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From: jans@mako.UUCP (Jan Steinman)
Newsgroups: net.video
Subject: Re: Auto Focus?
Message-ID: <875@mako.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Jul-85 20:46:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: mako.875
Posted: Mon Jul 29 20:46:33 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Aug-85 20:27:29 EDT
References: <3351@drutx.UUCP> <558@ihu1m.UUCP>
Reply-To: jans@mako.UUCP (Jan Steinman)
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 39

In article <558@ihu1m.UUCP> (Joe Heneghan) writes, quotes:
>> I have decided to jump on the band wagon and buy a video camera...
>> ...the question is, for those of you that have video cameras with and
>> without auto focus:  How valuable, useful, convienient, etc. is auto focus?
>
>I have found that auto focus is more of a gimick than a useful
>feature.

I have found auto-focus to be ESSENTIAL for indoor (family, home-movies type)
shooting.  With indoor lighting, the iris opens up, depth of field goes away,
and indoor shooting distances mean you are ALWAYS fiddling with the focus.
The tiny B&W viewfinder is not the greatest focusing screen, either, so the
errors in manual focus on a 19" color screen are embarrasingly apparent.

>There are shortcomings too, like the auto focus mechanism not knowing what
>to focus on. Say you're at a park and you're trying to focus on a bird in a
>tree about 100 ft. away.

In my experience, a bird 100 ft away isn't going to be much to look at
anyway, even with the zoom all the way out.  When doing outdoor, distance
shooting, use fixed focus at infinity.  Outdoor light stops down the iris,
giving reasonable depth-of-field.

>You have to aim through a tree to get to the tree you want and the auto focus
>focuses on the nearer tree.

My camera (Panasonic clone, a.k.a. Olympus) doesn't get fooled unless the
close object is close to the center of the frame.  It comes down to this: can
you get decent composition and have auto-focus, or do you regularly need to
use selective focus, which is necessarily manual in nature?

>> Could you live without it?  Should I hold out for it?

Since most of my camera work is for teaching skiing, I could probably live
without it, since I do most shooting at infinity.  I sure would miss it when
shooting the family at home, though.
-- 
:::::: Jan Steinman		Box 1000, MS 61-161	(w)503/685-2843 ::::::
:::::: tektronix!tekecs!jans	Wilsonville, OR 97070	(h)503/657-7703 ::::::