I'm buying one

I am going to buy one of the Katz Eye split prism screens for my camera. I want to be able to get accurate manual focusing.

I have been in email communication with Rachael, the woman who runs Katz Eye Optics, and she has been most helpful. She is very knowledgeable and is articulate and thorough in her responses to my questions.

What made me decide?



A) I want one. I want to be able to manual focus reliably. I have found this to be a significant problem lately.

B) All of my lenses are Auto Focus. This does not mean that I don't have a need for the manual focus screen, it means that my lenses are fully automatic. This means that (by virtual of the fact that they are not vintage lenses) they use the widest aperture available for composition, and only stop down for the actual taking of the image. This eliminates some of the problems.

C) Most of my lenses are wide aperture lenses, thus negating a large portion of the problems associated. Most of the lenses I intend on buying are large aperture lenses.

D) After talking with her it is clear that if one uses center weighted average metering on the camera this virtually eliminates all metering issues associated with the screen, and again, these are primarily with slow lenses, which I don't have a lot of.

I have no problem with using that metering method. I have no need for spot metering, as I have recently read many are upset about not having on my particular camera. Spot metering uses a very small %age of the screen for metering... maybe as little as 1%. This gives you the ability to meter an exact location, which I could see as being very powerful, but for my purposes, I have not gotten that deliberate yet, so have not felt the need for it.

The alternative, given that we (Canon Digital Rebel XTi users) do not have a spot metering selection, is to use partial metering, which uses something like the central 9%. This metering method does not work well with the new screen, because the prism can make the center portion of the screen dark. Again, this occurs with slower lenses, fast lenses are not affected.

I always use evaluative metering, which is Canon's smart (read for dummies) metering method. It works great, which is all I cared about. This metering mode does not work so well with the new screen either (on slow lenses) because, as far as I can tell, it gives weight to the center of the screen in it's evaluative process (like I said, it is for dummies, so it assumes what you are shooting is in the center of your shot). This can cause problems with the new screen.

So, center weighted average metering it is. As a matter of fact, it's better than that... it's center weighted average metering with slow lenses only. With all other lenses I can continue to use my camera in any way that pleases me with little to no ill effect.

PERFECT!

I'm buying one.

:)~

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