Calypso Cabaret Ladyboy Show at Asiatique Bangkok Ultimate Manual Focus Test for Canon EOS M |ThaiPhotos

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Calypso Cabaret Ladyboy Show at Asiatique Bangkok Ultimate Manual Focus Test for Canon EOS M

ISO 100 f2

A lot of people have been complaining about the lackluster auto-focus performance of the Canon EOS M as probably one of its biggest weakness. Since I am mostly using manual focusing lens like Leica and Carl Zeiss M-Mount on it that is not really an issue. HOWEVER trying to manual focus using this camera is not that easy either.

ISO 100 f2

Having been using this camera for a while I feel that doing manual focus with it is not too bad IF your subject is completely still and you have an infinite amount of time to take the shot. First of all there is no Peaking function :(. To focus you have to press a little button on the touch screen, press it once and it will magnify the picture x5 press it again and it will magnify it x10. You then try to get the picture in focus by looking at the back of the screen.

ISO 200 f2

The thing I hate most is once you get the picture in focus, you then have to press the button on the touch screen again to unzoom, then you have compose the shot and move your hand back to press the shutter. When you are using a wide aperture this process very often can cause the focus to be off. With no peaking it is also very difficult to keep track of a moving object to focus on at x10 zoom.

ISO 6400 f2

Having said all that I still took the camera with me to the Calypso (Ladyboy) Cabaret Show at Asiatique in Bangkok, just to see if despite the difficulties it was still possible to get some shots with this camera of fast moving subjects under difficult lighting conditions using manual-focus.

ISO 800 f2

As expected it was quite a challenge and a lot of time zooming in to get accurate focus was just not fast enough and I had to just judge the focus without zooming in, so a very high percentage of shots were just no usable at all. But those that were I am actually quite happy with, in fact considering the size of the system I am very impressed with the photos I got.

ISO 1600 f2

Considering this is probably the weakest shooting situation for the camera I am very impressed and I must admit I am finding less and less reasons to bring along my heavy DSLR kit with me.