Civilian Aviation

Hello all,

The last few photo session's I've done have been with my new-ish xmas present, a Nikon D3200 with an additional Nikon 70-300 1:4 5.6G lens. I took this to Frankfurt last week for some shot's, and I thought I had got the knack of the manual focus ring (there's no Auto Focus switch) and through the view finder it looks great. When I take the picture it doesn't look what I expected it to, and when looking at it on the PC it's rubbish

This A340 looked alright for example, a bit of cropping and processing would have come out well, but it's come out rather blurry



Now I know about Back Button Focusing, but I've not used it yet, however I'm not sure if that's a possible solution, can you actually use it though when you have a manual focus lens?? I find the manual focus on that lens is rather delicate, one very very slight movement on it and it's ruined. I'm sure it's great doing static/landscape etc but for moving planes I am trying to manually focus as quickly as possible before it disappears, sometimes I can't and it's gone.

I've tried 'holding' the focus ring where it is so I can get a similar shot next time, but because it's loose and delicate, if you hold the lens wrong or put the lens cap on, you've moved the ring so you need to re-focus again.


Does anyone have any advice? Am I better off looking for a Tamron lens? I know someone who has a manual focus lens and say's it's not like the nikon one, it's one where you can hold the focus where it is and it stays there, however it is one of these ££££ lenses (f2, or something fast) but I could do with something like that (focus type I mean) on a cheaper scale, or am I better off with an Auto Focus lens?


Any help appreciated!

James.

Hi James

I suggest you use a shutter speed of at least 1/300th of a second and an aperture of f11 for maximum depth of field.

There are plenty of reviews of the D3200 online which can probably give you some more tips on how to get it right!

Regards

Robin

That was 1/800 at f5.6, must be where I was going wrong entirely?

james143611 wrote:That was 1/800 at f5.6, must be where I was going wrong entirely?

you certainly want to be higher than f 5.6 James but don't think you would need to go quite as high as scarba suggests unless you are really struggling with manual focussing. The 'sweet spot' for the lens is normally 2 or 3 F stops up from the minimum i.e. 7.1 or 8 so I would tend to try the latter although going up to F11 would increase the depth of field slightly as he suggests to help focussing.

1/800th should be ample to overcome any camera movement, I normally try to work around 1/800 - 1/1000th and adjust the ISO to get me to that speed as I usually work in AV so I set the aperture at F 8 and keep checking at what speed the camera is actually taking the pics. It's all a bit of a balancing act nut this time of year when there's heat and dust haze in the air I like to keep the ISO as low as possible but keeping within the above parameters to avoid noise on the pics.

One point though, when I'm taking prop jobs I switch to TV (speed control rather than aperture) to help get a bit of prop blur but I'm not steady enough to get really slow speeds AND a really sharp image so I still go around 1/300 - 1/400th and accept that the blur will be limited.

Finally, re an auto focus lens, I would personally go for that every time as it makes things a lot easier (for me at least). I have played around trying manual focussing occasionally but the failure rate goes sky high so I avoid it on moving subjects.
I do use manual focussing on static subjects (mainly birds) when the background will upset it if I'm not centering on the subject perfectly and also if the camera wont auto focus quickly enough - especially if a bird uses a regular perch and I want to be ready for it as it lands or departs - focus on the perch and wait!

HTH

andy

Thank you Andy, I shall try some different settings next time (I was using full manual though really I could have just used Shutter Priority?) and see if they come out better, if I'm still struggling with Manual Focus I'll have a shop around for some AF supported lenses