I can manual focus, I just did not know it. I had previously thought that when I went to manual focus on my Nikon D100, I just had to focus till it looked about right. I did not have the old split circle in the middle of my viewfinder like my older manual focus camera has, so I assumed I did not have anything at all to guide me. Wrong.
I was goofing around at Epperson’s Photo in Oklahoma City—I must say, having not been in a nice camera store for a few years, this trip was exhilarating—talking to a guy behind the counter about all kinds of topics: using this flash on that camera, this lens for that purpose, and such. I mentioned my manual focus woes, and he said, “You should be able to see the little dot in the bottom left of the viewfinder to tell you when you are in focus, even if using a manual focus lens…I think.” You are kidding me?
Yep! All this time, I have been frustrated that the camera did not tell me when I was in focus when using manual focus, and it has been all the time. Funny. I tried it out, and sure enough, he was right.
I am not totally satisfied, because I do not want to lose sight of my subject just to maintain whether I am in focus or not, but I guess, that is not so different from the manual focus days anyway. If the subject is slow enough to use my old manual focus camera, it is slow enough to look down at that dot in the corner.
It is not ground breaking and is not going to change the way I photograph, in those situations where I really need to manual focus, now I know how to insure I have my subject in focus. “Oh, brave new world!”
Hmm… very interesting! I’m borrowing a 55mm macro all manual lens (a lens from before autofocus) from a guy in our group, so I’ve been doing a lot of manual lately. My D40 doesn’t even read that I have a lens attached to the camera, so I can’t use it in aperture or shutter priority, and the camera doesn’t meter for me so it’s a lot of guesswork! But I’ve really been having fun with it, so I could say that I too have had a manual focus epiphany!
The past few days I was using a manual focus telephoto zoom of my dad’s and had the same issues. I could get close-ish on the metering just by guessing, checking the LCD, and then shooting around some, but you have to be very aware of changing light situations.
Of course, if we had the D200 (or any newer Nikon of that level or higher), metering does work on manual lenses. Alas, the D40 is not made for such. At least we can shoot around with these manual lenses. I am hoping to shoot around with some manual wide angle lenses so I can really figure out what AF (auto focus) wide angle would work for me.