Originally posted by repaap My biggest gripe was MF, with my sammy. I sold it, it was super sharp'n all, but If you miss focus then that does not matter. That nice smooth Oof becomes annoying with your subject in it... FA 77 is smaller, but AF is also really nice, even if it is not super fast. Fast enough. Especially with FF 84/1,4 has really thin in focus area wide open.
Yep, that's the conclusion I am coming too, but my funds are too low to afford anything else, and I really wanted to experience 85/1.4 for myself (I have a Takumar 135/2.5 which I find a similar experience to handle). Like the Takumar the Sammy is hit or miss with nailing f1.4-1.8 on things far away, this from the eyepiece that is. I have actually removed my Pentax 1.22 magnifier as I think it hinders the process. Either it needs a good clean or it just blurs things every so slightly that the sharpness feedback is compromised (of what I can tell with my currently healthy eyes).
If the subject matter is closer then nailing f1.4 and 1.6 things becomes easier, so it maybe that when shooting something further away just bump that aperture down to f4 or something to get a better safety buffer.
This picture was taken last night, shot with the Sammy at f1.6 (ISO 800).
It took two attempts, due to the slightly off centre I just had to use my eye to judge the correct sharpness. I have increased clarity and sharpness slightly on the bottle, but I think it's a good pic to illustrate that even f1.6 can be neat if you nail it, I'm just hoping that with practice I can get it right first time more and more.
There maybe times I use a monopod and LV with magnification to hit higher success rates, and with people I am anxious to pulling off the shot (as they will move ever so slightly as well as myself), so we'll see. AF might not help much with this focal length and thin DoF (Christopher Rankins would probably be best to tell, I wonder how many shots it takes him with his Pentax 85*/1.4 to get things just right when shooting particularly wide with that lens).
The issue really is the Focus Confirmation, it's a range not a single point. You can twist and turn the lens quite a fair bit within this range, which when shooting at f1.4-1.6 is a large shift in where the focus lies. I tried to do some Focus Chart testing with it this week and what I learned is that if you focus from near to far (and then get the green focus hex confirmation) then perhaps that should be what you fine adjust the lens to, and never focus confirm from twisting the focus ring from far to near. I think if you always twist to focus in one direction then you may increase the success rate significantly (with the Fine Adjustments biased towards this), at least that is the theory I am going to practice and work on...
Until I decide which child of mine to sell I will have to make do with the Samyang and just drool over the Pentax 85*