photography and fashion have been with us from the start of photography more or less.

sir-les-mp · 18 Jul 2011 at 20:01

asim18 said:
With the utmost respect, I read your posts twice and they don't make much sense. Sorry.

That's gotta be the most nonsensical paragraph ever written.

How come it was sharper before you cleaned it? Did you clean it with sandpaper?

Good 'manual' lenses are still worth a lot of money in this day and age. I prefer automatic focus as it's just so much more convenient and possibly more accurate in time-critical situations.

I forgot to double check my post as my keyboard sometimes plays up and gives me different letters to those i thought i had typed in.

As for How come it was sharper before i cleaned it.

i obviosly didnt put across propery, What i meant it to say was from the few test shots ive taken with it Once ive given it a good clean i should have a very sharp 300mm lens.

DampCat · 18 Jul 2011 at 20:19

It depends entirely on what i'm shooting. If my subject isn't moving at all, but my focus point is changing, then I sometimes, although rarely, use manual.

Of course, manual is the only option when shooting video.

The studio i work in still has a cupboard full of old nikon and canon lenses, and they're excellent. Even the 80-200 Nikon is still sublime.

Broken Hope · 18 Jul 2011 at 20:19

sir-les-mp said:
however if you add the letterrs USM and a lower F number i.e 2.8 compared to say 4 - 5.6 then lens price more than qudruples at times.

Lenses that have lower F numbers, especially ones that can do that F number over their entire focal length have much more glass in them and are much harder to make, so of course they are going to cost more.

Andy90 · 18 Jul 2011 at 20:40

Ksanti said:
You don't actually disagree with me, I think I was a little vague.

What I meant was that things like aperture change an image in a way that a photographer's skill alone cannot. The point being that aperture is not something that makes it 'easier' (as the OP half-stated) but an extension of a lenses capabilities. It might not make the shot better but it is something that an f/4-5.6 lens would not be able to recreate exactly, no matter the photographer.

The overall idea was that he was saying that digital and new lenses just made things 'easier', the implication being that using them made us lazy as photographers, whereas my stance is that digital cameras and advanced lenses haven't made any of us better photographers, but opened up the possibilities of what we can photograph.

I.e. action, landscape, macro and sports photography were infinitely less prevalent fields of photography when film cameras and lenses made it so much less practicable or even impossible to achieve the shots, whereas portraiture, street photography and fashion have been with us from the start of photography more or less.

My apologies then

Oh and if anyone wants some good websites about Old lenses, try these, they give some really good tips

http://forum.mflenses.com/

http://forum.manualfocus.org/

http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-manual-lenses/

bigredshark · 18 Jul 2011 at 21:50

Ksanti said:
I.e. action, landscape, macro and sports photography were infinitely less prevalent fields of photography when film cameras and lenses made it so much less practicable or even impossible to achieve the shots

Some of that is just factually false, landscape photographers were among the very last people to move over to digital because of the quality aspect. There is absolutely zero that you can produce in landscape terms with a modern camera that you couldn't produce 30 years ago, the number of landscape photographers shooting medium format (film or digital - and medium format digital is still highly manual despite the £10k backs shooting 0.6fps at 60MP) is testament to that.

And landscape photography was less prevalent? What? Ansel Adams? William Jackson? Too many others to mention...

Sports photography was also pretty well established with film too, remember only todays pro bodies equal the speed of the later film SLRs for motor drive. The Nikon F5 was 8fps in 1996 with continuous AF - hell the F4 was close to 6fps in 1988!

For most photographers digital and newer lenses have just made things easier, even for things like AF they've only really changed the equation so you get the perfect shot a bit more often. You can shoot 1000 frames for next to no cost today, doesn't effect the ability of a good photographer to get the shot really.

All the fancy processing that people think is down to digital used to be done in the darkroom in many cases.

Modern gear has a place and sometimes it's worth it, it has a place but in 95% of cases a decent photographer can get exactly the same result with a 30 year old camera and some thought. Groups like

http://www.flickr.com/groups/mamiyalove/pool/

are testament to that. You can pick up a Mamiya 645 and decent lens for £250 today if you look around, you won't get anything new of comparable quality for less than £1k. Yes, you might get the perfect shot 10 frames in every hundred with new gear rather than 5 in every hundred with that, but that's pretty much the definition of making it easier to me.