How was it done before autofocus

[Joaquin Barbará]

Hello everyone, I am new to this forum and I tried searching for Manual Focus using the search function and could not come up with the answer I was looking for.
Here is my question, how was bird photography done in the days of film and manual focus.
I understand that viewfinders were brighter and had a split prism to assist with focus so I would like to know if anyone has tried using a focusing screen (KatzEye) and old manual telephotos for bird photography.
Obviously the reason I am asking is to see if it is possible to do this for about 1/10 the price of the current new lenses. I just bought from KEH a Nikon 300mm f/2.8 AIS that is supposed to arrive this week. It was aprox 800 dlls which compared with the new Nikon AF-S 300mm f/2.8 ED VR II that goes for 5,800 is a very significant price difference.

A Nikon 800 F5.6 ED INTERNAL FOCUS AIS (52) *WIT800 F5.6 ED INTERNAL FOCUS AIS (52) *WITH HOOD, CAPS, CASEH HOOD, CAPS, CASE (http://www.keh.com/camera/Nikon-Manual-Focus-Fixed-Focal-Length-Lenses/1/sku-NK06009042239R?r=FE) on KEH is listed for 3650 in excellent condition compared to a new Nikon AF-S 800mm f/5.6 ED VR for mere 17,896.00.

Since I do not make any money out of this hobby, at this point in time it is difficult to justify that kind of investment to the wife even if I had the extra money.

I understand that birds in flight are probably going to be VERY hard and the hit rate is probably going to be close to zero, but for stationary subjects, is it unreasonable to give these guys a try.

Again sorry if this is beating a dead horse but I could not find the horse's corpse.

Thanks again.

Joaquin Barbará MD

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Joaquin,

People did not do as much bird photography in those days because it was difficult and the photos were quite poor by today's standards. I was looking at 1993 issue of NG a while ago that had an article about flamingos, I am not sure if they used auto focus or not but most of the images would be "deletes" for most photographers today, birds were grainy and had little feather detail on them so critical focus wasn't that big of a deal any way. No one was used to seeing images with the quality we see today so expectations were lower.

I personally don't think you will be happy with the results from the vintage lens, especially with long focal lengths your photos will be blurry at pixel level. I would get a newer shorter lens with AF-S and get closer.

if you must use MF what you can do is to setup a perch and manually pre-focus on the perch and stop down your lens. try to get the bird on your perch and you should be good to go.

[David Stephens]

I think that Arash is absolutely correct. I tried to MF my 500mm lens with a 2.0x TC before my camera's firmware was upgraded to allow AF. The results were dismal. Almost none of the shots that looked good in the VF turned out to be a keeper. Our VFs aren't designed for MF and it never really worked that well at these super-telephoto focal lengths. Shooting set-ups is about the only way that you're going to get anything usable.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Yes, perhaps that short term you will be happy with the savings but medium to long term (and possibly even before that) you will long for AF. Do you absolutely need f/2.8? I'm not very familiar with Nikon's arsenal but you can get an AF f/4 lens or f/5.6 for much cheaper. You'd be happier with a "slower" longer reach AF lens than with a faster manual focus one. You'd even be happier with a third party lens such as Sigma if savings are what you are after.

[Marina Scarr]

I don't think you'll be happy in the short or long term, esp for bird photography.

[Doug Herr]

I'm using manual focus but I wouldn't if I had the typical AF camera.

My camera's viewfinder is optimized for manual focus: It's relatively big and bright and the screen has enough scatter that I can see easily what is or is not in focus. I don't use a split-image focussing aid. Instead I use the plain matte ("ground glass") to focus, which allows me to focus anywhere in the picture area instead of being restricted to focus points.

[Jerry van Dijk]

I may be completely off the mark, because I have only been using MF with AF lenses with the AF switched off, and haven't done this with any of the large telephoto lenses. I'm mainly doing this with my 200mm Nikkor macro lens on the D7000 body. AF is next to useless with macro, especially when handholding and/or shooting moving subjects, so I have it permanently switched off. Despite that, I have an electronic indicator in the viewfinder that indicates whether the lens is properly focussed or not and if not if the focus is in front or behind the subject. If I remember correctly, my analog SLR had a similar, albeit more crude, analog indicator where you had to position a green line between two brackets.

135332
(picture from the Nikon website, focus indicator indicated with red circle)

It is actually a very good help to see if I've got the focus right and it seems quite accurate. My guess would be that most modern camera's have a similar indicator.
The only thing I don't know is whether the camera needs the AF system of the lens to activate this indicator, but my guess would be that it is linked to the AF sensor in the camera rather than the AF system in the lens. In that case, the indicator would also work with MF lenses. Still no go for quickly moving subjects, but it should give you good results with stationary subjects.

Zeiss have an interesting article on the subject, which also discusses changing the focus screen to facilitate better manual focussing, and also advocate the use of live view with zoom for accurate MF: http://lenses.zeiss.com/camera-lenses/en_de/website/photography/what_makes_the_difference/manual_focusing.html

[Randy Stout]

Joaquin:

Daniel made an excellent suggestion. The Nikon 300mm f/4 AFS is less than $1000 used, and there are lots of them out there. It has very good image quality, is light and easily handheld, and good, not spectacular autofocus. It also is good for butterflies and other large insect macro work. For larger birds in many locations, it would serve you well.

The focusing screens on the film bodies were much different than todays DSLR screens. They tended to show a much more distinct in focus image, but in general were much darker and with some lenses the split prism center area would go so dark as to be very difficult to see.

The new Nikon DF body has managed to allow much better manual focusing, but isn't really optimized for bird work in other ways.

Perhaps you could rent a 300mm f/4 for a week or so. It wouldn't be very expensive, and might really help you. Let me put it this way, if I had to chose between a perfect example of a 300 f/2.8 manual focus Nikkor, vs the common 300 AFS, I would take the latter everytime, even though the 300 f/2.8 Nikons were generally superb optically.

Cheers

Randy

[Ted Miller]

Since I do not make any money out of this hobby, at this point in time it is difficult to justify that kind of investment to the wife even if I had the extra money.

As one who has explored that path, for the same reasons as you, I offer some observations from experience. I started shooting Nikon-on-a-budget with a used Nikormat Ft2 in 1975, so I have a small collection of MF primes.

The path I've wandered:


I had bought (long before digital) a Celestron 1000mm/f11 mirror lens (which was a very frustrating piece of gear, with both film and digital bodies)
My first (and only) digital Nikon is my D300.
I installed a KatzEye focus screen in my D300 -- would not try manual focus without it.
My first usable longer telephoto was a 300mm f4.5 (I think) MF.
I upgraded my 1000mm to a Nikon mirror f11 unit -- (still very frustrating).
I got a great deal on a 600mm/5.6 MF lens on Ebay.
It became obvious that my camera support (tripod) was a major cause of blurry shots, so that set me back almost a grand (used price)
I purchased a modified TC-16A autofocusing teleconverter (from eastern Europe), and started using it with the 300 & 600mm lenses. You have to rough focus manually, but then the autofocus will "fine focus" for you.


My observations:

I should have upgraded my tripod a lot sooner. The one I had was "a good bit sturdier than average", but it was not nearly sturdy enough for 600-1000mm lenses. A lot of things I blamed on other things were due to the tripod. You will find similar advice all over these forums -- BELIEVE IT.
Sedentary birds can be photographed with MF lenses.
Nervous birds (e.g. warblers feeding) are very frustrating -- less than 1% keepers. -- By the time you figure where the bird hopped to, find bird, focus lens, press shutter, the bird has either moved out of focus or out of the frame entirely. A lot of time I saw the bird, but only got it half focused before it moved on. (A lot of frustrating practice at Magee Marsh in May).
With my D300, the focus confirmation light is helpful. It still works with manual-focus lenses. The D300 has only a good-bad focus light. I understand that certain other Nikon models have 2 lights, one for too close, and one for too far. That tells you which direction to turn the focus collar.
The problems with the mirror lenses came down to:

At f11, things do not snap in and out of focus, so with the focus mechanism on those lenses, it is hard to tell when focus is nailed (but the sensor knows)
At f11 the split image is VERY touchy as to eye position. (Sometimes spent more time trying to get both halves of the split image working than turning the focus ring.)
My tripod shake was hurting me with those lenses.


The TC-16A made a world of difference. It has probably multiplied my "keeper" ratio by 5-10x, which also greatly increases the enjoyment factor.


I'm still learning (have had the TC-16A for only about a year), but am willing to share what I have learned.

Ted Miller