Hello Current Penrtaxian, just got itchy fingers I am undecided yet, but wonder what others have made of the switch
I made the switch about 4-5 years ago...more by default, slipped on a photo journey and busted major lens and body. Due to lens availability made the switch to Canon....but still a Pentax user at heart. All/most my favorite photos are from Pentax equipment. Could be that I was just more inspired during my Pentax days.
I'm not a 'switcher'....all my 35mm gear is Canon but I arrived here via the Pentax forum by virtue of having a 645Z and a selection of 645 and 67 lenses. Bob
I'm sort of a "dual" user of both Pentax and Canon equipment. My newer digital gear is Pentax, but for years I used Canon FD lenses & 35mm MF SLRs, and to a lesser degree some EOS AF 35mm SLRs and early DSLRs.
I was a Canon user even from the time of film camera. But there was the attraction of less expensive lenses used by Pentax, due to it's sensor stabilizer. So, I decided to give Pentax a try. And then, a second, a third, and a forth try. This was the number of Pentax DSLR I have owned. It was OK. I liked those cameras, I even make a passion about them. Scroll buttons in front and back, very well placed, much easy to change the lenses, because the button if on the right side, and even a somehow nicer design. But. I love to shot birds in flight, and also plane high in the sky. Here, Canon stabilized lenses give you much better chances. More, a stabilized lens send a stabilized image not only to viewfinder, but also to the focusing and exposure system. A Pentax camera doesn't has that advantage, and is much easy to loose the focus or miss the exposure. It happened to me many times. Many times, even with normal, not so extrem shots I had miss the exposure or focus. More, the magic of less expensive lenses has fade away in the last 3 years, with the new line of Pentax lenses, and the lost of new lenses from Sigma and Tamron. So, I give up on Pentax. Now, with my old 60D, I'm again very confident in my camera. Using Canon stabilized lenses I know that exposure and focus will be +99% spot on. Even with third party stabilized lenses, I have much better results than Pentax. Only some time missing focus a little with those. This is my Canon-Pentax-Canon story.
I've also had lots of fun exploring a variety of older lenses and making use of the sensor-based image stabilization that works with them! This has given me lots of practice using manual focus so much of the time that as a result, even when I have an auto-focus lens attached I prefer using manual focus most of the time with both Pentax or Canon DSLRs.
Yes, it could be fun when the eyes are helping you. But the range of diopter adjustment is a little short for my eyes. So, I have to use AF most of the time.
That's definitely a good reason to use AF. Even with the diopter correction adjustment being in range for my eye, I still prefer wearing my glasses. With my glasses on I use center-point AF assisted MF via "aim and reframe" to place the most important subject element within the frame into sharp focus before I reframe for the overall composition. This helps me be sure that focus placement for a given f/# gives me the desired depth-of-field in front and behind the sharpest focused subject element.
I have also tried this technic. After all, I still had some old manual lenses. And sometime I can nail the focus, sometime not so much. Sometime even the center point refuse to give me the confirmation of focusing. I travel the focusing ring slowly back and forth, and the confirmation comes, or not. Why is this, I don't know. And I don't like to struggle with manual focusing. So, I end up using manual lenses very rarely. More, this lenses don't have image stabilization, which is very important for me.
When I can't get AF confirmation to light up, I temporarily rotate the camera 45 degrees about the lens axis and that usually solves it. (assuming its not so dark & distant, or the subject has little detail that even AF has a hard time locking on) Are you saying that when you use a Canon EF lens with manual focus that the IS feature quits working also?
Nope. I don't have Canon EF manual lenses, and I prefer to use AF as much as I can. But I have some other lenses, and telescopes. For those I use an Canon adapter, with AF confirmation.
