[quote=Terry Zorich;447855
EDIT: I do not mean to imply in any way that the experience of you older guys is not valuable. Mark, you have some decent and interesting images on your site. (Although I can't help but observe that they are of very slow-moving subjects.) As I am a mere 35 years of age, I dare say that most of what you seem to have posted was taken before my birth. You did a nice job with the equipment you had available, perhaps better than I could do myself, although neither of us knows for sure. Now, I will also say that using that older manual equipment, you simply could NOT do as adequate a job as I could, if trying to photograph the same subject matter, and I assure you that's in no way an oversight or underestimation of your vast experience or your skills. But your implication that those of us modern action photographers who rely on high technology to help capture the images we're after have no concept of or appreciation for older equipment or the skills it took to master them is both unfounded and irrelevant to the matter at hand, which is making quality images of the chosen subject matter.[/QUOTE]
You miss the point and make, IMO, the mistake of speaking of what you are using today as all it should and could be, excepting, of course, the original focus problems of this thread.
Don't forget, I said I own an EOS-1Ds and an EOS-1Ds Mk II, meaning I am quite with the times and with the technology.
The present selectable 48 pt Canon auto-focusing devices are, IMO, the first to actually be able to rival the Messraster (which, of course, you had no idea of, but was the first patent to ever claim focal-point-exact focusing).
But the Canon Auto-focus, even if it didn't have the small problem discussed in this thread (which, according to what I read, my EOS-1Ds Mk II does not have, at least not in any problematic way), ....even without the problem discussed here, the Canon 48 point auto-focusing devices have serious limitations for real accuracy with all subject types.
First, the sensors are too small. At many portrait distances, for one example, the sensor will cover the nose, eyes and ears. So how is it going to find the eye, which is the main subject-point? It can't. So one continues to live in a world of depth of field imprecision, with apparent sharpness, but a certain quality of image missing, however subtle or not it may be.
Then, for another example, when I want to photograph a whole doorway to fill the sceen, and the frame of the entrance-way has super-fine carving, on which I want to focus, that frame of the doorway is outside the sensor area, so I cannot focus on it and still frame my image. And to focus on it first and then frame the image and take the shot changes the distance to the door frame and changes the focus. That is not a problem with the Messraster (or even with what little precision a ground glass can offer).
Then, there are the problems with smaller apertures and low light. The Messraster can solve those problems, albeit sometimes with a second Messraster calculated for the smaller aperture, etc.
And yes, I had a super-successful pro career for all of 9 years, from 1960-1969, during which I did and mastered all types of photography. Then I moved on to other things even more difficult to master. Those photos were celebrated, exhibited and published in those days in the finest venues. Of course, viewing them on the net with monitors not matching mine, etc., is a risk I took and which I avoided for quite some time until monitors and such reached a decent level. But that is not seeing them in their originals or as I viewed them on our Apple 30" monitor or SONY 24" CRT wide-screen GDM-FW900 super-monitor.
So I would suggest keeping this to the technology. I mentioned my stuff to point out that sequences could be done manually. And one makes a mistake to believe that the subjects of many of my sequences moved in any less difficult-to-catch speed or manner than modern sports or auto-racing, etc. Most of my subjects moved and changed attitude with enormous speed, but also in much less predictable manners than auto-racing and most sports. Even my children photos, most of which are not yet posted, has subjects of totally unpredictable nature and manner, moving quite speedily.
A shot on my site (of the Liberty Bell copy we gave West Berlin at
http://www.anstendig.com/Berlin%20Photos/bell_index.htm , click on the thumbnails) might have been helped with the canon Autofocusing. With the Canon, I wouldn't have had to do any focusing at all. In that photo I had to focus by moving back and forth until I saw the focus in the messraster, while holding on for dear life.
But please remember that, even without the fault discussed here, modern auto-focusing still needs refinement and perfection. It should be on the whole screen, not just in the middle section, and the smaller the sensors, the more accurate the focusing (assuming the sensors are as sensitive as the present ones). Just for starters.
Mark
Linear Mode
