31 replies to this topic

[SPiercePhotography]

I woke up this morning and it was foggy out, so I decided to go out and take some landscapes! As I was driving towards the Quabbin, a little hawk (red tailed I think?) flew out in front of me and landed on a tree! I backed my car into a side street, parked, grabbed my wildlife lens and went to shoot and... it won't focus! The camera focuses fine with all the other lenses, but not this one! I spent 10 minutes trying to get the thing to work, before I finally had to switch to manual focus (my eyes are slightly off, so I always worry about not being able to focus properly) and try and shoot that way.

but this guy just sat there, watching me fight with my camera, than sat still for another 15/20 while I photographed him. I would have been so distraught otherwise!

However, I think for my manual focusing, it turned out great. In fact, I think I might just keep it on manual with this lens permanently, even if I figure out how to get auto focus back!

Hawk by SPierceUrbex, on Flickr

Hawk by SPierceUrbex, on Flickr


Anyone else have a similar story, or am I the only one?

[canon eos]

Now you're not telling us that nice new ($3000+) Nikon D800 is acting up? Individual lenses acting up can happen, though. Might try cleaning the contacts.

Looks like you did well with MF, regardless.

thanks for sharing

[Bird Whisperer]

I think this is actually a Red-shouldered Hawk...

I feel your pain. My camera isn't fancy, it's just a point-and-shoot, so I've never had that kind of problem with lenses before. But my camera does turn off by itself really often, which is so frustrating. I'm glad the hawk stuck around long enough for you to get these cool shots.

[Melissa :)]

I've had something similar happen. When I'm taking pictures of birds in trees or bushes, or just surrounded by sticks or grass, then my camera will focus on the background but not the bird. So I've had to use manual focus many, many times-- so many times that now I'm actually good at it!

And on a completely different matter, I thought it was cool that I have a kestrel picture in the same position as your hawk!

[SPiercePhotography]

Sadly, it's just my lens. The auto focus worked out great with the rest of the lenses. but this one! I have no idea what I did, darnit. Still ticks me off though! We did already do a clean a while ago, and i haven't used it much sense. In fact, the lens was actually working 2 days ago. I must have hit a button or something on the lens, and.... *sigh* I was so distraught this morning- but my manual focus seems to work better than the auto focus. Weird!

Bird Whisperer - thank you, then it's a lifer! My first red shouldered hawk. Which makes it even more exciting

Melissa- thanks for showing your photo too. That's really awesome! Almost the exact same pose too.

[Bird Whisperer]

Heeey, congrats on the lifer!

[Benjamin DeHaven]

Did the lens just rack in and out from minimum to infinity or did it simply do nothing?

If it is the former, that is a relatively normal problem albeit frustrating as anything! The advice of making sure the subject you are shooting is away from anything of different distance which could throw off the AF sensor is pointless in birding. The bird is where it is. If foliage is really getting in the way and making the AF stop at the wrong distance then all you will be able to do is get good at manual focusing. I find any times when I am tracking with a bird in flight that is not overly close to me if my focus point moves off the bird, my lens it apt to try and refocus on the blue / white sky. Having no contrasting points for focus it then racks back and forth and I lose the bird. And now trying to find the bird is very hard because if my focus is anywhere near minimum my bird is completely blurred and basically invisible. If possible, I find it best to point down to the horizon and focus then refind the bird and when it is under the active focus point only then attempt to refocus. Then again, your settings could be causing their own set of problems just as mine do.

If it is the second, then either try and clean the contacts on the lens again, if you dare I have used and seemed to get good results from a new, clean pencil eraser. Just enough abrasion to rub off some oxidation. Other thing in my mind is if the lens has an auto-focus motor built into it then that motor may be going up or have a loose contact. If the lens is relying on the auto-focus motor built into the camera to move the focus element(?) then I really am not sure. I believe I read you have a D800 and I doubt the focus motor has gone up in a camera that new without it being a systemic problem which I haven't seen any reports of to date.

I wouldn't know any of this if I hadn't had every problem in the book so I can feel your pain. The birds never seem to stick around long enough for me to get a shot if things don't go right and I am really bad a manual focus so if I got that in MF I would jump for joy!

Benjamin

[Doug Herr]

I'm really glad I've kept far far away from autofocus.

[SPiercePhotography]

Did the lens just rack in and out from minimum to infinity or did it simply do nothing?

If it is the former, that is a relatively normal problem albeit frustrating as anything! The advice of making sure the subject you are shooting is away from anything of different distance which could throw off the AF sensor is pointless in birding. The bird is where it is. If foliage is really getting in the way and making the AF stop at the wrong distance then all you will be able to do is get good at manual focusing. I find any times when I am tracking with a bird in flight that is not overly close to me if my focus point moves off the bird, my lens it apt to try and refocus on the blue / white sky. Having no contrasting points for focus it then racks back and forth and I lose the bird. And now trying to find the bird is very hard because if my focus is anywhere near minimum my bird is completely blurred and basically invisible. If possible, I find it best to point down to the horizon and focus then refind the bird and when it is under the active focus point only then attempt to refocus. Then again, your settings could be causing their own set of problems just as mine do.

If it is the second, then either try and clean the contacts on the lens again, if you dare I have used and seemed to get good results from a new, clean pencil eraser. Just enough abrasion to rub off some oxidation. Other thing in my mind is if the lens has an auto-focus motor built into it then that motor may be going up or have a loose contact. If the lens is relying on the auto-focus motor built into the camera to move the focus element(?) then I really am not sure. I believe I read you have a D800 and I doubt the focus motor has gone up in a camera that new without it being a systemic problem which I haven't seen any reports of to date.

I wouldn't know any of this if I hadn't had every problem in the book so I can feel your pain. The birds never seem to stick around long enough for me to get a shot if things don't go right and I am really bad a manual focus so if I got that in MF I would jump for joy!

Benjamin

It simply does nothing. I must have hit a button or something, to where it just wont' register the focus on the camera anymore. I am pretty rough on my equipment sometimes, but we'll give it a good clean and see what happens. I think it might just not work very well with the camera- the lens is very old and my D800 is very new!

However, at the same time, it never focused as sharp as I would have liked it too anyway before, so now it might actually BE a good idea for me to do the focusing myself on that lenses, as it seems to have worked out pretty well. I'll keep testing it

Thank goodness the autofocus on all the other lenses work!

I'm really glad I've kept far far away from autofocus.

Is there a particular reason? 99.9% of the time the autofocus works just fine, it's just getting a bit quirky with new camera vs old lens!

[Joejr14]

Manual focus has obviously worked out very well for Doug, but I don't understand why anyone prefers MF over AF, especially with today's excellent auto focusing.

[TheBillyPilgrim]

Manual focus has obviously worked out very well for Doug, but I don't understand why anyone prefers MF over AF, especially with today's excellent auto focusing.

Yeah, I have to agree with Joejr. I don't think MF is ever comparable to AF if you have a newer, properly functioning lens.

[canon eos]

I first started using 'autofocus' in 1987 when Canon came out with the EOS 620!
I had been shooting MF for some time (heck, AF wasn't invented yet...LOL), including extensive car-rally photography, and I shot MF with my 2 1/4 cameras for years. But with AF it opened new opportunities for getting the shot(s|) that I could never have achieved before.
AF doesn't work 100% with any camera/lens and there are times when manually focusing is a viable option, especially when using a tripod. The very odd time I use MF for infrared photography.
But I find that the combination of many things going on with especially BIF photography along with the high reliability of AF to work well for me.

[Benjamin DeHaven]

It simply does nothing. I must have hit a button or something, to where it just wont' register the focus on the camera anymore. I am pretty rough on my equipment sometimes, but we'll give it a good clean and see what happens. I think it might just not work very well with the camera- the lens is very old and my D800 is very new!

However, at the same time, it never focused as sharp as I would have liked it too anyway before, so now it might actually BE a good idea for me to do the focusing myself on that lenses, as it seems to have worked out pretty well. I'll keep testing it

Thank goodness the autofocus on all the other lenses work!

Well, the D800 SHOULD work properly with nearly every Nikon lens that fits on it. And, if you get it working, I am almost 100% sure the D800 has AF Fine Tuning. If you are not familiar with this it is basically a software setting that you set and then it off-sets what it thinks the focus position is to correspond to what you have told the camera properly focused is. It then automatically uses that adjusted focus point every time you tell the camera to auto-focus with that lens (the camera can tell what lens is on the camera and unless set up otherwise will remain at the "normal" position for all other lenses). This is a feature I really wished my D90 had even though all my current lenses seem to focus well, I'd love the freedom to play with it.

There is definitely a time and place for manual shooting, but for me I want auto-focus to be my default. You know those birds that pop up in a bush showing themselves for a brief moment before flying? If I am carrying my tripod I get nothing, if I am hand-holding a smaller lens then it becomes an old west shoot out testing how fast you have trained yourself to hit the right button (or buttons if you set up back focus) while at the same time finding the bird in the viewfinder and focusing on the bird (or something close anyway). My "shoot-out" ready lens is the 70-300mm VR mounted on my D90. I carry the lens extended to 300mm and usually I am at f/5.6 which at 10 feet gives a depth of field of 0.069 feet and 0.291 feet at 20 feet. 0.291 or 3.5 inches in focus at 20 feet gives no room for error. I can't image ever being good enough do to that.

Crazy thing is I am quite sure there are people who can.

Benjamin DeHaven

[Doug Herr]

Is there a particular reason? 99.9% of the time the autofocus works just fine, it's just getting a bit quirky with new camera vs old lens!

The viewfinders of AF cameras are terrible for manual focus, the mechanical construction of AF lenses is terrible for manual focus, and AF is least reliable when you need it most. I'm not surprised that so many of today's photographers prefer AF, all they've experienced is the horrid viewfinders and poor ergonomic designs of AF cameras.

[Doug Herr]

You know those birds that pop up in a bush showing themselves for a brief moment before flying?

Like these?





Manual focus, manual exposure, 400mm lens with shoulder stock. ISO 64 film for the Blackburnian Warbler, ISO 25 film for the Prairie Warbler. It's not rocket science, but it does require an intelligently designed camera. Sadly lacking in the current market.

[Benjamin DeHaven]

Interesting, I never thought there might be the kinds of differences between "designed for AF" and "designed for MF".

And yes, those look like what I had in mind by "old west shoot out". I knew it could be done and even done well. However, the learning curve seems quite steep. Awesome skills!

Benjamin

[Doug Herr]

It's also intersting to note that Canon recommends against the focus-lock-recompose technique when the photo is at close range with limited depth-of-field, i.e., a small bird. Instead they recommend either altering the composition so that the thing you want to be in focus coincides with one of the viewfinder's focus points, or to focus manually. Focus-lock-recompose in these conditions is very unreliable, Canon says so and my experience agrees.

For my use of the photos, altering the composition to suit the camera maker's idea of where the focus should be is a huge no-no. In fact the idea of focus "points" is is abhorrent. One of the huge advantages of a TTL-viewing camera system used to be to evaluate focus over the entire picture area. That's one of the things a viewfinder designed for manual focus can do for the photographer. No only does it allow me to place the exact focus on a bird's eye no matter where it is in the picture, but also simultaneously I can see if the birds's wing/back/feet or whatever else is also in the plane of focus. It's like the ground glass of a view camera. Viewfinders for AF cameras are optimized for brightness at the expense of the 'ground glass' effect, because a large portion of the light coming through the lens is diverted to the AF system.

The learning curve can be steep especially when using an AF camera, but the skill will stay with you once you learn it. Unlike last year's "must-have" camera feature.

[SPiercePhotography]

I hate to say it, but maybe the manual focus thing DOES seem to work better for me than the automatic. When it comes to birds at least, they seem to like to be patient for me!


Hawk by SPierceUrbex, on Flickr

I have to admit, too, i'm a lot sharper and a lot more careful.

[David Case]

I hate to say it, but maybe the manual focus thing DOES seem to work better for me than the automatic. When it comes to birds at least, they seem to like to be patient for me!


Hawk by SPierceUrbex, on Flickr

I have to admit, too, i'm a lot sharper and a lot more careful.

Yikes! You certainly had no trouble with focus on this shot. Beautiful.

[SPiercePhotography]

Thank you Sadly, i turned epic fail again this morning. Blurry photo upon blurry photo of a green heron. Oh well!