Lightroom 3 showing focus point

[sandpiper]

Originally Posted by tonylong

I myself have never found a need for spotting the focal points. I can tell if the dang thing focused where I wanted it!

That is my view too.

The bit of the image that is in focus, is where you focused (unless your gear is seriously in need of recalibration). You also need to bear in mind that if you use "one shot" and focus recompose, I presume it will show the focus point in the usual point in the frame, and not where it would have been when you focused. So, if you use centre point and focus on something top left, then return the camera to the framing you want, the point will still show in the centre and not the top left. It simply shows which point was used, not where it was pointing when you locked focus.

I have never wanted to see what point I used, I can see if I focused correctly or not and which point I chose to use is unimportant, after the shot has been taken. Besides, I could look at a scene and know which point I would choose if I was to take that shot again and it is pretty likely that would have been the one I used originally.

[frenchconnector]

Originally Posted by tonylong

The information such as Focal Points is proprietary to Canon. It has nothing to do with how "incredible" Lightroom is but with the fact that Canon does not give away their "secret codes". There are one or two apps that have either bought code from Canon, have "inherited" it, or have managed to reverse-engineer/break it.

I myself have never found a need for spotting the focal points. I can tell if the dang thing focused where I wanted it!

Focal points are located in EXIF's maker notes. While they are proprietary, all that this means is that they don't follow a uniform EXIF system. There is nothing to reverse engineer or break really, it's all in plain text. Adobe could just stop being lazy and correspond plain text focal point markings to actual focal points like other software manufactures do. Anyone could do this, including you and me

[PixelMagic]

Well, I don't know if 'anyone' can do it but there are several apps available that will show focus points.

As other have said, viewing the active focus point isn't a problem for me either; I use Breeze Systems' BreezeBrowser Pro to preview, cull, add bulk metadata, rename files, etc. before importing them into Lightroom. I never add files to Lightroom that I haven't first review in BBPro or other applications.

Originally Posted by frenchconnector

Focal points are located in EXIF's maker notes. While they are proprietary, all that this means is that they don't follow a uniform EXIF system. There is nothing to reverse engineer or break really, it's all in plain text. Adobe could just stop being lazy and correspond plain text focal point markings to actual focal points like other software manufactures do. Anyone could do this, including you and me

[nekrosoft13]

Lightroom 4 still doesnt do it.

[Wilt]

Rather pointless feature to have, in general, considering that it truly shows which focus zone was in use to achieve focus, but NOT which item within the frame was under that focus point.
Any 'recompose' at all between focus and shooting destroys a 1:1 relationship between focus point and item in the scene. So the feature provides no useful information.

[tonylong]

Originally Posted by Wilt

Rather pointless feature to have, in general, considering that it truly shows which focus zone was in use to achieve focus, but NOT which item within the frame was under that focus point.
Any 'recompose' at all between focus and shooting destroys a 1:1 relationship between focus point and item in the scene. So the feature provides no useful information.

I tend to agree.

If I do want to actually see the point I can use DPP, but it's more a matter of curiosity and "playing around". Either my image is focused on the subject or it's not, or, in case of "creative shooting" when I focused on something other than an "obvious" subject, well, I either succeeded and it's evident and also I remember my intent, or I failed (or the shot is just not interesting enough to mess with)!

[René Damkot]

Originally Posted by Wilt

So the feature provides no useful information.

Except when troubleshooting focusing issues. That's the only times I've ever used it.