I just bought a used Vivitar V3800N with a Vivitar 50mm 1.7 lens for an intro photography course. I'm coming from a fully-automatic D60, so this fully-manual camera feels really alien to me.
I'm trying to learn how to focus, and I understand that I should get the split image in the focusing screen to align.
But when I do so, the overal image is blurry. I can get the split image to be sharp (when unaligned), but then the outer areas are blurred. The distance of the subject is about 3 feet. Things get so small from further away, that I'm not really sure if things are really in focus when aligned; everything's just so tiny.
Is this normal? Is my approach correct, or should I be doing something different?
I bought it from B&H's flagship store, where it was rated an 8+.