Comments at bottom.
At 3:56 PM +0000 12/31/01, olympus-digest wrote:
>Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 04:42:24 -0800
>From: "Olympus" <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [OM] AF vs. MF.. Proof!!
>
>Well, I saw my sister's wedding pictures taken by the wedding photographer..
>She was using a N*kon F5. I took the same shots as she did..
>
>I was using Fuji NPC 400, she was on Kodak 200Gold. (Don't you love how I
>make film sound like illegal narcotics? "She was on Kodak 200's at the
>time.. " hehehe) well, we compared.. I thought she would have the upper
>hand, I figure Kodak 200 would be a bit less grainy than my 400.. Well...
>
>First, my color was much more neutral... Shooting asians with kodak is not
>that great, everybody turns out more brown and yellow than they should.
>Second, mine was a LOT (Let me repeat) a LOT sharper. Her's from an AF
>didn't look that focused. You can't tell from her pictures... UNTIL you
>put mine next to hers. Same shot, we stood side by side... My mom's
>friends just asked for reprints, and they picked mine over hers...
>
>Mine was in focus, and was just razor sharp. Her's looked sharp, until
>people saw mine, then her's looked a bit soft and blurry.. While AF is very
>convient... I have to admit that part... But when it's all said and done,
>AF cannot focus as well as an MF. I was not sure about that (as the
>THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS) of C*non and N*kon commercials and ads tell me
>otherwise... which contradict what I read on the internet... but now that
>I had proof in my hot little hands...
One thing strikes me here -- the Ni*on F5 might need some adjustment. My first
Olympus, an OM-1 bought new in 1975 with the 50mm f/1.4 lens, was very soft
when used above f/4 or so. I always thought it was operator error, until I
read a book on camera repair (by George Romney, if memory serves), which
commented that cameras often had a difference between true focus and focus
indicated in the viewfinder. Hmm! I went out and tested it with a bit of 35mm
wide groundglass taped to the film plane, frosted side towards lens. Focus
points don't match. Damn! So that's why! Off to Olympus for adjustment.
Turned out that the mirror wasn't resting at quite the right angle, throwing
the indicated focus off. This was true of the camera as received from Olympus,
and may be quite common, if my experience and Romney's comments are any
evidence.
I later learned that the f/1.4 lenses weren't that good either, and got a f/1.8
instead.
It strikes me that the lens tests published at
<http://members.aol.com/olympusom/lenstests/default.htm> may suffer from this,
as one would expect that a given lens (same serial number) would always perform
the same regardless of which camera body (by model or serial number) it's
installed in, if and only if those bodies are all correctly adjusted. And yet
the results differ from body to body.
Now, back to that Ni*on F5, the top of the line. I bet the F5's autofocus
system is capable of perfect focus under most situations, but also I bet that a
wedding photographer's camera takes quite a beating, and doesn't get sent in
for CLA until it just won't work anymore.
So, it's hard to draw a conclusion unless we do the tests on two properly
adjusted cameras.
Joe Gwinn
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