A80 manual focus and hyperfocal setting

[DiJ]

Hi all, after experimenting and taking various test pics with the manual focus and AF, I have found the MF function to be an extremely useful feature. (somewhat contrary to what many people have said)

Advantage:
Much less shutter lag
No need for object with vertical edge and strong contrast
More reliable than AF in very dim or bright lighting
The only option for far subjects in near complete darkness

Its useless to rely on the LCD to determine focus! Even with the magnified centre. There just isnt enough resolution for that. You got to take test pictures at different focus distance settings and study them either with 10x mag on the LCD or at 100% on the monitor. This way you will know what range of subjects will be in focus at a certain focus distance and aperture value. This is the settings I use on my camera:

AV: f3.5
MF: Inf
DOF: ~10m - Inf

AV: f3.5
MF: 5m (this is the hyperfocal for me)
DOF: ~2m - Inf

AV: f3.5
MF: 3m
DOF: ~1.5 - 10m

Using just 3 settings I can get majority of my landscape and people snapshots in perfect focus! This is partly because you got so much DOF with small sensor digicams. However I try to avoid using MF for subject closer than 1.5m as the DOF starts to get much too shallow. Will post some test pics when I figure out how. Anyone can show me how???

[DiJ]

This particular photo was taken at in AV mode f3.5 MF locked at the 5m mark.
The building in the background was around 50m, the palm trees about 20m and the bushes about 2.5m away. BTW 1m is about 3.3ft. The crops are at 100% view.