no distance scale, so how do i focus on infinity?

[northlondon43]

Hi everyone
I have a Samsung nx 11. None of the nx lenses have a distance scale/ring on them so how do I focus on infinity when I need to?
Thanks
Adrian

[Manfred M]

Find a very distant object and have the camera autofocus on it. Once it is in focus, disable autofocus on your lens / camera without touching your lenses focus ring. You will be set at infinity.

It's not just Samsung that has done this, but is a bane of pretty well all modern lenses.

[northlondon43]

Cheers Manfred although will that work if I'm trying to take a sunset picture if there's nothing in the distance to auto focus on?
Adrian

[Carl in Louisiana]

Cheers Manfred although will that work if I'm trying to take a sunset picture if there's nothing in the distance to auto focus on?
Adrian

This may help if not do a search on "infinity" on this forum. Plenty of info to be found.

To Infinity and Beyond?

[northlondon43]

Cheers Carl. I haven't, so far, found anything on the forums that either directly answers my question or makes any sense to my non technical mind. I like simple answers and don't need to understand the tech behind it :-)

[Carl in Louisiana]

Cheers Carl. I haven't, so far, found anything on the forums that either directly answers my question or makes any sense to my non technical mind. I like simple answers and don't need to understand the tech behind it :-)

Sorry Adrian, but I forgot to say just click on the words "To Infinity and Beyond" in my first post, it will bring you to that post with lots of answers.

[jcuknz]

When you consider depth of field then anything a goodly distance from you will be an alternative to infinity ... In any case why waste DoF at distances beyond infinity [ assuming that is possible ] Maybe it matters with long focus lenses but with 'normal' focusing at 30<60ft is as good as so called infinity. Check out your lens[es] at www.dofmaster.com for details.
Perhaps I am spoilt by the shorter lenses I have been using of recent times and this attitude doesn't apply to DSLRs.

[northlondon43]

Carl, thanks, I did go to that link but it was totally over my head.
Sorry JC, no idea what you mean.

All I'm asking is how I set my lens to focus on infinity when taking a sunset pic when there's no other object to focus on

[FrankMi]

Hi Adrian, the short answer is that you can run the lens all the way out, then back off about 10% and let the DoF take care of the rest. If, when you pixel-peep the result on your monitor you see any softness, try a little further in or out.

Another way is to focus at infinity on a bright sunny day and put a pencil mark on the focus ring so you can return to that point when there isn't enough light.

[dje]

Adrian if you are concerned about finding a suitable point to auto-focus on for a sunset, you can look for a better illuminated point in the distance that isn't in shot, auto-focus on it and then switch from auto to manual focus as Manfred suggests. Or you can also try manual focus with the screen view magnified. You would normally be using a small aperture to get good DOF for a shot like this so it's not super critical.

Dave

[northlondon43]

Cheers Dave that makes sense....fingers crossed I see some decent sunsets on holiday in Namibia :-)

[jcuknz]

To explain myself better I would suggest that the fact that you do not have any distance markings on your lenses is completely irrelevant in the digital age and AF. point the camera at something a fair distance from you, AF, and depth of field will cover you to infinity for that sunset picture. Modern cameras are not designed to be manually focused and the option is included simply as a sop to old timers who cannot learn new tricks of the digital age, or how to use AF properly. To learn the characteristics of how your lenses perform go to dofmaster and play with the DoF calculator.
I have passed the 'big eight oh' and only manually focused a couple of times in the past decade of digital photography.