What is your average focusing time?

dave lackey · 05-14-2012

Just contemplating something...

With my M3, I normally leave the focus tab on infinity and it therefor makes longer distance shots much quicker but, if I am shooting at 10-30 feet or so, then, my average focusing time is longer. How long? Never measured it but it is probably in the 2 second range?

I must check this out sometime with an assistant.

What is YOUR average focusing time with an M-body at less than 30' ?

Richard G · 05-14-2012

I was shooting my son at basketball on Saturday with a 90 Elmarit M which lacks a tab. He was 40 feet away, sometimes more, sometimes as close as 15. I changed focus in about 1/3 s I reckon. Strangely, I found it much easier in the vertical orientation, certainly not the usual for me. The line between his pale shirt and dark shorts was an easily discernible target that moved much slower than the horizontally moving vertical focus targets.

Moriturii · 05-14-2012

Why don't you start turn the focusing lever as soon as you something of slight interest. Then when you put your viewfinder up to your eye you will, after little practice, be pretty damn close with the focusing more often then not, and you just fine tune.

dave lackey · 05-14-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moriturii

Why don't you start turn the focusing lever as soon as you something of slight interest. Then when you put your viewfinder up to your eye you will, after little practice, be pretty damn close with the focusing more often then not, and you just fine tune.

Yes, excellent suggestion.

Let's say you have the camera in hand and happen to come upon a motif that catches your eye. Once the camera is in place, how long does it take to get the shot? I realize, of course, that lenses vary. My brief time with a 35 Cron was enough to realize it is faster than my Summarit 1.5!

Moriturii · 05-14-2012

One problem will be, if you have different lenses and they have different focus throws. Best case scenario, they are pretty close, then it's just a matter of muscle memory, YOU KNOW, because of habit that if you turn your lens "yay much" (let's say 35 degrees) whilst camera is around your waist/chest level, or whatever, and you are observing your subject, it will be focused to so and so distance. Like I said, after a while, you'll be pretty spot on before you even raise the camera to eye.

Focusing to me usually takes 0.5sec if I am concentrating and I practice what I've just preached. 30 seconds if subject is moving, and when I am on my bicycle I wish I had a autofocus rangefinder :-)

Ljós · 05-14-2012

For some time I also used to have the lens always set to inifinity, and go from there. The late Al Kaplan here on RFF swore by it - means you can never get confused about the direction to turn the lens.

However, I found out over time that what works even better is to have my 35mm lens set to 3m, and my 50mm lens to 5m, and make adjustments from there. With practice (and for street photography with some DOF) it is quite possible to make small adjustments from these "baselines" without looking at the lens or even the RF-patch. The long throw of Summaron 2.8 and collapsible Summicron are perfect for this method.

So, very often the focusing time is literally zero: 3m and f5.6 or f8 with the 35mm lens. And depending how you count, even the times when I adjust the focus a bit without looking (before the camera comes up to the eye) , the focus time is zero.

You can refine this further, of course. Say you are moving in closer, or are with friends etc. , then of course you move the baseline and will have the lens at 1.5m, etc.
I admit that I DO mess up pictures, very rarely though, because I had forgotten to "reset" the lens. With the "always at infinity" method, these instances would not have happened. However, I feel that I would have "lost" many pictures with the infinity-method, simply because there was no time to dial in focus.

Greetings, Ljós

Clancycoop · 05-14-2012

I agree that the best thing to do is pre-focus before you even put the camera up to your eye, that way you will only need a slight adjustment rather then going across the entire range of the lens while it is up to your eye. I honestly don't even think about it anymore. To answer your question, I suppose probably half a second. The same as it takes to focus with an AF DSLR and faster than my OM-1 MF SLR.