Simple Tweak To Achieve A Smooth Focusing Experience With Photographic Lenses

Manual focusing can be difficult for at least a couple of reasons:

  1. we are not used anymore to focus manually;

  2. the design of many modern AF lenses provides a very poor manual focusing experience.

Legacy lenses are, in this respect, often better, but you could have a stiff focusing ring. I got frustrated when trying to focus on my Star Adventurer because every time I go to touch the camera, the view gets all shaky.

This can be an indication that my tripod is not too sturdy, still, vibrations are dumpled very quickly.

Last night I remembered videomakers using digital DSLR often mount on the lens a focusing bracket of some sort, to smoothly change the focus from one plane to another.

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Since I had a couple of rings used to mount guiding scopes, I tried fitting one of those on my Olympus Zuiko OM 300 f/4.5 legacy lens.

The focus is now very smooth and I can focus using only a finger, which means that while focusing the image is more stable. This should improve focus precision.

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A trick to try.