Manual focus sounds slow. With a rangefinder and a bit of daylight it’s often faster than autofocus, because you do the focusing before the moment arrives.
The idea
At small apertures a wide band of distances is acceptably sharp. With the 35 mm lens at f/8 and focus set to 3 metres, everything from about 1.8 m to 9 m is sharp. Set it once, and anything happening at a normal street distance is in focus.
Setting it on Field One
- Turn the aperture ring to f/8.
- Use the focus tab to put the 3 m mark on the index line. You can do this by feel: the tab points straight down at 3 m.
- Set shutter speed to 1/250 or faster, and let auto ISO do the rest.
When to change zones
Closer work, like a market stall, suits 1.5 m at f/5.6. Landscapes and wider street scenes suit f/11 at 5 m, which keeps everything from 2.5 m to infinity sharp. The depth-of-field scale on the lens barrel shows the zone for every aperture.
Focus before the moment, not during it.
When the light drops and you open up to f/2, the zone shrinks to a few centimetres and it’s time to use the rangefinder patch instead. Most testers ended up switching between the two without thinking about it within a week.
