Re: Viewfinders

[Greg Erker <erker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>I'm wondering how many people use their viewfinder to focus?

  On my Sputnik I mostly scale focus. But
indoors I have tried to focus on the main
subject and gotten burned because the point
of best focus wasn't exactly where I intended
(due to VF calibration being off or perhaps
just the grainy focusing circle).

  My Stereo 225 is going to be trouble. It
has two nice viewfinders for focusing and
the focus distance mark is on the bottom
front of the camera. So I may have a tendancy
to use the viewfinder too much.

  The 225s have DOF tables on the back but
I have to check to see how optimistic they
are. I recall shooting hyperfocal f22 on
my Ricohflexs and being unhappy with the
infinity sharpness.

>I'm shooting for a range of focus, so the specific plane of perfect
>focus is not important to me.  Am I alone in my thinking?

  I think the normally this is true but
sometime you have to shoot at say f11
to stop motion or be able to handhold.
Then there is no way to have the whole
scene in focus so you may want to use
the focusing screen to place it on your
main subject. Or maybe use a DOF table
or calculator and have your DOF straddle
the most important part of your scene.

Greg E.