Focus requires light?

E

Eithcowich

Active member
I'm continuing to test my af100 with the 14-140 and yesterday I shot two indoor scenes at friends' houses, while using manual focus (a new way of working for me.) Got some really great shots, and I finally understand why manual is the real thing, and why I shouldn't miss the days of my good old pd170.

But I noticed that when the light in the room is low it's much harder to find focus. Is that true, or am I missing something? Is there any way of improving on this situation, other than buying a better lens for low light?

Thank you for you help!
 
No way around that one. The 14-140 will not be a good lens for low light. You either need to put more light into the shot, or get a lens that will handle lower light. The Olympus 14-35 or 35-100 are great for low light shooting if you want a zoom. Otherwise there are plenty of prime lenses to pick from.
 
Even with the fastest lenses (i.e. f/.95) you'll still run into situations where there isn't enough light, so having an LED light (a simple flashlight or an actual video light) becomes invaluable.
 
Low light is also one of those situations where precision cine lenses excel. Measure the distance from sensor plane to focal point, check the DOF range for your lens FL and aperture, and set the focus ring to the correct marked distance.
 
Razz16mm said:
Low light is also one of those situations where precision cine lenses excel. Measure the distance from sensor plane to focal point, check the DOF range for your lens FL and aperture, and set the focus ring to the correct marked distance.
Click to expand...

Agreed. It is really nice to be able to do this.
 
someone here on the forum did a little diy work and attached a small flashlight to the top of his AF100 to assist his focusing when there's not enough light.
 
Sharpness really just a matter of fine contrast, and without light you cannot have contrast. Underexposing usually reduces contrast by lowering the brightness of your highlights and midtones and introducing more noise into your image. For example, detail or sharpening filters really just find edges with contrast and add additional contrast to either side of the edge. Sensing contrast is also how contrast-detect AF works, as well as the little focus assist bar at the bottom of the LCD on the AF100.

Manually focusing on the AF100 can be a bit tough anyway, given the short focus throw of still lenses, some of them also having imprecise servo focus, and the small LCD and lack of 1:1 image zoom. Definitely try to use the red focus assist and evf dtl to help, but in the end, an external LCD will also help a lot, especially one with its own focus assist functions and a quickly adjustable contrast/brightness adjustment (for when you really need to see focus but not necessarily set exposure).
 
Thanks, everyone. The Olympus are out of my budget range but how about the Tamron 17-50?

nyvz, thanks for the info. I am using the evf dtl and the red assist, they're great. Too bad we can't turn the LCD to b&w with a user button -- get the colors right and than concentrate on focusing. I'm using the view finder all the time, and it would be nice to have another option, for example when shooting hand held from the waist.
 
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