EOS M Low-light focusing help/tips/suggestions

Really liking my M, but I'm having difficulty in one area especially. Low-light focusing, like when you'd normally manually focus and rely on the distance scale.

My biggest gripe with the M is with the STM lens setup not giving you a decent option here for really low light shots or long exposures when using say 16 stops of ND filters.

The problem I have is if I manually focus, and then put 16 stops on it, i will very likely move the ring out of where I've determined critical focus. For the love of god I wish you could use the AF lock when manually focusing. I mean, why not? It's not truly MF anyway, it's electronic MF... wish this was a feature, my life would be better.

Now in really dark scenarios where MF is difficult because you can't see jack on the lcd screen, i have no idea what to do here. I've attempted to "guess" a distance if I'm stopped way down and want to focus on a foreground subject, but what if you want focus significantly far into the frame? You can't see anything, you have no distance scales, and no physical stops... another golden opportunity for Canon to take advantage of the electronic focusing and provide some (on-screen perhaps?) feedback that you've reached MFD or Infinity.

Thoughts? Advice?

Heya,

What are you trying to focus on in the dark?

The LCD can increase gain so you can see an image on the LCD even through a 10 stop filter. I do it with mine and use a 10 stop Lee Big Stopper no problem. I use hyperfocal focusing when I use long exposure, so it doesn't matter if I move the focus at all frankly. 22mm at F8 to F11 will have infinity focus to the horizon from a few feet in front of you to the horizon no problem. I can do very close focus (6in to 1 foot) and still stop down to F11 or 16/22, and still get the horizon in focus via depth of field.

For the close range stuff, the LED beam is pretty good that it emits. But if you're trying to do land scape and stuff, just turn it to MF and use hyper focal. Stop down. Everything will be in focus just fine.

Very best,

Hmmm. The LCD screen indicates the Exp. Sim is working, but it seems to stop increasing gain rather abruptly and is quickly too dark to see anything. I was struggling with this last night where exposures were a few seconds long -my screen was pretty much all black despite the Exp. Sim indicator. Is there some setting I'm not finding in the menu?

Also, how are you using hyperfocal with the 22 stm? There's no distance scale. I'm obviously missing something here...