CHG_CANON wrote:
Honestly, if you need a center-frame split prism to manually focus on a modern digital technology marvel of a mirrorless camera, you're doing it wrong.
Instead, you should:
a) consider your composition and tap your touch screen to place your AF point of focus as appropriate for the composition, anyplace other than the frame center.
b) raise your camera to your eye in a shooting position and 'pop' the EVF to the 10x zoom of the details where you've set the AF point, aka focus magnification.
c) carefully and precisely focus your MF legacy lens for the details using the 100% zoomed view of the subject.
Capture the image, letting the zoomed view drop back to the full-screen view of the composition. Regarding the colored shimmer showing the plane of focus, aka focus peaking in the mirrorless EVF, this really only works well when MF lens is precisely focused via focus magnification. Go into your user manual and find how to set the peak color (shimmer) to the maximum / extreme / highest setting. Consider using red instead of yellow or white. Once the MF lens is focused for the composition, that shimmering color can now be used to track any subtle changes to the focus (forward or backward) of where the lens is currently focused for the current composition. The 'maximum' setting makes the plane of focus rather obvious in the EVF.
Finally, for focus magnification, consider having this tool assigned on an external button so you 'pop' the EVF by pressing that (re)programmed button, again with the camera held to your eye in a shooting position. Ideally, you can go from 0% zoom to 100% with one press. Alas, you might need to cycle a few steps to the max 100%. Check your User's Manual for confirmation.
Honestly, if you need a center-frame split prism t... (
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Honestly I don't need the split/micro prism to manually focus but I think camera makers have not optimized manual focusing on modern mirrorless cameras - focus peaking and spot zooming leave much to be desired. I was just suggesting as an additional option to other manual focusing aids the old familiar and simple split/micro prism aid which was simple and quick on film cameras (would be most appropriate on retro cameras like the Zf) ...on modern cameras can be enabled/disabled, and even re-positioned and resized which was not possible with real glass. Also modern cameras have too much info in the EVFs...less is more. Thanks for the tips.