About nine months ago I downgraded from my Canon SLR to the powerful but diminutive Sony NEX-5 mirrorless interchangeable lens camera. Since I've been using it I've been both thrilled (speed, build quality, features, picture quality) and disappointed (lens line-up, lack of physical buttons and viewfinder). The last disappointment on my list comes in the form of the manual focus performance.
I figure if you have an interchangeable lens camera then you might as well us it. Given the relative lack of interesting lenses from Sony and pretty poor aperture of most of them, I bought an old school Konica Hexanon 40mm f/1.8 and I couldn't be happier with the photos (see below). The one thing that still has me down is the process of using the manual focus lens on the NEX-5. While Sony does offer a manual focus assist mode that provides a magnified view of your subject so you can lock in sharp focus, I find that more times than not it's just too difficult to get a sharp picture. It may be related to the size of the camera, the placement of the button, the level of magnification or any number of things - in any case, it needs something better...and something better this way comes.
Sony NEX-5 with Konica Hexanon 40mm f/1.8 manual focus lens.
Today, Sony is set to release a firmware update for the NEX-5 (and NEX-3) that is derived from work on the new NEX-C3 that's due out on the market soon. While there are a few interesting updates (like real-time image effects), the real treasure of this release is it's Manual Focus Peaking Mode. If you're an aspiring amateur like me, you've probably not heard of peaking mode. I did a little hunting online to learn more and I'm really excited.
So what is peaking mode? Peaking mode is a manual focus assistance that provides you real-time (i.e. on display) feedback of what is and is not in sharp focus. In Sony's implementation, that comes in the form of a subtle red outline of the elements in the frame that are in focus. With peaking mode, one can skip the fumbling that happens when trying to get to the manual focus assist zoom magnification and simply have a look at the complete picture. Not only is it a win for framing of your scene, it's a win for speed. Manual focusing is, obviously, a slower process than automatic focus. Peaking mode should bring those two options closer together in speed and further open up the NEX system of cameras to the staggeringly large world of high quality manual focus glass that was produced well before the dawn of digital photography.
Peaking mode in action:
