m10p Zone focusing not sharp (enough) vs focusing to infinity

[kkumpu]

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Hi all,

I've tried to get a hang of zone focusing, but never have been able to pull "sharp enough" images with that method.

Today I finally started looking this more precisely. I took a bunch of images, all of them were shot from tripod and 2 sec timer to prevent camera shake.

 

Look f.e. white vegetation on middle left on pictures. When I zone focus, I make sure that hyperfocal point is between distance scale (so f.e. with 21 SEM@f11, if I set focusing to 1.5m, zone focus area should be between 0.75m and infinity)

 

However, this doesn't seem to work (see photo 1, L1004908.jpg, or left side of attached image), image is just not sharp, or to my eye, not sharp enough.

If I set focus to infinity (zone focus area from 1.3m to who knows where), images are sharp. (see photo 2, L1004909.jpg, or right side of attached image)

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... have I understood zone focusing wrong, is my camera and/or lenses misaligned or what gives.
This same happens also with 35mm and 50mm , but with those lenses I understand that zone focusing area is much narrower.

And since there's a limit for how big image I can attach (and that's only 1 image), I included dropbox link where you can find full-size jpg files. 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/i2s5m6doaqvrvh4h4oaye/h?rlkey=keya4h7v2hu9ymm77wmp4gwqo&dl=0

 

EDIT: looked at attached image. If I would only need images for web, that would be more that enough sharp. However, if you look full-sized images, you understand what I'm after.

Edited July 18, 2023 by kkumpu

[jaapv]

I have always referred to zone focus as controlled misfocus.
As it relies on setting the lens to a zone of acceptable unsharpness it is highly subjective. Additionally, the sharpness falloff is a gradient, the further from the actual point of focus, the more unsharp.
The only sharp area in the image is the plane of focus, nothing else. Zone focus is exactly the same as setting focus by symbols on an old box camera, face cartoon, stick man, family group, mountain.
It was used as an quick-and-dirty aid in the days before autofocus, and has been adopted by rangefinder users as a workaround to get an acceptable image in situations where setting proper focus is impractical - which depends on skill level. 

There are better solutions, for instance preset your focus point and let the subject move into it, or better still, use the rangefinder thoughtfully provided by Leica. 

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[charlesphoto99]

Zone focusing is a 'failsafe' when missing the focus if capturing moving subjects, where ultimate sharpness is not always needed. It's not needed (nor should ever be used) for static subjects. 

[dpitt]

I think it depends a lot on the camera (sensor) you are using. With the M8 , zone focus as indicated on Leica M lenses works (sort of)
With higher resolution, your actual focus zone will be smaller than indicated. The zone focus lines were made with film camera's in mind.

As a guide line, I would recommend these (always focus at about 1/3 of the zone area):
> 20 MP => use the zone of one stop less as your actual diaphragm (e.g. use F4.0 lines for F5.6 setting)
> 40 MP => use 2 stops less
> 60 MP => use 3 stops less

It is personal of course, so check what works for you with some test shots.

[jaapv]

1 hour ago, dpitt said:

The zone focus lines were made with film camera's in mind.

 

In the 1930-ies...

[pegelli]

As Jaap said what is acceptable sharpness is somewhat subjective and, as you already found out, also depending on magnification. It seems you're using the old film dof tables for zone focussing which is start but the magnification on which these are based is that a print looks sharp when viewed at a distance of the diagonal of that print. However when the magnification increases (like pixel peeping at 100%) it's a much higher magnification and more like looking at a print of several meters wide from a distance of 10 or 20 cm (depending on the amount of pixels of your camera). So if you want to have sharpness when pixel peeping at 100% your zone gets much smaller.

So when determining how big of a zone you need you need to know what magnification you'll look at the output. So when you make a 40x60 cm print that will be looked at from ~70 cm the old film dof tables will generally work fine, even though your file will look soft when pixel peeping. But if you make a print of 1 x 1,5 meter that gets inspected from 20 cm distance the zone of acceptable sharpness will be much smaller and you need to take this into account when zone focussing.

Edited July 18, 2023 by pegelli

[Stuart Richardson]

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In general, it has been my experience that photography is generally about making choices...how to frame, how to expose, what to focus on etc. Like in life, it is seldom possible to get everything you want all at once, at least if you are talking about in the best possible quality. I would generally suggest focusing on the most important image element. You almost always want the sharpest area of the image to be the most significant detail. Often if that is not easy to identify, the image itself is lacking in terms of composition. It gets a bit trickier when the image is about the interaction of two different objects, in which case I would typically suggest focusing a bit behind the nearer object and stopping down as much as required to bring the second object into focus. These decisions generally come down to experience. The DOF distance markings on the lenses are best thought of as very general guidelines for what will be sharp in small prints or pictures on the web. Anything bigger than A4 or A3 is probably not going to be well served by hyperfocal focusing unless you stop down very generously or have a fairly wide lens. As you probably know, the closer distance you focus, the shallower the DOF, so typically you are better off focusing a bit further out if you are concerned with sharpness at infinity, for example.

Edited July 18, 2023 by Stuart Richardson

[jaapv]

It irritates me a bit when I see Internet pundits declaring zone focus the way to go about street photography. Sure, Street is multi-layered and focusing somewhere in the middle at f8 or f11 is an acceptable compromise, but to proclaim zone focus to be the best technique to use a Leica M is bollocks.

In general, an unfocused image lacks focus  

[Jeff S]

I prefer to focus on the thing I want in focus and, with an M, to use the RF. For me, the print is the intended goal and barometer for success.

Jeff

[Stuart Richardson]

5 minutes ago, jaapv said:

It irritates me a bit when I see Internet pundits declaring zone focus the way to go about street photography. Sure, Street is multi-layered and focusing somewhere in the middle at f8 or f11 is an acceptable compromise, but to proclaim zone focus to be the best technique to use a Leica M is bollocks.

In general, an unfocused image lacks focus  

I think it is also very much about intended output. Many of the street photographers who practiced zone focusing were using quite wide lenses stopped down pretty far, and generally they were printing modest sized darkroom prints, or publishing in books and newspapers. Or in the case of, for example, William Klein or the Provoke photographers, blurriness was an acceptable part of the aesthetic. You would rarely see a photographer like Eggleston or Shore resort to it, even if they are associated with vernacular photography. One option is to set up your camera for zone focus if you are doing street work and want to be ready to take a photo immediately without focusing, but then to focus if you have time. That will probably allow you to have your cake and eat it too. Or get something like a Ricoh GRIII, which has a 28mm equivalent on APS-C, so it inherently has very wide DOF.

[Al Brown]

As a rule of thumb - for semi-successful zone focus use two stops less on the lens' DoF scale.

[jaapv]

39 minutes ago, Al Brown said:

As a rule of thumb - for semi-successful zone focus use two stops less on the lens' DoF scale.

With a few  caveats:

- if you want a tack-sharp horizon, focus on the horizon

-if you want subject separation, focus on the subject

-if you want front-to-end sharpness, use focus stacking (on static subjects)

[kkumpu]

Well, that question collected many great answers and things to consider.
I've never heard about the rule to use 1-2 stop smaller scale on digital cameras when using zone focus.

Best part, no-one has said that camera and/or optics need to calibrate. That's one way to say that money can go towards new M body or lens 😇 

 

So, it's more practise for me.

Thank you All 

[jaapv]

It is not very easy to tell whether a camera or lens needs to be calibrated. Sure, you can see by careful testing that an image is off, but as both camera and lens must be adjusted to a common standard, determining the culprit is not the easiest thing to do. The best thing  is to have your trusted third-party service check out the complete kit. However, it is not as common a problem by far as internet may have you believe. 
Mostly lens calibration is needed for older lenses, produced for film cameras. As film has a thickness and is never completely flat , the tolerances for the digital age have tightened up considerably. 

But if your properly focused images in general are sharp to your eyes, there is no problem.

The very film thickness and flatness, and dispersion in the emulsion, are also the reason that DOF has tightened up by 1-3 stops, depending on sensor resolution.
 

[pgk]

When zone focus was first advocated photographers made much smaller prints than we do today (and they didn't pixel peep). So if you do use zone focusing then its probably best not to make big prints nor to view at 100% on screen. 

[adan]

6 hours ago, pgk said:

When zone focus was first advocated photographers made much smaller prints than we do today (and they didn't pixel peep). So if you do use zone focusing then its probably best not to make big prints nor to view at 100% on screen. 

Quite right - the standard for what will be sharp according to the depth-of-field lines assumes a standard print size (ye olde "Twenty-seven 8x10 (inch) color glossy photos with circles and arrows on the back explaining what each one was." - Alice's Restaurant, Arlo Guthrie, 1967). Or in SI units, 20cm x 25cm.

Whether digital or film, on paper or screen, in the 1930s or 2023 - that is the largest print or screen size they will work for reliably.

Although as always with DoF, viewing distance is also a factor. It is assumed to be the diagonal of the image size, so for a 20cm x 25cm print, square of root (20^2 x 25^2) = no closer than 32cm (about 1 foot).

....

In addition, stopping down to f/11 is reaching the point where diffraction blur kicks in, at 24 Mpixels or more on a 24x36mm "Barnack-sized" sensor. Everything starts to be less sharp than optimal, as the edges of the aperture blades start bending and spreading the light waves all by themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction

[Greenhilltony]

I once relied on the zone focus setting, especially F8, because I was not confident to focus quickly enough every time on the street. But with the digital M10-P I soon realized it is not that reliable at the days of pixel peeping. So I started to train myself to be familiar with various distances on street, so I can confidently set my lens to 1.5, 2, 3, 5, 10m before I want to shoot or when I react to something happening, and this training rewards me not having to rely on viewfinder and ability to shoot wide open at low light situations with accurate focus.

[rramesh]

Zone focusing in street is typically used to quickly capture handheld, a person or a group of people.

Here you select a speed that will address shake and or possible motion, choose an aperture that gives you a wide enough zone of focus, and focus on a distance that is an approximation of where you want the primary focus to be at. 

For static images, like what you have tried, just use the viewfinder. 

It does take practice. With a digital Leica unlike film, it's cheap to experiment and perfect.

Edited July 20, 2023 by rramesh

[Rick in CO]

On 7/18/2023 at 9:56 AM, Jeff S said:

I prefer to focus on the thing I want in focus and, with an M, to use the RF. For me, the print is the intended goal and barometer for success.

Exactly - and then adjust the aperture to allow the greatest depth of field effect you desire.

It has been previously discussed in this forum how approximate the depth of field markings on lenses are,

     hence the recommendation to stop down further than indicated.

On 7/18/2023 at 7:22 AM, jaapv said:

There are better solutions, for instance preset your focus point and let the subject move into it, or better still, use the rangefinder thoughtfully provided by Leica. 

Zone focusing is a misnomer, distance focusing as Jaapv suggests, a focus pre-set, is really what is being recommended.

The ultimate discussion I've found of all this is "The Ins and Outs of Focus" by Harold Merklinger, who also wrote "Focusing the View Camera"

        if you really want to understand tilting and shifting and circles of confusion!

 

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[mujk]

Agree with the previous replies. I had the same experience when starting to use the 21 SEM. It is easy to assume that a lens this wide would look sharp over a wide range of distances at f11, but this is definitely not the case. The DOF scale does not really tell very much.