This is what I usually get when I tell a person, that my camera is on auto-focus.
Present day D-SLRs offer the options of auto-focus and manual-focus with proper compatible lenses. Currently when your surroundings are being flooded with the apostrophe s photography pages, profiles and link-ups, you come across this lot of people who think that MANUAL FOCUS is the coolest thing EVER that a photographer can use, and if he goes on to use AUTO FOCUS, it is a crime.
Yes, manual focus is one of the coolest things ever. But then, it is not something which will gift you split second visuals. Period.
One of my friend came along with me on a photo outing once. It was early morning and the sun had risen and was at an acute point with the horizon. Usually this the best light to capture moments at the Thol Bird sanctuary in Gujarat. Both of us had a 70-300mm (zoom) lens mounted. Now that guy being stubborn about his methods was using manual focus. I advised him to shift to auto, since we were trying to shoot birds that change positions and come to activity less often. Since these moments don't come that often you'll definitely get a unique moment freezed on your memory card, but if you struggle with focus at that particular moment, you'll lose all the action. And at this kind of a focal length (300mm) even an inch's movement will easily lead to focus errors. To my suggestion, he gave me a smirk look and said 'Pagal hai kya?' (Are you mad or what?). We settled and positioned our cameras. After 15 mins approx. the flamingos we aimed at came to action. I immediately shot the sequence in a continuous shot AF mode. After we were done, the guy finally did realize the importance of auto-focus.
I am not against the idea of using manual focus. But using it at the wrong places and being proud about it, is foolish.
Here are some moments that I probably would have missed, if it wasn't for auto-focus.
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