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Sign of being a failure

You taking the same intro course over and over again.  As you simply couldn't finish what you started.  It's like a bad dream or an infinite loop you can't wake up from or get out.  You need a hard reset but you are hesitant to do it.

If you don't make the choice, somebody will make it for you.  It probably doesn't make any difference.  Or it probably does.  But in the end everybody dies so it doesn't really matter.

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There is some advantage of being such a failure.

You don't get to wake up in the middle of the night thinking that you are such a fraud.  That never happened to me.

AF and MF

Minolta may not be the first manufacturer that does auto focus but that's the company I remember them of in the late 80s.

As an amateur I shot color negative and had them developed in 3R, or 3x2" prints.  For the longest time, that's how I judged my pictures.

You asked your subjects to remain still before you pressed the shutter release button.  Rarely, if at all, did I shoot any moving subjects because you and your subjects should remain stationary when taking pictures, that's just a given.  Auto focus was not even germane to what or how I shot.  A focusing screen with split, micro prism, and the ground glass is all I need.  The choice is just whether is a horizontal or a 45 degree split.  Actually it wasn't much of a choice.  My first Ricoh came with a 45 degree split while Nikon came with a horizontal split focusing screen.

My first auto focus camera was the Nikon F5, a camera imported from the future, as proclaimed by their marketing folks.  F5 was supposed to have the latest and greatest AF, at least that's what I was led to believe.  But through out almost its entire life I never put it to the test; I was using my old manual focus lenses and years later when I shot with my first AF lens, the 24-85 f/2.8~4, it was never ever for any action photographs anyway.

In short, I have never shot any action using a manual focus lens.

I am sure it can be done.  Maybe just not by me?

I guess what I am trying to write is for the sake of "money saving" does it make sense to buy a MF lens to shoot action?

I have been using my 80-200 f/2.8 and beginning last year the 70-200 f/2.8 VR for the majority of my action shots.  I almost use AF-C and 9 points exclusively.

My longest lens is the MF 300mm f/4.5 which I used a handful of times and maybe once on the velodrome.  I like the color rendition.  I did have one shot that I quite like, not the kind of fast action shot.  But definitely not stationary, it's in focus and has the emotion pull of the moment.  The 300mm on a DX sensor seems longish but on a FX sensor well not that long.  It's subjective but if I am going to get a tele photo lens, it's going to be at least 400mm.