viscountdriver
Senior Member
I can get hold of a cheap 70-300 lens but it it only manual focus.Anyone had any experience of manual focussing on a long lens?
Long lens
- Thread starter viscountdriver
- Start date
Using a manual lens can be fun and give you a certain amount of pleasure and satisfaction.
Before the advent of autofocus you had no choice. Even all sports photography was covered using manual focus.
Even with todays best lenses and cameras, manual can still be better even for sporting events and is still often used.
If for example you were shooting a 200m sprint race and you wanted to capture the winner breaking the ribbon....
the best way is to prefocus on the ribbon and wait for the runner to hit that spot. Its a far more reliable method than shooting
7 or 8 frames a second even. I covered the Grand National and caught the winning horse crossing the finnishing line using this method.
The rest I used autofocus and 7 frames a second. I did the right thing too. It was the closest finnish in the grand national history this year.
I could easily have missed it, if i had been shooting just hi speed. A fast horse is likely to move 2ft or more at the speed they travel, even at
7 frames a second. It helps if you use a top end camera, since you genraly have bigger and better and brighter foccusing screens.
My guess, is that you will enjoy it, and also learn a lot. So just go for it and enjoy !
Before the advent of autofocus you had no choice. Even all sports photography was covered using manual focus.
Even with todays best lenses and cameras, manual can still be better even for sporting events and is still often used.
If for example you were shooting a 200m sprint race and you wanted to capture the winner breaking the ribbon....
the best way is to prefocus on the ribbon and wait for the runner to hit that spot. Its a far more reliable method than shooting
7 or 8 frames a second even. I covered the Grand National and caught the winning horse crossing the finnishing line using this method.
The rest I used autofocus and 7 frames a second. I did the right thing too. It was the closest finnish in the grand national history this year.
I could easily have missed it, if i had been shooting just hi speed. A fast horse is likely to move 2ft or more at the speed they travel, even at
7 frames a second. It helps if you use a top end camera, since you genraly have bigger and better and brighter foccusing screens.
My guess, is that you will enjoy it, and also learn a lot. So just go for it and enjoy !