focus screens and autofocus confirm with OM ?

[mas]

Hi,

A couple of questions please.

How does the autofocus confirm work? Is there a good reason why it couldnt be done by the camera even with a manual lens? I know you can buy the glue on chips, but do they know/get told anything about the lens they are on?

Has anyone tried the split focus screens on a 510? I've seen them from katz and china on ebay - but the viewfinder is quite small. Any good? Anyone used the cheap ones as opposed to the katz ones?

thanks

Mark

[HughofBardfield]

Re: focus screens and autofocus confirm with OM ?

Focus confirm could almost certainly be done by the camera if Oly chose to implement it in firmware. See here: http://olyflyer.blogspot.com/2007/06...d-to-work.html (and many threads on the subject on www.DPReview.com )

The general opinion seems to be that it would require a few lines of code at most... why Oly have never addressed the issue either by doing something or by saying it can't be done because... is unknown (to me at least).

Replacement focus screens can be very good. I had a Katz Eye screen on my E500 and it was excellent. However, the LED focus point lights don't work with the KE on the E510, so I sold the screen when I sold the camera.

I bought a Virtual Village Chinese clone screen for my E1 and I was not at all happy. Focus was slightly iffy and metering was unreliable in any mode. Others have said that the focus point may be anything from slightly to considerably out. Basically, the position of the screen needs adjustment to get focus accurate, and you could do that with shims behind the screen (Katz supply a shim with theirs, and also offer a fitting and adjustment service). The screen came out of the E1 after persevering for a couple of months.

Other people have professed themselves delighted with their clone screens, so it may well simply be a QC issue. My advice, for what it's worth, is to buy a Katz Eye rather than a clone, but YMMV

[mas]

Re: focus screens and autofocus confirm with OM ?

Thank you Hugh

I'll go read those threads on autofocus.

And I guess that I'll leave the split screen for the moment. If I was going to spend the katz type cash I'd rather buy better lenses and the loss of the af lights and unreliable focusing negate the point really.

thanks again

Mark

[gib48189]

Re: focus screens and autofocus confirm with OM ?

I've been using one of the autofocus adapters for a week or so now, been really happy with it. Focus seems to be quite accurate, able to program it so cam knows the Fstop for exposure.