Posted by Ryan Askren on March 15, 2010 at 10:21 PM
Hey all,
Reading through my lens manual and found a confusing sentence. It states: "If you set the AF start (AF-ON) button to "ON" on the camera or the focus operation button on the lens, vibration reduction will not operate". What do they mean? I'm shooting a D300 and a Nikon long lens. I think they are talking about AF-Activation (a5) which I currently have set to shutter/AF-ON. Can anyone make sense of this for me? Thank you!
Posted by Matt Anderson on March 16, 2010 at 9:01 AM
I think what they are saying is AF will be activated with the AF-on button, the VR will be activated when the shutter is pushed half way and through the release cycle. AF/VR are independently activated. VR is disabled only by the volatile switch on the lens itself.
Ryan, you are not alone. The statement you printed makes no sense. With my 18-200 VR on a D300, if I set the AF-ON button to ON - meaning that either a half press of the shutter or pressing the AF-ON button will focus the lens, VR only happens when I half-press the shutter.
If I set AF-ON to off, ONLY VR happens with a shutter half-press, and ONLY focus happens when I press the AF-ON button.
So it seems that half-press of the shutter always activates VR, regardless of the setting of the AF-ON button.
As an aside - I find that acquiring and tracking focus with AF-ON set to OFF - using the AF-ON button to acquire focus - is more reliable than using a shutter half-press to focus.
Discussion
2 repliesReading through my lens manual and found a confusing sentence. It states: "If you set the AF start (AF-ON) button to "ON" on the camera or the focus operation button on the lens, vibration reduction will not operate". What do they mean? I'm shooting a D300 and a Nikon long lens. I think they are talking about AF-Activation (a5) which I currently have set to shutter/AF-ON. Can anyone make sense of this for me? Thank you!
If I set AF-ON to off, ONLY VR happens with a shutter half-press, and ONLY focus happens when I press the AF-ON button.
So it seems that half-press of the shutter always activates VR, regardless of the setting of the AF-ON button.
As an aside - I find that acquiring and tracking focus with AF-ON set to OFF - using the AF-ON button to acquire focus - is more reliable than using a shutter half-press to focus.