help manually focus

[Turbo]

I put a Pentax O-ME53 magnifying eyepiece on mine. Better than the Olympus one, but it requires a little filing to fit. It's not just for people with bad eyesight....but an advantage of the pentax piece is that it's great for folks with glasses, it's got a big soft rubber cup. It does help, and it's inexpensive.

I have a Haoda split image focusing screen, haven't installed it yet. They run around $75.

Here's a link, these guys have some screens that are much cheaper...but I have not personally used their products or ordered from them.

Olympus E-510 Focusing Screens

 

[Derrel]

One of the oldest and most basic "secrets" of manually focusing is to turn the lens focusing ring from Infinity smoothly and quickly, from FAR to near focus. As soon as the image in the viewfinder looks good, Stop! THis needs to be practiced. The reason for going from far to near is that the eye adapts quickly, and the focusing action of a lens is always rapid when coming from far to near, and slower when going from closest focusing distance outward toward infinity.

On most 50mm lenses, like the Oly 50/1.8, the close focusing range is traversed rather slowly, and the eye "adapts" or more properly, cannot discern the difference between say 2.5 feet and 2.75 feet and 3 feet, typical actual marked distances on a MF era 50mm lens. The way focusing by "hand and eye" works is based on "differences"; the human brain can easily sport a "difference", but things that are very similar are much,much harder to differentiate. So, focus from Infinity inward, closer, when it looks good Stop! and you will be very,very close to the optimal focusing distance. You might need to make a tiny, minor correction if you over-ran the distance, but with practice this method is clearly the best way to manually focus. If you start out a say 5 foot focus and futz around back and forth,back and forth, your hit rate will be much poorer. Trust me.

Another critical thing is to make sure the eyepiece's adjustable diopter is set right. Focus a lens on an object at Infinity. Bring the camera up and with your eye for lack of a better word, "relaxed", see if the eyepiece's adjustable diopter is set so that the image you see is perfectly sharp when your eye is "relaxed".

 

[coreduo]

There's a book that gives guidelines what aperture and shutter speed to turn to under different circumstances. Read basic photography.

 

[Dao]

There's a book that gives guidelines what aperture and shutter speed to turn to under different circumstances. Read basic photography.

:scratch:

 

[C-Towner]

Im surprised no one here mentions using live view to attain perfect focus! You can use LV to compose the image, then zoom in either 7x or 10x on the area you want in focus, fine tune the focus, and trip the shutter. There is some lag, but your chances of getting a shot focused where you want are increased by an order of magnitude at least.

Thats the method I use with my 510 and the same lens, and I have been absolutely satisfied with the results.

 

[coreduo]

There's a book that gives guidelines what aperture and shutter speed to turn to under different circumstances. Read basic photography.

:scratch:

Sir Dao, I just came across a book that lays down all of the above. I read a lot and came across two or three books on Exposure. But forgot.

 

[Dao]

There's a book that gives guidelines what aperture and shutter speed to turn to under different circumstances. Read basic photography.

:scratch:

Sir Dao, I just came across a book that lays down all of the above. I read a lot and came across two or three books on Exposure. But forgot.

humm .. Sorry .. maybe I miss something.

I thought we were talking about how to focus better manually with the DSLR instead of exposure.