Focus (stupid question time)

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Magicman

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Trevor
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I have been trying to use manual focus on my d3000, when I look through the view finder and adjust all seems ok, but on the resulting photo it is way out.

So my stupid question is: is the view finder being adjusted to my bad eyesight making everything look all clear? So when other people look at the photo it is like looking through another persons glasses?

Hard to know how to put the question, so I hope this makes sense.

Trev
 
Do the light up points on your autofocus screen look in focus? Does it look in focus when you use autofocus? If no, adjust the dioptre (little dial somewhere near the viewfinder. Check your manual if you can't find it.
If that all looks fine it's probably that you've just mised your focus. It's really hard to tell in a small viewfinder whether everything is pin sharp. If you have live view I'd use that t ensure everything is spot on On a canon at least you can magnify a tiny area to really fine-tune it.
 
Easiest way to set the dioptre dial is to autofocus on something, then turn the dial until everything is sharp in the viewfinder.

I actually find manual focus quite difficult myself, as I can't tell if it's pin sharp by looking through the viewfinder, but think this is down to my eyesight being so bad.
 
Trevor, do as suggested above with the diopter.
To check you have manually focussed correctly, when looking through the viewfinder, if the image is in focus you will see a small green solid circle in the bottom left corner. This shows that whatever you have the focus point on in your composition will be in focus. Hope that helps. Iain
 
Focusing a DSLR manually is quite difficult. Much more so than a film SLR.

I find most crop format DSLRs are just about impossible from a practical standpoint - too slow and innacurate. The viewfinder image is just too small and dark, the focusing screen isn't designed for it either.
 
HoppyUK said:
Focusing a DSLR manually is quite difficult. Much more so than a film SLR.
Click to expand...

Would you be able to clarify that please? I always thought so but have never known the mechanics of why it is true.

Most of the time when I am manual focussing I just use live view. It takes time but I always end up with very sharp images.
 
I've found manual focusing with a DSLR more difficult than when I used a film SLR (which my only option was to focus manually) because it has been with a DSLR with a cropped sensor which gives a darker less magnified view in the eyepiece.
 
trencheel303 said:
Would you be able to clarify that please? I always thought so but have never known the mechanics of why it is true.

Most of the time when I am manual focussing I just use live view. It takes time but I always end up with very sharp images.
Click to expand...

Manual focus film SLRs are obviously full frame. The viewfinder image is correspondingly bigger than crop format digital (due to the focal length increase) and the lenses tend to have lower f/numbers for a brighter image, and with shallower depth of field so the image snaps in and out of focus quickly.

The focusing screen of MF SLRs has microprism and split-image focusing aids, plus the lenses are designed for manual focusing with much finer adjustment - and no play in them!

All this is optical viewfinder related of course. Live view changes all that!
 
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