IMO, focusing scales on contemporary lenses are indeed useless.
Back in the good old days before AF and zooms, we used primes and the
scales were very useful for determining hyperfocal distance. Also,
accurate focus distance was necessary for determining flash exposure
with our manual flash equipment.
Early zoom lenses of better quality had helpful markings for
hyperfocal distance but as AF displaced MF those markings became more
vague. Someone may correct me, but I think a lot of current zooms are
actually varifocal lenses that required refocusing every time focal
length is changed.
I wonder if a lot of the people who are now into photography even know
what hyperfocal distance is? AF technology lends itself to getting
one particular point in focus, making a pic and letting everything
else fall where it may.
my two lux worth/ScottGee1
On 12/7/05, Dan Mitchell <danmitchell@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Daniel Sepke wrote:
> > From pictures
> > of the lens itself if it is definitely in the consumer class of DZ lenses.
> > It lacks the window with a focus scale so I imagine its use will be pretty
> > much limited to AF or MF guesswork.
>
> Maybe I'm missing something here, but how does a focus scale help with
> accurate focus? Roughly, sure, I can tell if it's at the near or far end
> of the range when things are completely blurred.
>
> But I can't see how you'd use the focus scale for critical focus at
> all. Firstly I'd have to get an accurate measurement from the nodal
> point(?) of the lens to the thing I'm trying to take a shot of; heck,
> the bit of that object that I wanted to be in focus, which would be
> pretty fiddly if I was going for the insides of a flower, say.
>
> Secondly, I'd have to turn the lens until the focus distance on there
> matched the distance to subject, and I can't see how that could be done
> accurately at all given the amount of turn from end to end on most
> lenses. If someone made a lens which took multiple rotations to shift
> focus, maybe, but with the usual one-turn-or-less I'm not sure how this
> would work.
>
> Presumably in the real world nobody would genuinely try to set
> something in focus without ever looking through the viewfinder, but once
> you _are_ looking through the viewfinder then what does a focus scale on
> the lens get you?
>
> Is this just for setting things at hyperfocal distance or something?
>
> -- dan
>
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