blickblocks
Active member
I heard that some AF-S lenses don't mate well with a follow focus, too much play or lag. Any idea? I'm considering the 18-70 f3.5-4.5 as an inexpensive run and gun lens.
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AF-S focus rings and follow focus
- Thread starter blickblocks
- Start date
blickblocks
Active member
Anyone? You all use AF and manual lenses?
Blue Bomber
Well-known member
Not much experience with AF-S, but I did have the 18-105 VR. Yup, compared to regular lenses, the AF ring is a bit loose, since it's set to override AF when you turn it. There's no switch needed to manually focus, unlike their regular AF lenses. I think it also made a clicking noise when switching from zooming in to out because of the slack.
zeroscenecred
New member
The AFS lenses are a total loss in my opinion. There's a few problems I've run into while trying to use mine with my D7000. Long story short, stick to either AI-S lenses or the earlier AF lenses that still had aperture rings and hard stops on focus ends (close and infinity). Here are a few of my findings....
- AFS's lack of focus stops: If you have a follow focus with hard stops this is less of an issue, but it still requires lots of extra work to setup. You'll need to set the lens to "M", then focus to infinity, wherever that might be since the ring doesn't stop right at it, and the near point (again, wherever that is), then set your hard stops and hope you didn't get it wrong.
- Flakey feel of the ring in general: It just feels vague, real vague.
- Accidental auto-focus totally screws up your hardtops: If you forget to put the lens or body in M and half-press you just lost all your previous work.
- Lens breathing: It's vicious. Focusing while zoomed results in the image getting larger and smaller in the view. This was the deal-breaker for me.
- No aperture ring: Can't do Live-View based aperture changes.
All in all just do yourself a favor and either A) get a handful of far faster primes which will each be lighter, sharper, faster, arguably cheaper even covering the same ranges, and lack all these issues, or B) find a brand of lens like Tokina or whomever, who makes a lens with at least focus stops. At 1080p the resolving power and accuracy of the lens plays less of an issue than it does at 16+ megapixel. The AF lenses works great btw. I have the < $200 50mm 1.8 and the $600 85 1.8 and both make for great filming. The former's in-out moving front element is a very minor trade-off (which will only matter with a matte box).
Happy Nikoning!
- AFS's lack of focus stops: If you have a follow focus with hard stops this is less of an issue, but it still requires lots of extra work to setup. You'll need to set the lens to "M", then focus to infinity, wherever that might be since the ring doesn't stop right at it, and the near point (again, wherever that is), then set your hard stops and hope you didn't get it wrong.
- Flakey feel of the ring in general: It just feels vague, real vague.
- Accidental auto-focus totally screws up your hardtops: If you forget to put the lens or body in M and half-press you just lost all your previous work.
- Lens breathing: It's vicious. Focusing while zoomed results in the image getting larger and smaller in the view. This was the deal-breaker for me.
- No aperture ring: Can't do Live-View based aperture changes.
All in all just do yourself a favor and either A) get a handful of far faster primes which will each be lighter, sharper, faster, arguably cheaper even covering the same ranges, and lack all these issues, or B) find a brand of lens like Tokina or whomever, who makes a lens with at least focus stops. At 1080p the resolving power and accuracy of the lens plays less of an issue than it does at 16+ megapixel. The AF lenses works great btw. I have the < $200 50mm 1.8 and the $600 85 1.8 and both make for great filming. The former's in-out moving front element is a very minor trade-off (which will only matter with a matte box).
Happy Nikoning!