Photography Discussions: Money

Welcome to yet another issue of CRPhotography's Photography Discussions! In this series, we aim to promote a specific discussion topic for the month. We want to hear your opinions, engage with you about them, and see you engage with each other as well! So here's a new topic of this series:

Money:

Last month we discussed the various methods of camera Focus, what we use, and why!

barananduen said:

I use Manual Focus. It was one of, if not perhaps, the most important reason I wanted and got a DSLR - I was tired of spending longer trying to trick the AF on my point-and-click than setting up or taking the shot. It's fine since most of the stuff I take pictures of stays relatively still, and I can compensate for wind and flying insects with shutter speed and, if necessary, increasing the DOF.

For pics of my dog or of birds (most of the time; unless it's perched), I use AF, though, but I'm not very good at those.

Rick-TinyWorlds said:

I use almost exclusively Manual Focus. In fact, it's one of the reasons why I got a DSLR.
My images are mostly macro shots with static element in the scene, so once I have the right focus, I'm good.
Besides, with manual focus I can get my object nicely magnified and sharp, although still using a 18-55mm lens ...
On the other hand, I want to get into photographing wildlife at some time. There Auto Focus can be really, really useful, since you often will find yourself trying to capture rather fast movements.

I think in the end it depends on what you want to photograph.
For most purposes Manual Focus is the way to go, because it gives you more control over the camera.
However, for sports and wildlife photography, Auto Focus can be a helpful tool.

syntheticdreamer said:

I started photography with a Pentax P3 from 1985 and a 50mm lens my dad bought for it from a second hand store in Cologne, Germany.  This was a manual focus film SLR and one of my most favorite cameras I ever had the pleasure of being able to use.  I really felt in total control of every single shot that I took with it which immersed me more into photography.  I also feel it helped me understand the mechanics of photography a lot better by being a lot more hands on with the camera itself. 

Black-Rabbit-Studios said:

I use both depending on the situation. For a long time, I was a firm believer that if you did not use Manual Focus you could not call yourself a photographer, but I have progressed beyond that because I realized that in certain situations you are forced to use Auto-Focus. For example, I do a lot of self-portraits and it is very difficult to manually focus when I am further than arm-distance from the camera. For that, I must use Auto-Focus to be able to get a sharp image. Another reason I have started to use Auto-Focus more is I have bad eyesight. Yes, you can readjust the viewfinder to match your eyesight, but I have found that I have to adjust it for every situation, depending on where my subject is at, and that takes time that I simply would rather spend shooting. So for instances where I have to be on my toes and I cannot use Live View, I will use Auto-Focus as a tool to help me rather than hinder myself with Manual Focus. With moving subjects, Auto-Focus is a great tool because it will usually focus faster than I can focus manually so I will use it in that situation as well. I still try to use Manual as much as possible . . . it simple gives me more satisfaction as a a photographer to know that I had complete control over the photograph.

I usually keep my focus mode on One-Shot AF simply because it is the one I am most familiar with. I have not experimented a whole lot with Al Servo mode, but it is something I would like to get more familiar with because I like shooting wildlife and I think it would be a useful tool to have in my box. There are certain situations I can look back on and realize that if I had thought to switch the focus mode, then my pictures might have turned out better, but for most of the things that I do, One-Shot AF does the job and does it well.