
Originally Posted by
Russell Edwards
Obviously the lack of AF is a distinct disadvantage, but I'm curious as to how much. I never had AF with my film SLRs; my sole experience of it is with a cheap point-and-shoot family snaps camera. In that context I find it very infuriating. It's Russian roulette as to which part of the field the camera chooses to place in focus. I would much rather it had a manual focus ring, and aperture ring, and shutter speed dial! I have no doubt DSLRs offer very much improved AF performance but I guess my real question is, how much harder is it with manual focus? Are things like birds in flight just a bit harder or do they become near-impossible?
At the end of the day if I found myself being seriously drawn into wildlife but hampered by MF, I could splurge on one of the native supertelephoto zooms with AF. I can't afford those initially--- plus in any case, apparently the Olympus' contrast-based AF despite improving greatly is still well behind phase-based AF of SLRs.
Anyway, there's my thoughts- I'm very interested to hear some input!