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Rangefinder Focussing 201


GarethC

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With all this talk about how Leica ships all these M8's with the AF broken, and how they refuse to fix it so we all have to manual focus to accommodate them, I have a few questions on people's practise because I've been thinking and that's always a dangerous thing.

 

I understand the notion of zone focus and pre-focus etc etc but I was wondering what you street shooting experts did and what your process was for getting a shot.

 

The bits that I'd be really interested to read about are things such as the process for getting the shot on the street in order to remain incognito. ie do you prefocus and then just put it to your eye? Do you "see" the shot without putting the camera up and if so what is the point of having the rangefinder experience of seeing outside of the framelines in the first place?

 

Also, if you want the selective focus of a larger aperture how do you overcome these obstacles to speed and stealth?

 

I'm relatively new to rangefinders but not to manual focus, even with a dslr I spent a lot of time using manual focus but speed was never my strength.

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Well, if you consider the screen of a newspaper offset print is not the ideal, and that you are lucky to show 16-30 shades of grey, then absolute sharpness is definitely not an issue.

One of our newspapers is 10x12.75 inches, and 200 dpi is more than enough, giving roughly a 2000x2500 pixels to make a FULL page picture. So you can indeed crop a lot! 140 dpi does the trick as fine as 200.

So in practice you tend to use a wide-angle at F5.6 or F8, prefocused around 3~5 mtrs (10-20 ft) and you go from there.

Another trick it to have the lens always at the infinity setting, use a 21mm (remember you can crop half the picture and it still works) lens at F8, bump the iso to 800 and get the shot. When you focus at infinity, the minimum detail you get is the focal length divided by the F number in the subject space, in this case you get to appreciate anything over 3mm!!!

Good luck!

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Most of the time when I'm out on the street I previsualize where I expect the action to be and prefocus on a spot on the pavement or something else nearby. When something happens I just adjust focus from there as the scene requires. Most of the time I shoot at f4-5.6 and this works fine for me. If I want or need a larger aperture it makes it more difficult to nail the focus, but far from impossible with practice. As long as someone isn't running fast straight at me follow focus really isn't that hard. I find that most of the street images that I like end up being made with the plane of focus somewhere around 12 feet from me with a 35mm lens (28mm on the M8, but I still really think in 35mm terms). That's my street sweet spot.

 

I personally don't think stealth really comes into street shooting that much; being unobtrusive plays a part (the Leica M size helps obviously), but that's somehow different than being stealthy to my mind. And as far as being quick, while knowing your equipment is important, I think even more important is being aware of the situation and anticipating when something photoworthy is going to happen. It's a very meditative experience for me actually, street photography.

 

Something which I used to do to practice was to try to guess distances...that car is 15' away, that person is 6', etc and then compare with what the rangefinder indicated. I used to do it just sitting around my apartment while watching a movie. You can get quite good at it and it helped my speed with focusing.

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I haven't been using zone focus a lot, but I did try it out for a while and it works well. Just remember to set the hyperfocal distance on the lens-barrel guide to one stop FASTER than the aperture you're using. I don't pretend to fully understand the physics of this – it's to do with the 1.33 crop of the M8's sensor – but it makes all the difference. So if you're shooting at f8, set your infinity marker to the f5.6 guide.

 

Gosh, I hope I've got that the right way round –*it's a while since I tried this. Think so, though.

 

Incidentally, I read somewhere that it's better still to dial in two stops of compensation. It's not, it doesn't work.

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Most of the time when I'm out on the street I previsualize where I expect the action to be and prefocus on a spot on the pavement or something else nearby. When something happens I just adjust focus from there as the scene requires. Most of the time I shoot at f4-5.6 and this works fine for me. If I want or need a larger aperture it makes it more difficult to nail the focus, but far from impossible with practice. As long as someone isn't running fast straight at me follow focus really isn't that hard. I find that most of the street images that I like end up being made with the plane of focus somewhere around 12 feet from me with a 35mm lens (28mm on the M8, but I still really think in 35mm terms). That's my street sweet spot.

 

I personally don't think stealth really comes into street shooting that much; being unobtrusive plays a part (the Leica M size helps obviously), but that's somehow different than being stealthy to my mind. And as far as being quick, while knowing your equipment is important, I think even more important is being aware of the situation and anticipating when something photoworthy is going to happen. It's a very meditative experience for me actually, street photography.

 

Something which I used to do to practice was to try to guess distances...that car is 15' away, that person is 6', etc and then compare with what the rangefinder indicated. I used to do it just sitting around my apartment while watching a movie. You can get quite good at it and it helped my speed with focusing.

 

Great insights Matt, funny what you say about looking at distances in the aprtment, I haven't gone that far yet but I do ind myself guessing a distance and then checking to see how accurate I was.

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Guest Bernd Banken

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For me it makes no sense to have a deep field of focus for street shots.

 

The secret ist to have even with a wide angle lens a limited DOF to isolate the subject from the background. Hipshots are boring.....;)

 

Bernd

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For me it makes no sense to have a deep field of focus for street shots.

 

The secret ist to have even with a wide angle lens a limited DOF to isolate the subject from the background. Hipshots are boring.....;)

 

Bernd

 

So what is your process for focussing Bernd?

 

Your statement really goes to the heart of my question. I love having limited dof but find that I lose a few shots due to my lack of speed in getting the lens focussed.

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With all this talk about how Leica ships all these M8's with the AF broken, and how they refuse to fix it --.

Gareth,

you seem to identify a feature that my M8 don't have: AF. I would not be happy with a RF camera shipped with auto focus anyway and would immediately try to put a stick in the middle to prevent its working.

The M8 is much more sensitive to focussing because of the large enlargement factor you have (the C1 100% button will show you what I mean). Just setting the lens at a certain distance and dia does not give automatic focussed shots IMHO.

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Looking over the responses, it seems many people set hyperfocal distance and rely on cropping to get the shot they want. Are the responses a reflection of what many people are doing.

 

Personally, I prefer to use dof and while Bernd tells us what he doesn't do, he doesn't tell us what he does do and I guess that's what I was really after.

 

Maybe my other resistance to zone focussing is that I am on the verge of needing reading glasses but am still 20/20 for distance so it's alot easier to look through the viewfinder than at the distance scale on the lens barrel :)

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