Who actually uses the distance gauge on their lens?

I wish there is a display in the viewfinder for this... the less i have to take my eye off the better

In my opinion it works best with the camera on a tripod for landscapes when you figure how far the closest image is that needs to be sharp. Set it for that distance on the left and infinity of the right of the scale on the lens.

I used to do all of my candids using it years ago. I would say be shooting dancing shots in a very dark room with a 35mm lens you could pre focus at f/8 so everything from say 3.5 ft to almost 6 ft are in focus. Set it and just shoot. If you look through the view finder it will more than likely look out of focus but don't worry about it as long as your subject is within the distance pre set for the aperture you are using you're OK.

Using those scales on the lens is how some of the really great street guys like Winogrand and Freidlander would do it. They would pre set a 35mm lens for say f/16 so everything from around 4ft-infinity would be in focus and its really bad on new EF lenses. Then all they would do is watch the scene and shoot when the photographed happened not having to worry about focus.

The problem is with zooms its not very accurate even on older FD type lenses. Its much easier to read and use on primes.

In the right hands with some practice this can be a very useful tool....

airfrogusmc wrote in post #7038730
In my opinion it works best with the camera on a tripod for landscapes when you figure how far the closest image is that needs to be sharp. Set it for that distance on the left and infinity of the right of the scale on the lens.

I used to do all of my candids using it years ago. I would say be shooting dancing shots in a very dark room with a 35mm lens you could pre focus at f/8 so everything from say 3.5 ft to almost 6 ft are in focus. Set it and just shoot. If you look through the view finder it will more than likely look out of focus but don't worry about it as long as your subject is within the distance pre set for the aperture you are using you're OK.

Using those scales on the lens is how some of the really great street guys like Winogrand and Freidlander would do it. They would pre set a 35mm lens for say f/16 so everything from around 4ft-infinity would be in focus and its really bad on new EF lenses. Then all they would do is watch the scene and shoot when the photographed happened not having to worry about focus.
The problem is with zooms its not very accurate even on older FD type lenses. Its much easier to read and use on primes.

In the right hands with some practice this can be a very useful tool....

Yup. In high school, I would shoot couples at dances, with my distance set on the manual focus lens, and the aperture set, and the flash output fixed (which was totally manual with no exposure automation) and shoot. I would have a 'shorter' setting and a 'longer' setting for shooting one couple vs. a group of couples. I was shooting 'A' or 'B' all night.

It is amusing (in a 'black humor' way, yet very unfortunate) to me how technology has made photographers into 'stupid' users. If they don't have flash offering focus assist, and if they don't have ETTL control, they can't shoot! The 'idiot light' in cars has turned young drivers into 'stupid drivers'...a friend's son burned up an engine because the (burned out) idiot light didn't tell him the oil was low, like a dipstick would!

Wilt wrote in post #7038891
Yup. In high school, I would shoot couples at dances, with my distance set on the manual focus lens, and the aperture set, and the flash output fixed (which was totally manual with no exposure automation) and shoot. I would have a 'shorter' setting and a 'longer' setting for shooting one couple vs. a group of couples. I was shooting 'A' or 'B' all night.

It is amusing (in a 'black humor' way, yet very unfortunate) to me how technology has made photographers into 'stupid' users. If they don't have flash offering focus assist, and if they don't have ETTL control, they can't shoot! The 'idiot light' in cars has turned young drivers into 'stupid drivers'...a friend's son burned up an engine because the (burned out) idiot light didn't tell him the oil was low, like a dipstick would!

Wilt my first strobe was a honeywell press master and it had high and low. I knew that if I were doing full lengths and I were 12 ft away from subject it was f/8.

I use it a lot with my manual focus primes for DOF and hyperfocus distance. I've found it pretty useless for my current autofocus lenses. The markings are to too close together to set accurately. I've found it easier to guesstimate a distance and focus on a rock or something at that distance.

Its not to bad on the 24L and the 35L but most of the zooms I've seen its not great but it wasn't great on the manual focus zooms either.

airfrogusmc wrote in post #7039242
Wilt my first strobe was a honeywell press master and it had high and low. I knew that if I were doing full lengths and I were 12 ft away from subject it was f/8.

Honeywell Strobonar 400 is the first one I owned...

Recon Photojournalist wrote in post #7033836
I use distance gauge when AF and MF(human eyes) is not possible due to low light and low contrast condition.

+1
have to use it at night when I hunt for the northern lights.
When I just had my kit lens that was impossible. Lots of images got ruined.
I just want to know where the infinity mark is. But on all the lenses the lens mark for infinity shows the beginning and if you turns it further it gets out of focus. Wonder why it is made like that? I mostly use my 10-22mm

Only time i use a distance gauge (and im assuming you are all talking about the focus distance) is when im going to be shooting without looking through the viewfinder, usually for smaller animals.

I'll set my focus distance to say, 2 feet, hold the camera eyelevel with the dog/cat/whatever, stay roughly 2 feet away and fire away. you can move around with the animal or whatever, just try and stay at your focus distance. Ive got some really cool shots this way because the perspective is better than shooting down at a small animal.

Hopefully this is the same distance scale you guys are talking about.

i use distance marking all the time.

only because i like night photography, and can't always see the subject through the lens

I used it with in the old days of manual focus. Scales for distance and DOF were much more useful then.
They had more detail, specifically the DOF scale.
Nowadays i do not use them, not becaus I don't want to use them but because they are not useful anymore.