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up vote 9 down vote favorite

I have been looking at the Nikon AF-S 35mm f1.8 lens and it has two focus settings:

  • Manual Focus
  • Manual-Priority Autofocus

What is "manual-priority autofocus"?

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3  
The answers you already got are correct. There are many names for this depending on the camera or lens manufacturer: DMF (Direct Manual Focus), AF+MF, Full-Time Manual Focus (Lens) and Quick-shift Autofocus are the ones I remember early Sunday morning :) – Itai Jan 23 '11 at 16:53
I had the lens for a few days and loved this feature. It let me use the camera's brain to auto focus fast then dial it in by hand when taking pictures at close range where the auto focus seemed to have trouble getting a lock. – kacalapy Jan 23 '11 at 18:06

2 Answers

up vote 11 down vote accepted

Manual-priority allows the lens to auto focus but still allows you to adjust the focus manually. Many other lenses lock the focus ring when using auto focus to prevent damage to the internal motor. This lens is designed to allow full time manual override which is very useful to tweak focus without switching out of auto mode.

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Great stuff - thanks for this answer. Sounds like I can point the camera at a person, let it autofocus and then tune in the focus to get the eyes really sharp! – Steve Fenton Jan 24 '11 at 9:13
up vote 4 down vote

If it's like Pentax's fulltime manual in autofocus then it's basically autofocus mode with the ability to manually adjust the result without switching out of autofocus. If you have a lens without this, then manual adjustments are bad for the lens when the body is set to autofocus and so you need to switch out of autofocus mode to adjust.

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