How To Read Focus Distance Window on Canon Lens

This is probably fairly remedial, but can anyone give me the quick lowdown on how to read the focusing distance window on my 24-70mm... the one that goes from Macro to Infinity? I imagine this really only comes into play if you are manually focusing.

I came from an old 35mm film lens,and the markings on that lens made sense to me (you could line up the focus lines to depth of field approximations on the lens). The markings on that lens were actually more intricate.

Does anyone make use of it?

Haven't lived through the old MF days, but I don't use the distance scale much, except when I am lining up a lens at infinity focus for fireworks or low-light work. That's about as useful as it gets..

It's sometimes nice to look at, but I hardly if ever look at it when actually shooting.

That distance window on an AF lens is so small, and the rotational distance is so small (to preserve battery life and keep AF fast) that the distances are so compressed from nearest to infinity, that the distance scale on AF lenses is like your appendix...it is there and fairly useless!

Wilt wrote in post #2606506
That distance window on an AF lens is so small, and the rotational distance is so small (to preserve battery life and keep AF fast) that the distances are so compressed from nearest to infinity, that the distance scale on AF lenses is like your appendix...it is there and fairly useless!

LOL. Love the appendix analogy. Yeah, I figured it wasn't "of much use", since I don't hear many mentions of it. I suppose setting it to infinity can be one benefit, as pointed out.

The old Canon FD lenses had usable distance scales engraved on the lens barrel. The distance scales on the EF lenses I have found to be much less useful and almost impossible to read. You really can't read the distance with any appreciable accuracy when you're beyond three meters (10 ft) anyway.

Mark