Re: Studio shot? (further thoughts) - AF and sharpness

Good focus with digital AF SLRs depends on choosing the focus point and placing it on the right spot on your subject. I know this sounds simple, but it's not.
I prefer my Canon EOS 1D mk II's 45 AF sensor locations to the EOS 20D's 9 locations, but I use the same procedure with either camera. I see a shot I want, choose the point of focus for the composition, then track moving subjects and shoot when I like what I see.
I used that procedure in both of these wildlife images,. The originals are very sharp at the eyes and the feathers. Images were made with EF 500mm f/4L IS (robin snarfing berries) and EF 400mm f/4 DO IS (snowy egret in the pink): 
http://tinyurl.com/3zoq6
http://tinyurl.com/4fner
While the 400mm DO IS was in the shop awhile back, I used my backup 400mm f/6.8 Telyt. Here's a manual-focus shot made with the 20D and 400mm Telyt: 
http://tinyurl.com/y2ub5j
In the original image, this young Cooper's hawk's feathers are sharp. The eye is very slightly soft, from my (mis)focusing. It may also be the limitations in a two-element achromat showing up in a digital image. The sharpest feathers in this Telyt image don't look as individual-feather sharp as those in the robin image from the 500mm f/4L IS.
I remember Doug Herr commenting that focusing to an AF sensor location restricts composition. If you're shooting full-frame without cropping, yes, I agree unconditionally, especially with a low-sensor-count dSLR. However, most shots are cropped at least slightly by photographers and magazine editors after the fact. If your subject is perched or taking off against a uniformly-colored background blur, cropping may give you the placement you want.
With manual or auto focus, you can anticipate subject placement and choose photo situations to give the composition you're after. That's why you see photographers crowding race courses at the same spots. Pro mountain bike racers chose the fastest lines through the rocks in the Park City/Deer Valley downhill course's nastiest turn, so everybody set up there. But you won't always get precisely what you visualized with either focusing system.
Will you lose a few shots due to not getting the sensor on your subject where you want it? 

Probably.
With a manual focus lens like the 400mm f/6.8 Telyt, will you lose a few shots due to not focusing fast enough on the part of the subject you want to be sharp? Maybe due also to vision problems? 

Again, probably.
** You can make sharp, pleasing photographs with whatever tool you're familiar with, if you don't have any vision limitations. I'm also starting to have some of those, so I'm using my AF lenses. 

Mark Bohrer
Mountain and Desert Photography
www.mountain-and-desert.com
Wildlife on the urban edge


David Young wrote:

Geoff wrote:


I agree with Doug. I would add that it otherwise does look like a posed
portrait, almost too perfect and maybe a little static. By the way, not to pick on Oly but a worthwhile comment on AF, I think; have you seen the print ad for the E-3 that is a close up of a painted face? The focus misses the eyes and has the painted skin sharp? Maybe a deliberate tactic? Bothers the 
heck out of me though.


To which Doug added:
On another list a photographer compared his bird photos made with a Nikon F5 and AF-S lenses with his photos made with the R8 and modular APO-Telyts. The Nikon produced many photos that were pretty good, but it often missed focus by a bit and in his words "a miss is a miss". With the R/APO-Telyt combination when focus was off it was usually WAAY off but when it was "on" it was spectacular and he reports more 'keepers' with the R than with the Nikon.
Doug, Geoff, and all the others who commented, both on and off list, about the focus being a problem..
I agree, the focus point is a problem. I think I was taken with the shot, because when shooting active performers, with stage lighting, one seldom gets shots with such clean backgrounds, where the performer is looking at the camera, while the shot is taken. The similarities to a studio shot astounded me. OTOH, the focus is, indeed, off. :-(
As for the percentage of AF shots being "on"... Since my move to the AF Oly, my percentage of good, sharp, well focused shots, has gone waay, way up. This, I think, is not due to the superiority of Oly's AF (though it is very fast and very good), but rather to the poor percentage of keepers I was getting with MF, due to failing eyes.
As for your comment, Geoff, on the Oly ad ... I have not seen it. However, here is a "grab shot", of my nephew, Nathan (10), as he came out of the pool, at the Water Slides. There is, I think, a slight bias towards focus on his left eye, but again, maybe that's just my eyes. 

http://www.furnfeather.net/Temps/Nathan.htm

Does this one live up to standards?

Thank you, all, for taking the time to look, and to comment.

Cheers!
---

David Young,
Logan Lake, CANADA



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