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Zoning With Zonin
6 August 2019
It's become a Sunday tradition. Lox and a bagel, the lox perhaps scrambled with some eggs and green onions, perhaps floating on a sea of cream cheese. And the prosecco.
Zonin. Captured at f4.0, 1/80 second and ISO 400 before processing in Adobe Camera Raw..
We stare out the window looking for a certain tall old gent who strides up the hill about 10:20 every Sunday wearing his workout clothes, reliable as the quartz movement in a clock.
And while we are waiting, we amuse ourselves watching the churchgoers come and go, families in tow, the children who had run down the sidewalk head of their parents leaning over the curb at the corner until given permission to proceed.
You can see lifetimes in that small Sunday drama.
So we set about to pay tribute to it in a single shot. We picked up the Olympus E-PL1 and the 12-100mm Pro zoom we are testing, dressed in our Sunday-best circular polarizer, and fired away.
That was two Sundays ago. We tried it again last Sunday, too.
The reshoot was an attempt to address a focus issue we noticed in the images from the first shoot. On autofocus, the lens at f4 seemed to be focusing on the back rim of the glass. So the bubbles in the foreground were soft.
We wondered if the lens might be backfocusing so during the week we tested it with the SpyderLENSCAL. It was focusing fine. That's because Micro Four Thirds cameras don't suffer back or forward focus problems, not being subject to phase detection autofocus.
Then perhaps contrast detection autofocus was the problem, we thought.
To avoid that issue at the reshoot, we used manual focus but again at f4.
There are two ways to turn off autofocus on this lens:
- To temporarily disengage it, you can just hold in the L-Fn (Lens Function) button on the left side of the barrel. That's pretty conveniently done with your left thumb using the traditional right-handed grip.
- For a more relaxed, Sunday morning approach, you slide the lens focusing ring at the front of the lens back toward the camera. That reveals a distance scale.
We chose the later, of course.
The Clutch. Pull the focus ring back to turn off autofocus and reveal the manual focus distance scale.
Funny thing, though. Focusing manually delivered nearly the same results as autofocus. Could it be a lighting problem, not adequately illuminating the bubbles? Note how sharp the tablecloth itself is at that plane.
Well, no matter. We had our homage to the little drama playing outside our window whose acts and intermissions always seem a bit jumbled, with moments that seem like flashbacks and others that suggest flashforwards and some that seem immediate. Which can make a person dizzy.
Especially if you are observing it with a little prosecco. From a glass once possessed by your great uncle. Who emigrated from Italy days before the 1906 earthquake and fire welcomed him to San Francisco.
And you think you just felt the floor shake.