Losing my mind... or just eyesight?

I could use some sage advice on "focusing for middle-aged photographers". I'm 46, and don't wear glasses or contacts. I have uneven eyesight, but with a very good right eye that I focus with. I've definitely begun to lose close focus over the past 4-5 years, a wonderful byproduct of the aging process! But other than for reading, I don't think I need glasses... yet...

So lately, I've noticed that I'm struggling to focus my camera in low light (not that unusual), but also on stuff like this close-up shot taken at Mirror Lake last week. In this example, I used the aperature/DOF preview button to check focus, and I would SWEAR that all of the icicles were in focus! In fact, everything in the foreground looked to be in focus. I bracketed the exposure with several different f-stops, but all of them had about the same amount of focus/unfocused.

Anyway, I'm baffled - but now thinking that I need to go get a pair of glasses.! This might sound like a stupid question, but if you wear glasses, do you keep them on while using your camera.. yes, I would think? That might explain my problem.

The other question I would ask his how/if people use their aperature/DOF preview as a reliable tool, or is that something that I should not be relying on..?

Tom (aka "Gramps")

I wear glasses full-time (I'm also very close to you in age) I'm not sure if it has anything to do with either of those factors, but I too have a hard time judging critical focus through the view finder. Instead, I take the photo and then zoom to just before 100% resolution to check focus in critical areas. Although a bit labor intensive, I find this to be much more accurate.

Same boat..I hate the idea of glasses and will only use reading glasses when absolutely forced to. Does you viewfinder have a diopter adjustment? Be sure to adjust it carefully.

Pete

Yup, welcome to the rest of your life. I had to learn to use my glasses with my camera, although now it's no big deal. Adjust your viewfinder, and learn to look through it with glasses.

I feel your pain. Unfortunately, my problem is astigmatism, for which the diopter is totally useless. I rely heavily on AF, and DOF bracketing. Wearing my glasses is difficult at best with the DRebel viewfinder. I read somewhere it's the smallest one out there. If my eyes get much worse I'll be forced to buy a camera with a larger viewfinder and more relief. Hey! I think I just came up with justification for the General for upgrading my camera!

Ugh. So in summary (a) welcome to geezer-hood and (b) get some glasses..!

Well, I guess I can live with that (as if I had a choice). Thanks for the camera tips, too - I do have a diopter adjustment, and I think I've got that correctly adjusted for my viewing eye. I've been using the AF-MF setting when I'm really struggling to see if the camera can get close enough for me to pick the right details to focus on manually, and that works fairly well. I'll try that preview/zoom idea, too, John.

I am 47 years old and have been wearing bifocals pretty much full time now for several years. Sure it sux but seein is much better than the alternative.

I use my glasses for focusing. It was an adjustment but with the larger viewfinder in my Canon 1D Mark III it's certainly doable. I am finding that the Live View feature for landscape photography is VERY useful. It doesn't use auto-focus but it can zoom in to a scene in realtime with DOF preview enabled!!!! VERY VERY SWEET.

So yeah welcome to geezerhood!!!

Damn guys, thanks for comfirming that I'm getting old too. I guess at 44, I'm joining the geezer-hood as well. I keep telling myself, that once I can't hold the book far enough away to read it, I'll finally have to go get some glasses. If I keep second-guessing the focus in my camera, I may need them sooner than I thought.

Tom: I'm 56 years old and I have worn glasses since I was ten. Like Curtis, my main correction is for astigmatism. I find that the diopter adjustment corrects a bit for me, but I can't stand the extra distance from the viewfinder with the glasses, so I usually remove them. I have a retaining earpiece on my prescription sunglasses so I just let them hang around my neck. My glasses are bifocals, so I use the lower section for the LCD screen. If I'm focusing or otherwise scrutinizing the screen, the bifocals don't cut it and I have to go with my naked eyes up really close. No doubt about it, glasses are a pain in the keister, but things could be worse. We could all be shooting with ancient box cameras.

If you had focused on one of the icicles, the stuff at the top would have gone out of focus. Also, instead of focusing on the icicles, you should have chosen one to focus on. Not only are crop sensor cameras harder to focus manually, so are slower kit zoom lenses. And use a tripod. Otherwise, even if you can see to focus, with shallow DOF, you may not be able to hold the distance steady.

That's not how I would normally establish DOF for this sort of image. In this case, I used the DOF preview to set an aperture that brought the full depth of the near-ground subject into focus, then adjusted the shutter speed to the correct exposure bracket. In this case, it was absolutely still, so I was able to set a very long shutter speed in order to set a very small aperture.

So that's why I think my vision is what caused the focus problem, and and not the camera settings. I always uses a tripod with my dSLRs, so that's a constant, as well.

Pet Peeve of mine so forgive me. Doesn't matter whether you are shooting at f22 or 1.2. What you focus on is in focus. Everything else is out of focus. It's just a matter of degree.

Yep, it's a dilemma, this focusing thing, as your eyes age. Been there awhile now... And I'm still learning how to deal with it. But then, I have pretty poor vision, comparatively speaking. Thanks to all the fine folks here at NPN, who offer good critiques for me, I am learning what "tack sharp" looks like to my eye. Also, what helps me the most is to set the lens to A/MF and tweak the focusing ring back and forth repeatedly. Of course this is very difficult if not impossible to do with action shots, but for landscape and especially for close-up and macro, I found it helps a lot. Look for a replacement focusing screen, too. Sometimes a different one than what came on the camera can make a difference in how well you can see through the viewfinder. And then, try to be patient with these changes. Your brain will accommodate over time and it won't seem so difficult. Hope this helps...

I've been in geezerhood a few years now, and wear progressive lenses full-time now. Been awhile since I was checking around the clock in the raviator bidness, so my eye-use techniques have modified a bit since then, too.

I don't bother taking the glasses off, and sometimes the lens AF doesn't agree with where I slapped the viewfinder up against my glasses, so I have to pull off a couple of millimeters and adjust. It all works out in the end, though.

Humans are extraordinarily adaptable, self included. I find, though, that when I'm resisting the need to change and adapt to a new circumstances that the act of adaptation becomes just that much more difficult.

Long story short . . . accept geezerhood . . . get glasses . . . use 'em with pride in your new station in life . . . wise sage, that would be . . . and once you get over the initial rough patch, all will be mostly OK.

. . . Oh yeah . . . by the way . . . you'll have to adapt all over again every time your prescription changes.

Life works.