Sergery, This is a personnel experience, I am not too sure if other share the same feeling as I do, when I enlarge it to 12" by 18", I saw some subtle differences between the MF and AF. For ex&le, two weeks ago I went to shoot some dragon fly. I had a picture that point at the dragon fly directly on the head. I had the image captured and it appear to be sharp all the way from the month to eyes and the pictures looks great in an 4" by 6" photo. I scan the film and blow it out as large as possible to see if it is worth making a larger print out, yet I found out that the forcus on the month is "dead on" and the eyes is a little bit out of focus, it will be great if it is the other way round. When I took the images, the images capture square is on the face of the dragon fly, cover both the month and eyes, and the machine decided to focus accuratly on the month instead og the eyes. I am not saying the AF is not accurate, but it is not the same as the photographer's mind, and sometime it just not better then using the MF. For taking landscape or so, AF is great, yet for taking close object, I found the MF much useful then the AF, that why I said the dual forcus mechanism is a great feature!