Manual focus and old eyes (69y)

Hi,
Much as I hate to admit it to myself my eyesight has seen better days. As most of my lenses are MF and I'm more into in wildlife, bird and macro photography, this has become a problem.

To help me focus I have the Pentax 1.2x and the Seagull 2x eyepieces and three different split focus screens, it can take me an age to find focus and then I'm not always spot on. When it comes to long lenses focus confirmation does not always help.

How accurate and effective is the live view screen on a K7 when used for focusing, I'm aware that the image can be zoomed but does it show a crisp picture on the LCD which enables one to judge the focus and what happens in sunlight, the LCD gets washed out.

Greg

Not sure if you already know this, but with a manual focus lense you can set your camera to auto focus, hold down the shutter release then twist the lense into focus and the camera will fire when perefect focus is achieved.

Hi Karl,

Yes I've set up the camera so that if the AF switch is on then it will only trip when there is a focus lock confirmation, but with most of my long lenses there is insufficient light for the camera to get a focus lock, green hex, and that's were I have a problem

Greg
K200D

Hi Gareth,
Sadly I can only speak for the K100D.
Have you done the aperture ring setting when using a manual lens? Maybe it is something to do with that?

Greg, use a smaller aperture and guess?

If you set a MF lens to MF on the body then the shutter will fire at any time. Use a MF lens with AF set and it will only fire when in focus. This can be used for "trap focus" technique where you depress the shutter release and slowly turn the focusing ring until the shutter fires at the focus point.

On the K200D you have to change "Custom Settings" 22 "Catch in Focus" On

Greg

To go back to my original question

Greg
K200D

Hi,I find the screen to be very accurate and if you are using Manual focus you have the luxury of 10X magnification (with autofocus set then it is 6X), You might need to shade the screen if strong sunlight falls directly onto it but otherwise it is perfectly usable in bright light, There is a very fine line grid when the live view is not being magnified and you can show bright/dark portions on the screen in live view too.
You can move the sensor by up to a couple of Milimetres in any direction which is very useful in macro as sometimes moving the tripod can mess things up. Another very useful thing with the K7 is a Timer, I don`t just mean the 2 or 12 second delay but a proper interval timer that can be set to take up to 99 shots at any interval up to 23 hours 59 min so great for time lapse of say a flower opening.
I hope that is of use to you!

Best Regards - Pete.

Thanks Pete,

That's the info I was after, I'll go and try it out.

Greg

K20D does this too. I must get around to trying it on something.

Is there any way to expand that?

For example when you want to make a timelaps movie you would need 30fps so that means you have just a little more of 3 seconds of film there
if you could do 999 it would have been more useful.
I know you could use a digital wired remote for that but in camera should be easier.

ps. sorry for going quite off topic now.

Is 30fps timelaps, I thought that was real time video?

Greg

No it isn't but to get a fluid video you need around 24fps to 30fps, you could use some tricks of course.
16fps is the bear minimum or else you see flashing images.

ps. I mean that the video need to be that, not amount of shots the camera needs to make in a second.

It is intended for still images but if you wanted to use it to make a movie then you could always re-set it after the 99th shot as long as the Camera was stable enough. Still a very useful feature for someone who does not do enough time lapse photography to justify buying a specialist piece of kit. Personally i find it useful for night shots when i am a long distance from the Camera You can set the time of the first shot which you can use to get closer to the subject with flash or handheld lamps and then set a different interval for subsequent shots without having to return to the Camera. I can use the pop up flash to indicate when the next exposure begins.

Best Regards - Pete.