where's the dof scale?

[kdd]

where did it go? i haven't seen it since auto-focus and digital lenses came about? it's not just canon either; it's all of them. i still have my manual f-1 and fd lenses, that's a oldie but goodie. i currently teach photography at a local community college, and it's difficult at best to explain hyperfocal distance focusing, much less teach it, without the scale. i certainly do miss it and have plans to contact canon to see if they would bring it back. anyone else out there in cyberspace miss this feature, if your old enough to remember it? cheers from l.a. [ lower alabama 😉 ]

[7D5D]

Yes I also miss it and the hard infinity stop too. I understand why no hard infinity stop with AF lenses but I don't see why no DoF scales. I now use phone apps like Depth of Field Master.

[Edward]

I miss it too but still DOF button is there to help. This is another detail that could be shown by programming the camera software to do it and display in one of the LCD's.

[kdd]

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@Edward wrote:
I miss it too but still DOF button is there to help. This is another detail that could be shown by programming the camera software to do it and display in one of the LCD's.

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that's a dof "preview" button. remember when you could set the infinity mark to the desired "end" distance and know what would be in focus? i primarily used hyperfocal length distance focusing when i wanted from infinity back to the camera in focus.

when i went back to school to get my b.f.a. i had to take photo 2, because my professor said i needed to learn how to shoot "fine art" photographs. i had been a commercial photographer for 12 years shooting for magazines and u.p.i. (if you know who they were).

one day before a photo critique one of the other students looked at one of my photos and walked off and then came back to it and took a harder look at it. he commented that i had everything in focus and then asked what lens i used. i told him a 200. then he asked how i did it and told him i used hyperfocal distance focusing. his question of what was it surprised me. i showed him how to do it.

i do remember when i looked in the view finder the first time i used the method of how everything was out of focus and then i hit the dof preview lever on my manual f-1 and through the darkness i saw everything was in focus; i was hooked.

now, about programming the camera to do it for you. as i tell my photo students, your camera is stupid. you have to tell it what to do. i have a friend who is in search of an image editing program that will retouch an image at the click of the mouse.

i keep telling him that there is no such animal and never can be; and if he isn't willing to take the time to do the work he'll not become a successful professional photographer. of course, he argued there was such a program out there somewhere.

concluding, i wouldn't want someone to place limitations as to how i could use this feature. and something like that would increase the cost of the camera and with this in mind, it seems to me that it would be less expensive to add some paint to lenses as it would be to program, debug and continually have to update a piece of software to keep up with the continuous input from camera owners to fix the limitations fo the software.

cheers from l.a.

[John]

I don't particularly miss it.  "Hyperfocal distance" depends on how you define your circle of confusion.  But I wouldn't mind having the extra paint on lenses with a distance scale.  Seems like a simple thing to add.  As long as Canon uses the same CoC for all their hyperfocal distance scales, then it would make a good reference point.

Canon, you listening?  🙂

[kdd]

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@John wrote:

<snip>"Hyperfocal distance" depends on how you define your circle of confusion.</snip>

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maybe true, but in relation to the chosen f-stop. that's the key to hyperfocal distance focusing.

cheers from l.a.