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Author Topic: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?  (Read 58216 times)

D Fuller

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Re: an EVF allows smaller lenses
« Reply #180 on: November 08, 2015, 11:00:20 pm »


The tech's there. I use lag-free electronic viewfinders every day in a medical setting. Fast-focusing on-sensor AF systems are commonplace in top-level single-operator camcorders. But these things don't fit in an A7-sized body. A D810-size body, maybe.

I'm not so sure the tech really is there for lag-free EVFs. And certainly not at a price many will be willing to pay in a stills camera.

I don't have any experience with the medical devices you mention, but in the digital conema world, there certainly is lag in the EVFs. But it matters less in a motion setting because you are shooting continuous motion. Everything is seen with the same delay. Compensation for a tenth of a second or less delay is pretty easy to work into your anticipation of an actor's motion as you shoot (or, I expect, the action you execute through a laparoscope) so the lag really doesn't seem apparent. But it's there if you want to measure it. I never think about it on my Red, but if I measure it it's somewhere between one and two frames.

When you shoot stills it's different. You are recording a moment that lasts a hundredth or a thousandth of a second. You could miss that moment ten times over during the duration of the EVF delay.

But the elephant in the room here is cost. Medical devices are famously expensive. So is digital cinema gear. The viewfinder on my Red is pretty good, but it costs more than the Sony A7rII body. And it only works when it's attached to a $30,000 camera. (Well, I guess it would work on a $14,000 Scarlet, but you get the point.) All that processing and bandwidth are expensive to make.
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: an EVF allows smaller lenses
« Reply #181 on: November 08, 2015, 11:37:26 pm »

When you shoot stills it's different. You are recording a moment that lasts a hundredth or a thousandth of a second. You could miss that moment ten times over during the duration of the EVF delay.

Could you?

I had made the, probably naive, assumption that the full res stream to the sensor was buffered and that the still image stored to disc was the one at the exact moment of shutter release (delayed from the real action, but in sync with the delayed view of it offered by the viewfinder).

As a result, I was assuming that EVF had next to zero shutter delay.

Is it not implemented this way?

Cheers,
Bernard

hjulenissen

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Re: an EVF allows smaller lenses
« Reply #182 on: November 09, 2015, 01:19:10 am »

Could you?

I had made the, probably naive, assumption that the full res stream to the sensor was buffered and that the still image stored to disc was the one at the exact moment of shutter release (delayed from the real action, but in sync with the delayed view of it offered by the viewfinder).

As a result, I was assuming that EVF had next to zero shutter delay.

Is it not implemented this way?

Cheers,
Bernard
I would certainly hope that it is implemented that way (not using a disk as a buffer, but some sufficiently fast ram.). As you say, any manufacturer might be tempted to not record/buffer full-resolution video, but only a subsampled deemed sufficient for the ~1 megapixel EVF. In that case, a "proper" recording would have to start when you hit the button and the recorded image would lag behind what was presented in the EVF.

The post from D Fuller could be interpreted in another way: when the sensor is grabbing frames at a rate of 60 frames/second (or 30 or 15 in low light), then the view presented to the viewfinder is actually an average of (up to, depending on "duty cycle") 16.7 (or 33.3 or 67) milliseconds of imagery. If you are looking at extremely time-sensitive phenomena ("a moment that lasts a hundredth or a thousandth of a second"), that information might be temporally blurred out by the capture irrespective of the latency from sensor to EVF.

So how high "temporal resolution" can we exploit? I don't know, but my experience from musicians and hearing is that 1) People tend to overestimate how good their timing is and 2) Somewhere on the order of 10-20ms seems to be fine. Now, I don't know how "ear-to-hand" timing is compared to "eye-to-hand" but in the absence of other knowledge, it seems fair to assume that they are similar?

-h
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hjulenissen

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I was looking on a longer time scale, back to early DSLRs where usable ISO 1600 was amazing progress, and also comparing back to film, from where the gain is probably four stops or more.  And I am certainly not saying that everyone is or should be using higher ISO speed options to downsize their lenses or increase telephoto reach form lenses of given size. But a great number of us are, and for that usage, an EVF (or some form of "steadily hand-holdable live view") can a great advantage over a small and/or dim OVF image.  Shooting long telephoto shots with a plan to crop heavily is one example.

One threshold I see it that, from the film era to now, the upper limit on weight and cost in telephoto lenses for a great majority of photographers is a slowish 300mm, as in something like a 75-300/3.4-5.6 zoom, whereas for a lot of bird and beast photography in un-cropped 35mm format, "wild-life begins at 500mm".  Those same 300/5.6 and slower zoom lenses now give far more reach, comparable to 35mm film with a 500mm or even far longer lens when you allow for the cropping latitude of newer sensors, but a rather poor OVF experience.
If you want lots of tele and good quality, the Sony RX10II seems to deliver quite a lot with state-of-the-art 1" BSI sensor. Not necessarily cheaper than larger formats though and not extremely small/light. If APS-C and m4/3 has benefits over 135-size, why stop there and not go all of the way to 1"?

For those of us who never really wanted tele, I think that the RX100 vs RX10 is an interesting case study in "what happens to system size when you go from high-quality wide/bright to high-quality bright telezoom":
http://camerasize.com/compare/#622,623

-h
« Last Edit: November 09, 2015, 01:36:33 am by hjulenissen »
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pegelli

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Re: an EVF allows smaller lenses
« Reply #184 on: November 09, 2015, 02:54:00 am »

When you shoot stills it's different. You are recording a moment that lasts a hundredth or a thousandth of a second. You could miss that moment ten times over during the duration of the EVF delay.
That's not my experience, in practice I find the shutter lag way more "limiting" then the EVF lag and that's there for both EVF as well as OVF cameras (at least on the EVF and OVF camera's I use).

And now that I'm here anyway my answer to the OP's question is no. I use and like Sony cameras, their A7 series is quite unique but in the end it's just a tool. And other brands provide great tools as well. Sometimes the Sony tools are better for a given situation, sometimes other brands are better.
For me part of the fun is to get the job done with the camera you have with you, even though it might not be the best one for the situation at hand, (but I don't have to make money with it).
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D Fuller

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Re: an EVF allows smaller lenses
« Reply #185 on: November 09, 2015, 08:50:18 am »

Could you?

I had made the, probably naive, assumption that the full res stream to the sensor was buffered and that the still image stored to disc was the one at the exact moment of shutter release (delayed from the real action, but in sync with the delayed view of it offered by the viewfinder).

As a result, I was assuming that EVF had next to zero shutter delay.

Is it not implemented this way?

Cheers,
Bernard

I have no idea. But my experience with the A7s would suggest something less than the ideal design you suggest.

I find the camera's usability really pretty good for motion, if you're mindful of the rolling shutter. But I find it just frustrating to use for stills if the subject is moving or changing very much. It just does not feel responsive, and the exposure is often late. I attribute it to a combination of viewfinder lag and shutter delay. Both are important when shooting rapidly-changing subjects.

To be fair, viewfinder delay becomes a non-issue if you're tracking the subject with the camera--say you're following a race car on a bit of track--for the same reasons it's not an issue for motion cameras: you're working at that delayed timing. But shooting birds in flight, for example, you don't know which bird will be the subject until it starts to take off. You're not working with your eye in the viewfinder until it does. Then, the viewfinder delay matters a lot. So does the shutter lag. In those situations, my Nikons are equal to the task. The Sony just is not.

Red has an interesting stills mode that is always recording to a buffer and when you press the shutter release keeps a set of frames that includes some from the past. That may be a way for mirrorless cameras to mitigate the processing time hurdle. But it increases your post time significantly.
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MoreOrLess

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Agreed that a lot of my considerations are factors that lead some people to prefer at least some of the time to prefer a smaller format like APS-C or 4/3" or 1" - and as a secondary consequence of that, OVF performance becomes poorer, so for such formats the balance often shifts towards an EVF camera.  That is why I am unsure for now how the OVF vs EVF balance will evolve for 35mm format.  But there is also the desirability of facilitating occasional heavy cropping or "loose framing" from a high-resolution 35mm format sensor by using a lens too short to fill the frame with the subject. (The 2x virtual teleconverter mode of the Olympus OMD series is fun sometimes; I do not know if any larger format cameras offers that.)

Let me say it again, as you seem to be misunderstanding me, or discussing a different question like "are EVFs ready to completely replace OVFs?"  I am not saying that everyone, all the time, wants to move to smaller, lighter lenses, and so everyone should be moving to EVF cameras.  I know that some photographers still take every improvement in sensitivity as an opportunity to push ever further into high speed and low light photography with lenses as big and bright as ever. This is another reason why I can imagine OVF cameras having more of a future in 35mm format than in the smaller formats (and ironically maybe more than in the larger formats, where that "extremely limited light photography" is far less common, so I can imagine high resolution low lag EVF's taking over, slowly.)  On the the hand, there are plenty of people who prefer larger formats like 35mm primarily for advantages in IQ at lower ISO speeds, working primarily with slow-moving or stationary subjects and adequate lighting: for them, EVF cameras might be a better fit, now or soon.

There are a lot of terms flying about here that probably need to be defined better, when you say "EVF camera" for example that suggests something that has removed the mirror(although SLT tech hasn't) BUT it does not automatically mean a camera that's swapped to a new lens mount with a smaller flange distance.

As I said I think a lot of the old 35mm market that doesn't(0r can't afford to) push performance in low light/DOF control has already migrated to APSC. The end result is that today the FF market is more focused on these things than it was in the 35mm era, just look at Canons lens releases over the past decade, almost everything has been an L lens and even those non L's we have seen have still tended to be quite high performance..

I would suggest that in terms of size as well even shifting from F/2.8 to F/4 does not really mean your going to have small zoom lenses unless you greatly limit performance. Even something like the Sony 24-70mm which many seem dissatisfied with in terms of range and performance(and price) is not a small lens, not small enough to really make the savings in flange distance count for much, indeed as I said I think theres evidence that designing for small flange distances actually increases lens sizes even when your talking wideangle rather than the more obvious tele. In order to make a small flange distance mirrorless camera really compact your basically limiting yourself to the 35mm F/2.8 and perhaps the 28mm F/2 although that lens isn't tiny.

A big issue for me that plays on the first point I brought up is that I think the size saving advantages of mirrorless differ between APSC and FF. With APSC and smaller reducing a flange distance that's already longer than it needs to be(as a legacy of 35mm) with DSLRs is a bigger advantage because lenses are smaller and the demand for higher end handling(EVF, lots of controls, etc) is smaller, just look at the failures of the Pentax K-01 that was needlessly bulky for what it was. When you move to FF though I would argue that reducing the flange distance is actually less of a size saver than removing the prism and AF sensor, with the larger format these things are also that much larger were as an EVF remains the same size(and considerably smaller. Added to that of course I mention above very few FF lenses will be short enough to make for a camera/lens combination that isn't that deep AND there's the argument that in a lot of causes your just exchanging a shorter flange distance for a longer lens.

With that in mind I would suggest Canon and Nikon could actually benefit from much of the size saving of mirrorless without moving lens mount at all. Indeed I think Sony could have as well staying with the A-mount but I think they knew the hype behind a smaller flange distance would help sell in the short term and if your feeling cynical perhaps they wanted to cut third party lens manufactures out of the market so they could get away with charging a larger premium on own brand lenses.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2015, 11:21:22 am by MoreOrLess »
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eronald

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Re: an EVF allows smaller lenses
« Reply #187 on: November 09, 2015, 02:29:05 pm »

Sure, the camera is easily doing a full readout of the sensor and buffering it, all 42MP of it in 14bits @ 60Hz, back of the envelope that's 4GB/s and if you need the mechanical shutter to close and then fire, that needs zero time.

@4K rez -lower bit depth, 60Hz,  now that might be possible.

Edmund

Could you?

I had made the, probably naive, assumption that the full res stream to the sensor was buffered and that the still image stored to disc was the one at the exact moment of shutter release (delayed from the real action, but in sync with the delayed view of it offered by the viewfinder).

As a result, I was assuming that EVF had next to zero shutter delay.

Is it not implemented this way?

Cheers,
Bernard
« Last Edit: November 09, 2015, 02:42:51 pm by eronald »
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BJL

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people balance benefits larger vs smaller rather than going for either extreme
« Reply #188 on: November 09, 2015, 02:30:17 pm »

If APS-C and m4/3 has benefits over 135-size, why stop there and not go all of the way to 1"?
For some people, 1" format is indeed a good choice, but a lot of people are going to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of smaller versus larger and come to a choice that is not at either extreme. Typically, at each step in either direction, the gain is smaller than at the previous step while the losses are larger, so at some stage the further losses outweigh the further gains, and you stop, rather than pushing on to either extreme. Price for example has a big jump between APC-C and 36x24mm format, but a far smaller gap between 1", 4/3" and APC-C alternatives. [If comparing fairly, not "cheapest in the larger format vs most expensive in the smaller".]

It's the same reason why a lot people choose a motor vehicle that is bigger than a Smart For2 or Piaggio Ape, but smaller than a Suburban or Hummer.

(If we were at DPReview, some people would reply sarcastically that "if 36x24mm format has benefits over APC-C or 4/3" or 1" size, why stop there and not go all of the way to 645?".)
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BJL

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an EVF allows smaller lenses -- if and when one wants them, it's not obligatory!
« Reply #189 on: November 09, 2015, 02:53:21 pm »

With that in mind I would suggest Canon and Nikon could actually benefit from much of the size saving of mirrorless without moving lens mount at all.

Firstly "size and weight savings" are far from the only reason that some people prefer having an EVF (by which I mean an eye-level one, not a rear screen like most DSLRs have anyway.)

Secondly, I am puzzled by the argument for sticking with the old SLR mount, given that a new shallower "no mirror box" lens mount can be used with all the old mount lenses via a simple passive adaptor with pass-through of electrical signals, while accommodating more flexible designs for some lenses (wide-angles) and allowing adaptor mounting of other lenses.  Nikon could accommodate Canon-mount SLR lenses, which its deeper SLR mount does not allow! (The same for Sony with its deep alpha SLR mount.) Rather clearly, no one starting with a completely blank page in designing a mirrorless camera (including film range-finder cameras!) would make the lens mount twice as deep as it needs to be, and thus impede the use, when appropriate, of lens designs with rear elements closer to the focal plane.


Notes on some common misunderstandings:

(1) Lens designs with rear elements close to the focal plane can still have a high exit pupil (and the lenses in fixed lens cameras tend to be like this) so there need be no problems of highly off-perpendicular light incidence on the sensor.

(2) Nothing about a shallower lens mount forbids the use of an "SLR friendly" lens design with rear elements far from the focal plane, if and when that is the best choice.
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SZRitter

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Re: an EVF allows smaller lenses
« Reply #190 on: November 09, 2015, 04:18:07 pm »

Red has an interesting stills mode that is always recording to a buffer and when you press the shutter release keeps a set of frames that includes some from the past. That may be a way for mirrorless cameras to mitigate the processing time hurdle. But it increases your post time significantly.

Wasn't Nikon doing something similar in the 1 series? Or is my memory just off a bit.
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Torbjörn Tapani

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Re: an EVF allows smaller lenses
« Reply #191 on: November 09, 2015, 05:49:11 pm »

Wasn't Nikon doing something similar in the 1 series? Or is my memory just off a bit.

I think you are correct. There are mobile phones that does the same thing. Would be great for action if we could eliminate rolling shutter effects.
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: an EVF allows smaller lenses
« Reply #192 on: November 09, 2015, 08:48:51 pm »

I think you are correct. There are mobile phones that does the same thing. Would be great for action if we could eliminate rolling shutter effects.

Indeed, the Nikon 1 captures 1 sec of full res images all the time at 60 img/s and enables you to pick which of the 60 you want to keep.

A great function when shooting kids!

Cheers,
Bernard

eronald

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Re: an EVF allows smaller lenses
« Reply #193 on: November 10, 2015, 12:21:27 am »

Indeed, the Nikon 1 captures 1 sec of full res images all the time at 60 img/s and enables you to pick which of the 60 you want to keep.

A great function when shooting kids!

Cheers,
Bernard

Many pro video cameras can record to one card continuously, regardless of the trigger.

But the whole point of a still camera is to have huge resolution and bit depth, rather than continuous frame rate ...It's a tradeoff.


Edmund
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: an EVF allows smaller lenses
« Reply #194 on: November 10, 2015, 01:30:02 am »

Many pro video cameras can record to one card continuously, regardless of the trigger.

But the whole point of a still camera is to have huge resolution and bit depth, rather than continuous frame rate ...It's a tradeoff.

True, but the initial discussion was focused on the technical possibility to leverage a video camera like capability using fast memory for a short amount of time in order to remove competely the delay resulting from the EVF.

Nikon manages to do it for 1 sec at 60fps for their 18mp camera selling for 500 US$, it doesn't seem unreasonnable to think that Sony could do it for a shorter time for their 3500 US$ 42mp camera.

Cheers,
Bernard

hjulenissen

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For some people, 1" format is indeed a good choice, but a lot of people are going to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of smaller versus larger and come to a choice that is not at either extreme.
I am asking because I am impressed with my tiny Sony RX100M2. Even my miniscule 1/2.3" (?) iPhone 6s can be used for useful images in some conditions. Improvements in technology seems to have allowed us to either increase quality or shrink system size (or some mix of the two), starting 100 years back. Camera users generally seems to have weighted size/weight reduction quite heavily.
Quote
It's the same reason why a lot people choose a motor vehicle that is bigger than a Smart For2 or Piaggio Ape, but smaller than a Suburban or Hummer.
This elegantly shows why DSLRs are popular in the US and mirrorless is popular in Asia...
Quote
(If we were at DPReview, some people would reply sarcastically that "if 36x24mm format has benefits over APC-C or 4/3" or 1" size, why stop there and not go all of the way to 645?".)
I am by training and nature interested in asymptotes, so I am probably "that guy". If anyone says that "bigger is better", then my natural reaction is to check if infinite is perfect. At the same time, I think that many (not you in particular) forget to add sensible conditions to such statements. Such as "somewhat bigger than APS-C has some benefits".

-h
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hjulenissen

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...
(2) Nothing about a shallower lens mount forbids the use of an "SLR friendly" lens design with rear elements far from the focal plane, if and when that is the best choice.
Agreed. Some people seems to argue that giving the lens designer less choices leads to better lenses. I hope that is not true.

-h
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hjulenissen

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Re: an EVF allows smaller lenses
« Reply #197 on: November 10, 2015, 01:46:45 am »

Sure, the camera is easily doing a full readout of the sensor and buffering it, all 42MP of it in 14bits @ 60Hz, back of the envelope that's 4GB/s and if you need the mechanical shutter to close and then fire, that needs zero time.

@4K rez -lower bit depth, 60Hz,  now that might be possible.

Edmund
I guess there are several questions here:
1) What is the mechanical capabilities of the sensor/shutter
2) What is the analog/thermal capabilities of sensor and supporting electronics
3) What is the bandwidth of the ADC
4) What is the bandwidth of the digital buffering/processing

As for the latter question, the 2014 generation iPad had a "memory bandwidth" of 25.6 GB/s. I don't know how camera manufacturers pipe their images from ADC and via DMA to general memory or some special cache and dedicated ASIC blocks or general purpose cpu, but it would seem that the bandwidths you mention are well within reach for even a generic device like that?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8666/the-apple-ipad-air-2-review/2
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eronald

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Re: an EVF allows smaller lenses
« Reply #198 on: November 10, 2015, 09:23:37 am »

True, but the initial discussion was focused on the technical possibility to leverage a video camera like capability using fast memory for a short amount of time in order to remove competely the delay resulting from the EVF.

Nikon manages to do it for 1 sec at 60fps for their 18mp camera selling for 500 US$, it doesn't seem unreasonnable to think that Sony could do it for a shorter time for their 3500 US$ 42mp camera.

Cheers,
Bernard

Could you kindly point us at the Nikon docs so we can see exactly what Nikon is really doing?


Edmund
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NancyP

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #199 on: November 10, 2015, 10:38:15 am »

hjulenissen mentions the tiny 1" sensor Sony RX100 series. These have been incredibly popular among those long-distance hikers (especially through-hikers doing greater than 1 week long hikes) who can afford them. When ounces / grams are counted, and when the hiker wants more than a phone or tablet, the Sony RX100 is mentioned. That being said, the phone or tablet is also a map display device, ebook, alarm clock, naturalist ID manual (I have a North American bird app and a star map on my phone), low-level GPS device (only for areas with cell service - the true GPS devices operate from satellite signals), yep - phone and internet when in cell service range, and camera. So I expect a lot of people are going to just use their  phone/tablet with the now-much-improved on-board cameras.

I confess that I have looked longingly at the RX100 series for an always-in-my-pocket camera for casual and street photography. And of course I have looked longingly at the A7Rii  -  but first I have to upgrade my computer and storage to deal with the much bigger files. I keep hanging on hoping for news of the next MacBookPro with the Skylake or Kaby Lake microprocessor (cooler running, uses less energy than current Haswell and way less than my i7 Nehalem-generation processor laptop with non-retina matte screen). That's OK, I enjoy using Canon 6D currently. Ergonomics are Just Right For Me. I don't need no stinkin' 61 AF points, I manual focus a lot. I am not through-hiking any time soon, that's a retirement gig.
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