Fuji Focus tips with 56 1.2

merupert said:
Hi Rico,

I’ve never owned a fast lens like this before (56 1.2 on X-E2), and I find myself missing focus more often than usual when I’m using it wide open. Any tips, tricks, suggestions?

Thanks,

Mark
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Ok, regrounding myself in the original post, I can see that if the OP is focusing and recomposing incorrectly, it will absolutely be a source of some amount of focus error, the degree of which largely depends on focus distance. That's helpful, and well-supported by the myriad of linked articles.

However...

It is (in my humble, non-article-linking opinion) not helpful to tell the OP that he should "never" focus and recompose, or that it will "always" lead to focusing errors that he would ever, ever notice or care about. It is so, so so so so much faster and easier than hitting buttons and moving a little focus box around as your subject stops doing whatever it was that you wanted a picture of in the first place... no matter how fast you've gotten at it, I guarantee I'm faster with a half press and slight drag. Don't discount "fast." For people whose subjects aren't patiently waiting for them, "fast" is the whole ballgame.

Understanding the principle and avoiding the bad results that can come from it: Invaluable! Discarding the fastest way to focus and frame a shot because of a dogmatic fear of errors that rarely ever manifest themselves on an APS-C camera's shots... much less valuable. Damaging, even, to a developing photographer.
 
KillRamsey said:
It is (in my humble, non-article-linking opinion) not helpful to tell the OP that he should "never" focus and recompose.
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Never with the 56mm at f/1.2, as this is what this thread is all about. The OP has stated actual AF problems with this lens at this aperture, and he told us that is using a problematic focusing method. I never said that he should never do it with any lens at any distance and any aperture. There is obviously no harm in rotating the focal plane a bit when you shoot landscapes at f/14 with a 18mm lens. Actually, in this case I would deliberately introduce a "focusing error" by choosing the hyperfocal distance instead of what the camera's AF is locking on. Not to mention that we successfully shoot motion panoramas with the X.
 
Rico, the only poster in this thread conflating focus and recompose with rotation is you. It is a red herring. It is preferable, is it not, to teach good technique before reliance upon technology, that varies in inception and execution from camera to camera. There is nothing unique or magical about the 56 tha good technique and practice cannot master.
 
c0ldc0ne said:
Articles are great to underpin academic principles, but in the end it's the result that counts. Like Bill and Kyle, I have used the focus & recompose technique for as long as I can remember (albeit not exclusively) and hardly ever found it to be the indisputable cause of out-of-focus shots.



In my practical experience using focus & recompose with a myriad of fast lenses, misfocus is not inevitable but virtually non-existent.
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I agree, I shot an nikkor 85 1.8 h and a nikkor 105 2.5p on a nikon f2 back in the late 70s and if i missed focus it wasn't the recompose that did it, it may have been rushing a shot and just missing the focus on fast moving (live music) or other poor technique errors but theproper recompose rarely was the cause. (shootin 2.8 on medium format is a challenge as well though my etr portrait lens is an easier 3.5 150mm

I have a lot less problem hitting focus now actually with all the tools in the digital world (zoom in and focus peaking really make it quite a bit easier for old eyes)
 
Lightmancer said:
This makes interesting reading. Especially germane is point #2:
Six things that you might think you need in a digital camera that you CAN live without. — Soundimageplus
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I pretty much agree with all of them ( i was a little disconcerted going from having SR on everything (Pentax) to the Fuji where I only have it on 2 entry level zooms for my wife)
I'm practicing old habits and finding i can get pretty low hand held ( quite low indeed on the 18)
and art filters with a capital F had coffee spurting out of my nose :)
 
my 02 cents on how i understood the conversation...

i focus and recompose here and there because it's usually faster, period. i think many people learned this method because what other option was there, before? but it will always be some percentage less accurate than if you were to move the focus point over (or moving the focus point will yield greater accuracy, if that's easier to understand). yes, it exists and is available these days.

if "rotating" isn't the word anyone likes to use, whatever word you choose to call it, the image plane is moved in some degree along a pivot point, - the y-axis (which may be your self or the body). nobody recomposes by sliding the body over along the x-axis. and whether you get the image plane back into the same exact position or not is going to be sheer luck or lack thereof, or it's just close enough that the output looks okay by you (especially with a longer dof).

in the studio, photographers may go even further by placing the camera on a tripod and moving the focus point over a model's eye for the best accuracy. why would they not? i mean, moving a focus point without moving the image plane was for some good reason, right?
 
in the studio (particularly high fashion) you may be surprised to find a large majority of the shots are stopped down to f4 territory - i know a couple of guys who shoot fashion for a living in Paris and Toronto). In fact this mania for ultra narrow dof is largely a digital era thing. too much dof (before diffraction sets in) was never a complaint, but too little DOF is a frequent complaint. I like having the 1.2 don't get me wrong, I particularly like it at 2-2.8 where i't so sharp it cuts.
When people i know are shooting ultra narrow in the studio they may focus bracket as well if using medium format gear, and given the focus speed of ultra fast lenses and the number of missed focus shots they will allow for that in their plan. shooting stills in the studio they may well shoot tethered and focus manually using a rail and the big computer screen there are a lot of options now. I've never shot with any system that nails AF on fast lenses every time
 
romi.gilles said:
in the studio, photographers may go even further by placing the camera on a tripod and moving the focus point over a model's eye for the best accuracy. why would they not? i mean, moving a focus point without moving the image plane was for some good reason, right?
Click to expand...

Fully agree. If I ever, ever shot photos like this, I'd probably do it in a heartbeat. As it is, I'm chasing a 5 year old girl and a healthy wife. And I'm getting shots that don't have focus problems. -shrug-
 
romi.gilles said:
...if "rotating" isn't the word anyone likes to use, whatever word you choose to call it, the image plane is moved in some degree along a pivot point, - the y-axis (which may be your self or the body). nobody recomposes by sliding the body over along the x-axis. and whether you get the image plane back into the same exact position or not is going to be sheer luck or lack thereof, or it's just close enough that the output looks okay by you (especially with a longer dof)...
Click to expand...

No. I am genuinely concerned that for some reason I am not communicating clearly here - not usually a problem from which I suffer. When I focus and recompose, I neither rotate, NOR pivot. I don't swivel either. There is NO rotational movement. The easiest way to explain it is I shift my weight from one foot to the other; that small, LINEAR movement is all that is needed, and does not alter the plane of focus or the focal distance in any material way. It's how I have done it for so many years it is second nature, as much as using the split viewfinder of a Barnack Leica involves a tiny movement to get the desired result.

Try it...
 
eddie1960 said:
in the studio (particularly high fashion) you may be surprised to find a large majority of the shots are stopped down to f4 territory - i know a couple of guys who shoot fashion for a living in Paris and Toronto). In fact this mania for ultra narrow dof is largely a digital era thing. too much dof (before diffraction sets in) was never a complaint, but too little DOF is a frequent complaint. I like having the 1.2 don't get me wrong, I particularly like it at 2-2.8 where i't so sharp it cuts.
When people i know are shooting ultra narrow in the studio they may focus bracket as well if using medium format gear, and given the focus speed of ultra fast lenses and the number of missed focus shots they will allow for that in their plan. shooting stills in the studio they may well shoot tethered and focus manually using a rail and the big computer screen there are a lot of options now. I've never shot with any system that nails AF on fast lenses every time
Click to expand...
^
yes, look how much further they go.

when you get to live in NYC, it's easy to know at least one person in the fashion industry and has probably assisted the likes of markus klinko or indrani.

KillRamsey said:
Fully agree. If I ever, ever shot photos like this, I'd probably do it in a heartbeat. As it is, I'm chasing a 5 year old girl and a healthy wife. And I'm getting shots that don't have focus problems. -shrug-
Click to expand...
^
haha.. yeah. i'd be recomposing and recomposing at that point. don't forget to update your firmware!

Lightmancer said:
No. I am genuinely concerned that for some reason I am not communicating clearly here - not usually a problem from which I suffer. When I focus and recompose, I neither rotate, NOR pivot. I don't swivel either. There is NO rotational movement. The easiest way to explain it is I shift my weight from one foot to the other; that small, LINEAR movement is all that is needed, and does not alter the plane of focus or the focal distance in any material way. It's how I have done it for so many years it is second nature, as much as using the split viewfinder of a Barnack Leica involves a tiny movement to get the desired result.

Try it...
Click to expand...
^
i think i understand your method - you're moving along the x-axis (along with the image plane).
 
and to bring the ENTIRE thread back to the OP....... he never mentioned "focus and recompose" being the problem. And I'd venture to guess that it isn't the problem. The problem is much more likely having an AF box that is too big for the subject. It's happened to me before (whereas I've never had an issue with missed focus using focus and recompose.....other than being slightly off from shifting the plane of focus by rotating) where the AF focus covers both your subject and the background and the camera chooses the background because it has a point of contrast.

I think everyone may have scared off the OP anyways, but there are clearly many ways to get focus right and it's clearly not pure coincidence that so many people get along just fine shooting wide open AND are focusing and recomposing.
 

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