scott kirkpatrick
Well-known member
I just got a second M8 body (shortly before the recent price rises), and was testing it for focus accuracy before making it finally mine by registering.
With a 75/2.0 installed, on a tripod, shooting down at 30-45 degrees angle onto a sheet of square-ruled paper, it focuses 1.5 cm in front of the desired point at 27 and 37". It's 1 cm in front at 48". Is this the lens or the body? I went to the other body and this lens, focussed on that body focussed 1 cm in front. I switched to a 35/2.0 asph and found that focus was about 1 cm off at these distances on both bodies. Finally, I got out my Olympus E-3 with its 50/2.0 macro lens and found that this one, using single point center-only (there's a "region around" setting as well) AF, it was consistently 0.5 cm in front of the desired distance.
A surprising observation was that with the older M8 body, moving my eye from side to side makes the crossing point in the rangefinder shift from front to back by as much as 2-3 cm. This didn't happen in the newer body.
Do I care? Send them all back to Solms? Definitely not! I've heard of much worse experiences, and these all seem to be within the range of a little focus-bracketing if I really want to do macro work. Don't know what I can do about that @#$% AF, though.
scott
With a 75/2.0 installed, on a tripod, shooting down at 30-45 degrees angle onto a sheet of square-ruled paper, it focuses 1.5 cm in front of the desired point at 27 and 37". It's 1 cm in front at 48". Is this the lens or the body? I went to the other body and this lens, focussed on that body focussed 1 cm in front. I switched to a 35/2.0 asph and found that focus was about 1 cm off at these distances on both bodies. Finally, I got out my Olympus E-3 with its 50/2.0 macro lens and found that this one, using single point center-only (there's a "region around" setting as well) AF, it was consistently 0.5 cm in front of the desired distance.
A surprising observation was that with the older M8 body, moving my eye from side to side makes the crossing point in the rangefinder shift from front to back by as much as 2-3 cm. This didn't happen in the newer body.
Do I care? Send them all back to Solms? Definitely not! I've heard of much worse experiences, and these all seem to be within the range of a little focus-bracketing if I really want to do macro work. Don't know what I can do about that @#$% AF, though.
scott