[potsmoker]

I began shooting with Pentax K5. After a year or so of not frequent photographing with it I have discovered film and since then my digital camera is lying on a shelf. I loved the process from the start: slow paced workflow, developing with chemicals. Every shot counts, so you try to nail the exposure and don't do crappy shots, or do less of them at least. Film photography makes you a better photographer! I have two medium format cameras, two 35mm and one digital which don't use anymore but I don't sell it, because there may be times when I'll need it, where film camera won't do the job (there was no such ocassion yet).

[stevebrot]

...always thought auto focus was an ingenious solution to a non-exsistant problem...

AF has its use cases, but the compromises have not been worth the benefit.


Steve

[IHS]

Manual focus is all good and fine if you have a subject willing to sit and pose for you...like a building. But just try using in on a running deer or a diving pelican. It's useless. You WILL come home empty handed.

[ivanvernon]

Manual focus is all good and fine if you have a subject willing to sit and pose for you...like a building. But just try using in on a running deer or a diving pelican. It's useless. You WILL come home empty handed.

That is a very good point. I am wondering how they got pictures of living things before development of autofocus. Did they drug the animals or something?

[IHS]

It was done, as it still is today, by scouts putting the photographers on the game in the am when they were feeding. (read pretty still) A grazing elk would raise his head up while chewing and 15 shutters would all go off. That was it...boring but clear. Stabbing a cheetah was a much tougher challenge. Hundreds of shots would be taken to find one worthy of a magazine. No...auto focus is a good thing.

[rzarector]

The look the feel the taste the smell. All of thee above. And I love getting a seriously botched frame back. Reminds me of where we have come from and that not every photo is perfect and that its still an art.

[arnold]

[IMG][/IMG]

Manual focus is all good and fine if you have a subject willing to sit and pose for you...like a building. But just try using in on a running deer or a diving pelican. It's useless. You WILL come home empty handed.

Never a problem for me. I set a distance most likely to apply (say 50 feet) and an aperture around f8. Here is an example in 1961 with a simple view-finder, snapping a gull mid flight.

[stevebrot]

Manual focus is all good and fine if you have a subject willing to sit and pose for you...like a building. But just try using in on a running deer or a diving pelican. It's useless. You WILL come home empty handed.

I have friends who are prominent professional wildlife photographers and have been doing so since 1980. Imagine that, making a living doing wildlife photography in the field without AF and without motor drive as well. The same is true for sports and and motorsport.

AF is a great help for many things, but I had no problem photographing skiers in the early 1970s with a Ricoh Singlex TLS and last summer photographed bicycle racing using manual focus on my Pentax dSLR when the AF was not able to differentiate between the peloton and spectators.

I don't come back empty handed. It is a matter of technique.


Steve

---------- Post added 12-03-14 at 09:19 PM ----------

Did they drug the animals or something?

Hypnosis?

---------- Post added 12-03-14 at 09:24 PM ----------

It was done, as it still is today, by scouts putting the photographers on the game in the am when they were feeding. (read pretty still) A grazing elk would raise his head up while chewing and 15 shutters would all go off. That was it...boring but clear. Stabbing a cheetah was a much tougher challenge. Hundreds of shots would be taken to find one worthy of a magazine. No...auto focus is a good thing.

Truly? Most reputable magazines will (and would) not accept photos made using such techniques. Ditto for animal farm subjects.*

My friends worked in the back country as a husband-wife team shooting Grizzly and Alaska Brown bears and later in Yellowstone photographing wolves. It helps to find a fresh kill, but usually predators are photographed using many of the same skills needed for hunting the same animals.

You stated that such was impossible without AF, but obviously not true.


Steve

* I used to live near the Olympic Game Farm in Sequim, Washington where many "wild" animal movie sequences were shot using captive animals in large enclosures

[gofour3]

The same is true for sports and and motorsport

Yep I have a few books on the NFL from the early 1970’s, with tons of great colour/b&w action shots and ALL were taken with manual focus cameras.

Phil.

[Tonytee]

Admittedly I am a bit perplexed by this thread. What is so spiritually moving when trying to film deer on the run? I mean, who cares? My reward is getting a close up of such a beautiful animal grazing or just standing still or resting on the ground. I wouldn't attempt to shoot a running Silver Back Gorilla in the wild. However, I would love to get a close up of this powerful creature while he was simply sitting and eating. What better way to capture all the details he offers? Also, I did have an opportunity to photograph one of these guys using a Canon 500mm WR Lens. That is about as close as I dared to get. Any closer and it could be hazardous to one's health. Thanks for reading.

Happy Holidays.

Tony

[malinku]

After getting my first taste of shooting film with an slr a couple months back (on a exakta twin tl. what a weird way to start).
It just felt a lot nicer shooting with the film camera. Then the canon xsi I had.
So I was hooked.

Now that I got a Pentax km and canon ae-1 program. So I'm going to be shooting film for a good long while.
And all cameras should have a nice bright viewfinder like the ae-1.

[Cuthbert]

Manual focus is all good and fine if you have a subject willing to sit and pose for you...like a building. But just try using in on a running deer or a diving pelican. It's useless. You WILL come home empty handed.

As I came home HEMPTY HANDED from this shoot, for instance:



For the record, it's cropped from a bigger image because I used my Nikon F2AS with Nikkor 50mm f1.4 about f5.6, at 1/250 to freeze this juvenile Condor planing about 80 km/h in front of a crowd.

[/url][/IMG]

Never a problem for me. I set a distance most likely to apply (say 50 feet) and an aperture around f8. Here is an example in 1961 with a simple view-finder, snapping a gull mid flight.

You were feeding the seagull, confess it!

Yep I have a few books on the NFL from the early 1970’s, with tons of great colour/b&w action shots and ALL were taken with manual focus cameras.

Phil.

Some of the most beautiful images of the Golden Era of Formula 1 ('70s and '80s) were taken with airther Nikon F2s or Canon F-1s, long lenses and motordrive. In the F-1N book there are some beautiful images of an accident that happened in Montecarlo in 1981 when one car broke its miniskirt and was slingshot to air and it was taken with such a camera. Plus that book is literally full of action pics like skiing people with snow thrown in air etc...I would recommend the lecture to anyone.

Unfortunately all the automation that took over after the mid 80s seems to have dumbed down the photographers, even professionals, if they are questioning the feasibility of these shots without AF.

[LesDMess]

Manual focus is all good and fine if you have a subject willing to sit and pose for you...like a building. But just try using in on a running deer or a diving pelican. It's useless. You WILL come home empty handed.

As with any tool, I am sure it takes some practice. For myself, I had been used to exceptional AF equipment and was apprehensive getting into manual focus equipment. I am sure with enough practice, I can get better. Here is a three frame set that I was practicing panning technique with a Pentax LX + Vivitar Series 1 70-200 taken on Kodak Gold 100. I was manually winding since I didn't bring the motor with me. Unlike shooting the Reno Air Races, this guy was just flying unpredictably.



Full res version -> http://www.fototime.com/76F1C0439714DBF/orig.jpg
Definitely would have been easier with exceptional AF equipment but certainly not impossible to get critical focus.

[IHS]

Wow...just wow. I seem to have awoken a nest of sleeping luddites! Where to start?


Steve...I can assure you that baiting wild animals and then photographing them for magazines has been going on for decades and continues to this day. If you want to take pictures of great white sharks for a magazine with a deadline to beat, then you better start pouring blood in the water and I mean fast. Because even then there's no guarantee you'll get what you need. Riding around in a boat just looking for them won't cut it. All you'll get is a sunburn and lots of pictures of pretty water. Bow hunters want to look at pretty 10pts when they open their mailboxes every month and if your magazine can't produce them then they'll find another. That means if your photographers can't produce them then they'll find another. What happens when working scrapes and rubs results in ZERO? Those guys spread corn on the ground. Within a few days they'll have more shots then they can use. BELIEVE it. I think you should probably make your peace with it.

Cuthbert...That's a fine shot of a condors BUTT. If you'd been using an AF camera, you probably would have had 5 or 6 more shots of that same flight. (maybe even one of it's head?) In any case, the shot you posted would probably have been one of the worst and wound up on the cutting room floor. Kudos on freezing the feathers though...

As for all the talk about high speed sports such as skiing, F1 and so on, if manual focus was better than AF then why on earth don't professional sports photographers still use it? Hmm? Why?....why, why why??? It should be obvious. Because AF gives you so many more quality shots than anyone could ever manage manually.

I get that a lot of you love manual photography and I myself am starting to get into it but to suggest that shooting fast moving and unpredictable targets is as easy with MF as it is w/AF is just reaching. If AF was just some fad then it would have died with the ME-F but it didn't. I'm pretty sure most professional photographers in the mid-80s were demanding auto focus from the manufacturers once they began to see the tremendous advantages it had over manual.

[Cuthbert]

Wo
Cuthbert...That's a fine shot of a condors BUTT. If you'd been using an AF camera, you probably would have had 5 or 6 more shots of that same flight. (maybe even one of it's head?) In any case, the shot you posted would probably have been one of the worst and wound up on the cutting room floor. Kudos on freezing the feathers though...

As for all the talk about high speed sports such as skiing, F1 and so on, if manual focus was better than AF then why on earth don't professional sports photographers still use it? Hmm? Why?....why, why why??? It should be obvious. Because AF gives you so many more quality shots than anyone could ever manage manually.

Interesting theory, do you realise that the bird was flying about 80 km/h so low that I could barely see it? And I didn't have motordrive, otherwise I would have shot the entire sequence as I shot him landing and taking off, does autofocus give you the magical capacity to shoot was you don't see? I'm curious to hear.

And for today's "pro" photographers, they are a shadow of what they used to be, that's the reason why the big names belong to the past and not to the present, for your education download this file:

http://satnam.ca/cameras/Canonf1worldbook1.pdf

Ans see the pictures in page 25,30,41,42,43,43,44,45 (the pages dedicated to action photography with motordrive)...how could they do pictures like that without autofocus? Were they magicians?