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Manual vs Auto vs Back Button focus – Which should you use for landscapes?

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I see people banging on about Back Button Focus in Facebook groups almost every day, extolling the virtues and benefits it offers for portrait photography. And, well, I just don’t get it, I really don’t. I’ve tried it several times and it often turns out to be more of a hindrance than a help. But when it comes to landscape photography, back button focus actually makes a lot of sense.

In this video, Mads Peter Iversen walks us through manual focus, regular autofocus and back button focusing and how each works for landscape photography. He explains how each method works and how you can use each of them while talking about the advantages and disadvantages of all three methods.

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Watch: Video tests to see if the Nikon Z6 II Eye AF really that much better than the Z6

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Some of the biggest complaints about the Nikon Z6 have been addressed with Nikon’s new Z6 II. It now has dual card slots for redundancy and its continuous shooting speed has been bumped up from 12fps to 14fps. But one somewhat embarrassing setback of the Z6, even after the firmware updates, was its Eye Autofocus abilities.

Manny Ortiz has had his hands on a pre-production model Z6 II for a little while, and he wanted to put it to the test to see if the Eye AF issues, particularly in low light situations have finally been resolved. And, well, it looks like they might have been.

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CDA Tek’s LiDAR module lets you get fast autofocus on any camera – even in the dark

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It’s taken a while for this one to come to market, having first been teased in July 2019, and it’s still not quite there, but it’s close. Originally shown off as an early prototype alongside the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K, the CDA-Tek AFX, as it’s now known, works with the Pocket 6K as well, communicating with either camera over Bluetooth, requiring no external cables.

But the AFX also has an extra trick up its sleeve. It now also allows you to add LiDAR autofocus support to any lens, including manual focus ones, thanks to new communication protocols added for the Tilta Nucleus-M and Nucleus-Nano focus motors. It’s being launched via Indiegogo, already having hammered its goal with 30 days left.

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DJI’s LiDAR module gives you autofocus even with f/0.95 manual focus lenses

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One of the biggest problems I hear people talking about when it comes to gimbals it the lack of autofocus. In an ideal world, we’d either be able to hold the gimbal with one hand and easily move the focus wheel manually with the other or we’d just have a separate focus puller to deal with it for us so we can concentrate on the composition. But it’s rarely that easy for most of us.

It would be great if camera autofocus was perfect, but it isn’t. DJI’s is about to release a LiDAR sensor module to go with their new RS2 gimbal, which sits on top of your camera and talks to the RS2’s focus motor to let you get autofocus on your gimbal with just about anything. MAKE.ART.NOW’s Josh Yeo took it for a spin with the Mitakon Speedmaster 50mm f/0.95 III.

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Camera Conspiracies isn’t happy as he explains “Why I’m leaving Pansonic FOREVER”

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The whole “I’m switching from this brand to that brand” or “I’m done with whatever brand” videos have been done to death, but this one from Kasey at Camera Conspiracies popped up on my feed last night after the announcement of the Panasonic S5 and I have to say, it’s pretty hilarious.

He talks about Panasonic’s strengths (which are now mostly at least matched by the competition) as well as their weaknesses in the way that only Kasey can. The complaints mentioned in the video (the main one being the DFD autofocus) aren’t anything new, either. Panasonic’s flagship GH5 was plagued with autofocus issues and that was released three and a half years ago.

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Fotodiox’s new PRONTO adapter lets you autofocus Leica M lenses on your Fuji X cameras

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Fotodiox has announced their new Fotodiox Pro PRONTO AF lens adapter that lets you autofocus Leica M lenses on your Fujifilm X mount mirrorless cameras. The adapter was initially announced a little while ago, but it’s just now being made available.

Yes, Leica M lenses are manual focus lenses, but this adapter adds autofocus capability for other camera systems. This isn’t Fotodiox’s first Leica M autofocus adapter, having previously released one for Sony, but this one now lets you use them with Fuji, too.

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Galaxy S20 Ultra suffers from “serious focusing” issues; Samsung pledges a fix, but no timeline

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Three weeks ago, we told you about the Samsung Galaxy S20 launch. Not all is bright in S20land though. Over those three weeks, quite a few users have been reporting on issues with the S20’s camera. The issues seem to mostly affect the high-end model, the Galaxy S20 Ultra.

The S20 Ultra boasts a 108-Megapixel sensor on the main camera, and a 48-Megapixels sensor on the 100x zoom camera. This phone, and the tech inside it, reecived some great hype. On paper, they are indeed extremely impressive, but twitter seems to be disappointed with the real-life results.

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How to calibrate your lens autofocus for $0

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Sometimes the autofocus on your lenses may not be exactly where you want it. Fortunately, it’s an easy fix as most modern cameras offer “micro adjustment” or “fine tune” option that lets you calibrate autofocus of attached lenses. You do need a calibration tool to do it, though. However, Karl Talyor offers you a simple calibration method without buying (or making) a special tool for it. In this video, he’ll show you how to do it for $0 and in just a few minutes. All you need is a few items that you already have at home.

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