contax g1 focusing

although the vast majority of my pictures are in focus. it always

hasnt been that way with my g1. is there a sure fire way to tell if

your subject is in focus? im just considering taking my contax g1 on

vacation instead of my nikon f100. i just dont want to get home and

see i have bad shots.

Short answer - not that I know of.

 

Long answer - after locking focus on the subject (and recomposing if necessary) check the focus distance in the viewfinder to make sure it makes sense. Typical example: single subject and far background, i.e. most portraits. It becomes harder when there are multiple competing subjects relatively close together and the lens is wide open.

 

Having said that, apart from the first few rolls I rarely have out of focus shots nowadays. Happy shooting.

Spend a bit of time playing with the camera and not taking shots. Find a room with a thin column, or better still outside with a very narrow tree. Experiment to find exactly where on the focus brackets you see, the true focus is. It's easy to tell if its about 2m away, as the point jumps from 2m to infinity. I've got two g1's, and both focus a little to the left of centre of the brackets. This info and the helpful reply above should ensure 95% accurate shots.

Jermain, when you speak of out-of-focus shots, do you mean *slight* mis-focus under

critical conditions (like e.g. when you take a portrait of someone with the 45mm (or even

90mm) at short distance wide open and the focus is on the eyebrow instead of the eye

itself) or do you mean that the camera focusses on infinity when you would like to have

something at close distance in focus? The second case of course is easy to identify when

you look at the distance information displayed in the viewfinder.

 

Slight misfocus like in the first case is indeed very hard to notice when taking the picture

and I second the advice to play with the camera and find exactely the point in the

viewfinder where the camera focuses on. It also helps to be aware for what kind of

structure (lines with high contrast) the AF system is looking. Make sure to point the focus

sensor at such a structure if possible.

 

And if it is really an important picture: always take more than one! :-)

Make sure you depress the shutter release halfway to prefocus. Unlike your Nikon F100, G1 has quite a noticeable shutterlag.

 

As others have suggested, check the focus distance indication in viewfinder. The autofocus on G1 occasionally hunts around, but as long as it finds the subject to lock on, it should work just fine. Good luck.