Couple Questions about focusing

ryank382

TPF Noob!
Joined
May 14, 2012
Messages
24
Reaction score
1
Location
United States
Hey guys I've just been a little confused with the cameras I've been looking at with regard to its focusing capabilities. I'm looking at the Nikon d5100,d3200 and canon t3i. I want to be able to manually focus with video and pictures. From what I've understood the nikons manually focus on pictures but the video does not. It autofocuses which is annoying. The canon however seems to be the opposite. It autofocuses on pictures and manually focuses for video. My question is can I manually focus on pictures with the canon? I've also seen lenses with focal rings which make it easy to focus which I really like. Are these offered for both cameras? Kind of confused about all this and would appreciate any help or clarification
 
Not sure on the video portion, but I'm pretty sure that all DSLR's will allow you to switch the lens off auto focus. I know that the on the Nikons you have a switch on the front of the camera to switch between manual and auto focus modes,
 
Yep! ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑

You also need to be aware that auto focus for stills is usually a phase-detection process, while many entry-level cameras use contrast-detection for focusing in live view mode (video).

Contrast-detection is generally not as good as phase-detection.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos600d/15
Focusing, it must be said, is the 600D's achilles heel in video mode. Although manual focus will be second-nature to experienced filmmakers, more casual videographers might (understandably) expect to be able to hand responsibility over to the camera's AF system. Sadly, the 600D's contrast-detection AF system is far too slow to be useful during video shooting, and barely useful even for pre-focusing.
 
Last edited:
Thanks a lot for the quick replies guys definitely clears it up a little for me but I was also wondering how u would focus on something with autofocus off and no focal ring. Do you just select a location on the screen with the buttons to focus on? Or can u only turn autofocus off on lens that have a focal ring?
 
I've can't recall ever seeing a lens worth owning that didn't have a manual focus ring.
 
I plan on buying the camera with the kit lens and I don't think that has a focus ring. Is there any other way the cameras can focus on something when shooting? Autofocus seems like it could cause a problem and i would rather have all manual capabilities
 
The kit lens on any of those bodies have a mf ring
 
... Autofocus seems like it could cause a problem and i would rather have all manual capabilities
Why do you think that? The vast majority of the time it's a lot fast and a lot more accurate than manual focusing. Both Nikon and Canon but a lot of development time and money into their autofocus systems and they DO work very, very well.

Regardless of the reason, I can't think of any camera body made today that doesn't allow turning off autofocus nor can I think of any decent lens that doesn't have a focus ring. You would have to work pretty hard to find one that didn't.
 

Most reactions

Back
Top