As a reaction to my post “5 reasons I love manual lenses” some responses on other sites was claiming you need, yes MUST have autofocus to shoot moving objects. This is, I guess, from people who haven’t tried and can not turn a ring.

Sure. I have not shot birds, swallows in flight, racing cars… oh, but I wait I am mistaken. I have photographed those things with manual focus. But the “newer is better myth” says it’s impossible. I wonder what more miracles I can perform? ;)

I don’t have time to find really good examples today, so just some I fetched from my flickr, but my point is that it takes some practise but it is possible. The swan is one of my first manual photos and not the greatest of images but it is in focus:

Racing a cloudy, foggy day

Flying Swan, one of my first manual photos

Are you like me - rather the one behind the camera the in front of it? However, sooner or later you will need a picture of yourself, right? For your company, CV, website, book - whatever.

Well, I needed a couple of images for different occasions. So late tonight I took out the cameragear and gave it a try.

• A chair
• Two constructionlights (500W)
• Tripod
• Camera with m42-lens Asahi Auto-Takumar 85mm/1.8
• A piece of string
• Some Photoshopping

I tied the string to the tripod and stretched it to the chair. Sitting on the chair I focused on the tripod. Without touching the focus I put the camera back on the tripod. With the string I could tell where the focus in the image is.

I put selftimer on and ran back to the chair. Took the string to my eye (so it would be in focus). The lights were like I wanted them after several attempts. It’s a bit trial and error. I don’t have good flash or studiolights so I have to use whats available, but I think it turned out ok:

Selfportrait with Asahi Auto-Takumar 85mm/1.8

When you use a digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR) with modern lenses, you can always go back and look in the Exif to see what lens you used for each picture. But with the manual, old lenses there is no Exif-data from the lens. So if I use my Canon EOS 350D on a photosession, and 3 manual lenses - how do I remember which one I used for a single picture?

Well, I have come up with this rutine. Simple, I know - but useful. Take a picture of the lens before you mount it. If you use some kind of filter, take a picture when you mount it and when you dismount it and put it back in the bag.

Heres from my session the other day… I started with Pentax Super Takumar 35mm/3.5. Added macroring to shoot some flowers.

Add macroring

I took my flower-pictures. Removed the macroring.

Remove macroring

Took some pictures without the macroring. Then changed to Yashica ML 35mm/2.8

Change to Yashica ML 35mm

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