The Manual Focus Experience
My so-so relationship with Fuji, etc.
I think many photographers, even us old men that grew up on manual focus cameras forget that using manual focus and using autofocus are two completely different ways of working with a small degree of overlap. Instead many measure a manual focus experience based on an auto-focus way of thinking instead of a very different way of working with a very different set of criteria to evaluate cameras, lenses, and overall experience. For discussion’s sake I’ll refer to my Fuji X-Pro camera, my use of it, and why its manual focus experience is suboptimal. Much of this will apply to most, probably all modern digital cameras except the Leica M.
Think way back to what put Fuji on the map… the X-100, then the rapid follow-up of the X-Pro. Quickly Fuji decided they wanted to be competitive in the system camera market and slowly they started to make cameras and lenses that were more the same as every other modern camera, measured by an autofocus and EVF mentality instead of making a better OVF/manual focus camera. I have zero doubt at this point that 97.641% of X-100 and X-Pro users use those in EVF and autofocus 99.999999% of the time and care far more about how it looks instead of how it functions as a manual focus, optical viewfinder camera.
You may remember I mentioned that I quickly ditched my X-Pro 3 and repurchased the ugliest, most beat-up X-Pro 2. I also ditched all of the Fuji lenses I owned except the original 35mm f/1.4 and 18mm f/2. I liked those lenses because they both had renderings and performance that reminded me a lot of my favorite classic 35mm optics. Good wide open but with some charm and character but stopped down they were great. They were relatively small and not complete hunks of plastic crap. They were by no means lenses that gave a great manual focus experience but I had high-hopes which never materialized.
There were good reasons for those high-hopes, take the 14mm f/2.8 as an example. This was one of the minuscule number of second generation of lenses Fuji made, the ones that had the push-pull manual focus engagement, a distance scale, a DOF scale and a somewhat better set of haptics for something of a reasonable manual focus experience. High hopes but alas the quickly abandoned that vision. I personally hoped that these lenses marked a vector to make a camera that actually provided a good to great manual focus experience along side auto-focus. That never happened.
The bottom line is Fuji never had and probably never will produce a camera and set of lenses that have a great or even good manual focus experience. Count the reasons…
The lenses feel terrible when manually focusing them, no pleasure, not tactile reward.
Bad haptics and bad ergonomics. Not only don’t you want to use them but the whole disconnected fly-by-wire thing provides nothing stable to rely upon or reference like we’d experienced with great manual focus cameras in the past.
I guess the distance and DOF scale in the viewfinder in manual focus mode are ummm useable but certainly not optimal.
The manual focus assists while turning the awful disconnected focus rings never really were as good, nor as pleasant to use compared to manual focus cameras.
No muscle memory, no visuals, no pleasure, why bother? The entire implementation pretty much sent you back into and auto-focus mentality.
This could be said of all digital, auto-focus cameras except the Leica M… again. I still have my X-Pro 2 and the two lenses mentioned above. I am not sure why I have it except it doesn’t represent any sort of large investment and I do use it occasionally. I don’t use it as an auto-focus system camera. My Canon’s are far better at that as they always were. I kind of use it as a similar in size Leica M kit that I don’t care about much.
I set it up to function as a “don’t care much” M substitute by using the OVF with none of the not-so-great EVF helpers. I have it set to manual focus all the time but use that AF-on button on the back to turn the lens and hit a pre-selected point in the scene as I would with any manual focus camera. I use it in full manual exposure choosing an ISO before I even start making pictures. I only use the play-back every once in a while if I REALLY need a test polaroid/histogram. In this manner I truly use it only when I want to take a manual focus approach and am not using my M cameras, digital or film. What’s the difference? It provides very little in pleasure and compromised viewfinder, and other features of a full manual focus mentality.
I want to reintroduce to those that forget and to those that never developed a manual focus mentality. In opposition to an auto-focus mentality where everything is about how to react as quickly as possible to a scene a manual focus mentality is all about approaching a scene with everything already thought-through. Everything evaluated and chosen with intent, wrong or right, this mentality and all of the things done with intent is in preparation or pre-visualization. In many ways this is the fastest way possible to react to what does happen.
In practice this mentality is not about speed, or precision or, anything auto-focus related. Instead, this approach and mentality will cause you to make completely different pictures than you would have. In many ways this approach will make better pictures overall because of your mindset and approach. Even in retrospect, I would say autofocus is not only not required but counterproductive for 80% of anything most of us shoot. Thinking all of those things through given a set of restrictions can and will force you to rediscover to see as cameras see, which is pure magic, rather than overcoming the way cameras see.
If you consider manual focus as a mentality and most of the scenes we make pictures of have zero reason to react immediately the big question is how pleasurable do you want that to be and what factors in a camera help you to approach a scene this way as opposed to clutter your mind and your ability to use the camera. While you can use just about any camera with a manual focus mentality the real question is how good is that experience. In most cases I’d say all modern auto-focus cameras are not a great experience.
I think about this more and more now as I shoot far less film. I hope Fuji and others besides Leica think about this and provide more offerings. I had high hopes for Fuji but I’m not sure they’ll be able to deliver. I’d love to see them revive the X-Pro and innovate the living crap out of the OVF and manual focus experience. I’d like them to put that camera on the level of an M camera, not by copying it but by giving us something unique. Their lenses are electronically coupled, it seems it would be easy to project something like the Canon manual focus indicators into the OVF that would be as precise and stunning visually as Leicas RF patch. They could match the optics in the OVF. Better yet they could bring back those push-pull lenses but give us better haptics. Until then, go shoot a roll of film on a great manual focus camera and try to remember to use a manual focus mentality when it might be a better approach to 80% of the pictures you make.
I haven't used any of the Fuji cameras, but your description validates my decision not to buy any of them. While it would be comforting on some level to have a camera that looks like something from 50 years ago and has visible shutter speeds, etc., it seems that they have continued with the mistakes of other manufacturers with regard to how manual focus feels and works with camera that were intended to be used with auto focus. My studio workhorse is a Pentax K 1 DSLR used with an assortment of lenses from several manufacturers but mostly Pentax. It is a great camera and the Pentax lenses that I use are uniformly excellent in terms of sharpness, lack of distortion, etc., but since most of my work is in a studio I never use auto focus and the manual focus sloppiness is the one thing I would change if I could. When I go back to some of my manual focusing lenses ( a Pentax 85 mm f/1.8 from 1978, in particular) I really appreciate the feel of those lenses. And if I want retro, I shoot with my Rolleiflex 3.5 E or my Contax or Nikon RF cameras from the 1950's.
These characteristics seem to me to be product of marketing rather than consulting actual working photographers and finding out what they need/want. They are probably correct in assuming that most consumers are happy to have a camera that makes them look like skilled photographers even if everything is set on auto. If I shot weddings or sports for a living I might feel differently about auto focus, but fortunately for me I don't.