Yes, as long as it's not living, breathing people that are moving around and changing position after every frame.
.........snip......... This is Progress?
None of these suggestions you'll like (or even do) but if you put a 7" marshall monitor on your 5d set on live view you'll hit focus 9.9 times out of 10 if your talent moves into position, hits pose holds for a brief second, because at 7" the view is so detailed it's hard to miss focus.
It takes some getting used to because at first there is a slight disconnect feeling standing a few inches back from the camera and framing, focusing and shooting but after a while it becomes second nature. Kind of think of it as a smaller view camera with a big bright ground glass turned right side up.
Let's face it, you use to do this with a fuji 680 and you hit some, missed some but nobody lost their mind and the fuji was a hand holding beast compared to a 5d2 and a 7" monitor.
For client review, set up a field monitor from the marshal monitor using bnc cables. Its analog, but it will let them see what your shooting and they won't complain.
Now if your subject is moving running on the far side of the frame, rent/buy a 7d, set it on continuous focus and mark the prop by depressing the shutter halfway until those little blocks of focus areas light up. The focus points of a 7d or any 1.5 crop camera cover most of the frame and it will usually track true, as long as you keep the shutter pressed partially down. And you'll have to use a 50 instead of an 85* but it'll look pretty much the same.
You'll know it's a cropped camera, nobody at the tech station or the retoucher will.
But in medium format land, I think it's doable. A few weeks ago we shot 900 or so images with the Contax and the manual focus 120mm. Mostly full length models to 3.4 crop. I haven't shot solely manual focus in a while and maybe it was my lucky day, maybe my eyes have changed, but it worked to the point the few times I used other lenses like the 80 or the 140 I just left them on manual focus and shot.
I would imagine if the Contax with it's smaller viewfinder will do this the H-system won't be a problem, with that true focus thing probably better.
As far as progress, yes, I'd have given anything in the manual focus days to have a 7" ground glass that showed me my exposure.
Now if you want to try something that is progress go borrow one of those panasonic G cameras and set it on face recognition. The one that uses the lcd as a viewfinder. As the model walks through the frame you can see the yellow square just track with her face. Soon you'll be able to touch screen the area you want to track and it will follow. Not today but soon.
BC
*I rarely if ever use the 85 1.2., nearly always the 85 1.8. The glass is so large on the 1.2 it takes it too long for the focus to react and I think the 1.8 is sharper anyway.
All IMO.
edit
Working in live view, either video or stills I've noticed with the Canon lenses, there seems to be this weird kind of disconnect between turning the ring and hitting exact focus. Not that the lenses aren't sharp, I actually like the look of most Canon lenses and the prices are good, but they just don't have that locked in focusing feel of older manual focus nikkor lenses, or my contax lenses.
When these come out you might want to give them a try.
http://www.zeiss.de/c125756900453232/Conte...125756f003e6703They are true manual focus lenses with gears for follow focus and are probably the only true future proof product on the market today, cause the mounts will interchange between Canon, Nikon and PL cine, so when you finally buy that RED Epic you'll have the lens set. (insert smile here).
