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TTArtisan announces its first autofocus lens for five full-frame and APS-C cameras

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TTArtisan, famous for its inexpensive manual focus lenses has decided to go autofocus, and they’ve done it in quite a big way coming to five different camera systems at once. Announced today, TTartisan AF 32mm f/2.8 is a full-frame autofocus lens, although a couple of the new mounts are for APS-C cameras.

In full-frame flavours, the new lens will be coming in all three of the major mirrorless camera mounts. That means Sony E, Nikon Z and Canon RF. Yes, they’re going where other 3rd party lens manufacturers fear to tread. On the APS-C side of things, it’ll be available for Fuji X mount and, strangely, Canon EF-M for the dying EOS-M system.

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This is how Canon shooters got autofocus 40 years ago and it still works today

Canon might have the edge in autofocus today, with dual-pixel AF (and quad-pixel rumoured to be on the way… eventually) and possibly even beating out Sony’s Eye AF face detection. They’re even bringing back the Eye Controlled Autofocus System for the EOS R3. But back in the early 80s, autofocus wasn’t something you really heard much about… From any brand.

In fact, the first SLR with autofocus wasn’t released until 1985. But that doesn’t mean autofocus wasn’t available. Canon actually made autofocus lenses for their FD mount cameras. They weren’t cheap and they weren’t particularly common but they did exist, as this video from Kai Wong demonstrates. And it still works on today’s mirrorless cameras.

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This hilarious musical parody describes Panasonic autofocus pretty accurately

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As somebody who owns five Panasonic cameras specifically for shooting video, I’ve learned to never rely on the autofocus from any of them and just go manual focus pretty much full time. It’s a lesson that many Panasonic video shooters learn quite early on. For some reason, Panasonic just really never seems to bring it home when it comes to video autofocus. Even with their newer full-frame S models.

It’s something that Kasey at Camera Conspiracies has definitely noticed, and spoken about at length across multiple videos. And now he’s attempted to quantify the situation in this beautifully hilarious song. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s called “The Panasonic Autofocus Song” and it’s interspersed with clips where Panasonic’s autofocus absolutely fails to do its job.

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Rumour: Panasonic actually going to give the GH6 Phase Detect autofocus

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Well, this is a bit of a surprise if true. Panasonic has long shunned other autofocus systems in favour of its proprietary “Depth from defocus” system used in its Micro Four Thirds cameras. And while Panasonic might be happy with it, many Panasonic users are not. But now it seems like Panasonic might actually be changing their tune if the above video is to be believed.

It was posted by Film Studi-O-taku Hi, based in Japan who says that the “magical camera company fairies” (which could mean he’s protecting his source or it could be completely made up) got word to him that the GH6 will include standard phase-detect autofocus.

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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

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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