How To Get Perfect Focus On Your Camera Every Time

have you ever taken a blurry photo with your digital camera if so the chances are that your photo was simply out of focus in many cases your camera will do an excellent job automatically deciding where to focus but there are also times when it fails and your photos end up lured so if you want to take tack sharp stunning photos every time it's important that you know how to set the focus yourself my name is Mark Hemmings and I'm an internationally recognized photographer and photography instructor and in this video I will show you how to correctly set the focus on your digital camera so you never take a blurry photo again the first thing you need to know is that there are three main focus modes on your digital camera single-shot autofocus is for still scenes where your subject is not moving such as landscapes architecture and portraiture also continuous autofocus is for photographing moving subjects like sports and other dynamic situations where your subject is not still and manual focus is often used for still life close-up macro photography and when the autofocus options mentioned above fail to work properly depending on your camera manufacturer make and model you might have other focusing modes available but these are the three main modes that you will use for almost all of your photos okay let's go through each one of them so that you know when and how to use them you'll use single-shot autofocus to get perfect focus in most photography situations let me show you how it works okay I want to photograph this beautiful flower in this park because there is no movement in this scene it's best to use single-shot autofocus most all cameras are already on single shot by default but if for some reason yours is not I like to give you a quick demo okay to activate this mode on this Fujifilm mirrorless camera I switch the focus function button to s which stands for single shot autofocus it's possible that your camera are could have a different way to turn on single shot autofocus there's probably a button or dial somewhere on the body of your camera or on your camera's lens your switch will usually list AF s or s for single shot autofocus AF C or C for continuous autofocus and and that for M for manual focus select AF s or s for now now when I initiate taking a picture my camera focuses on whatever is at the center of the composition as indicated by the small green rectangle in the middle of the screen and when I take the photo I get a perfectly sharp image but what if you don't want to have your subject in the center of the frame I still want to focus on that beautiful flower except I want to position it slightly to the side of the frame for the purpose of my composition following the rule of thirds to achieve this we'll use a technique called focus and recompose first aim your camera at the subject so it's in the middle of the frame which would be the flower press your shutter button halfway down to lock your focus and while keeping the button halfway pressed compose the shot as you want it to look the focus will remain on your subject even if it's not in the center of the image anymore press the shutter button fully to take the photo and when we take the photo the flower is still perfectly in focus one thing to keep in mind if the subject is moved toward you or away from you while the shutter button is halfway pressed down or if your camera moves toward or away from your subject your subject will not be in focus anymore that's because by pressing the shutter button halfway down you are locking the focal distance you're telling the camera this is the exact distance to our subject and that's where it should focus if we change the distance the photo won't have focus sharpness anymore here's an example of what I mean if I first lock in the focus by pressing shutter halfway down then I moved my camera just a bit closer to the flower the flower is not in focus anymore let's look at the two photos side by side on the left you see the original shot on the right we have a shot where I moved just a little bit closer to the subject and it is clearly out of focus so the first shot is so much better so be careful not to change the distance to your subject as you are recomposing you can get even more control of where your camera focuses by using the focus area feature by default your camera will focus on whatever is at the center of the image using the focus area feature you can tell your camera what part of your picture should be in focus right now I want to photograph this beautiful Mexican street scene with cactus plants and festive mannequins let's take a look at how I focus my camera on either the mannequins or the cacti by using the focus area feature on this Fujifilm camera I'm pressing the function button again and then navigating to the focus area options I'm now offered many different choices one of them being what's sometimes called the wide option this means that the camera will try to decide what to focus on based on the entire scene if we select this option it gives the camera the ability to focus on whatever is in the composition which may not always be the best idea for example in this case it decided on its own to focus on the cactus plants which may be not exactly what I wanted if I wanted to focus on the manikins actually I suggest that whenever you have a static non-moving subject you use either the center focus area as we've done so far with the focus and recompose technique or the flexible spot option now it's called the flexible spot because you can tell your camera exactly where to focus if we decide to focus only on the cactus plants in the foreground we tell the camera to focus there which your camera's arrow keys or joystick who will take you we take the image and the cactus plants are perfectly sharp whereas if we want to focus only on the manikins in the background we can also do that once again we set the focus by pressing the arrow keys or moving the joystick left right up down to choose our desired focus area with that focus area rectangle illuminated we are exactly focusing on what we want and we can take a successful photo if we look at both images side by side they look very different depending on where we focused for example the first image the cactus plants are focused sharply and the mannequins have a lovely background blur with the second shot the opposite is happening where the mannequins are sharp but the cactus have a nice smooth out-of-focus look so if you want to have full control over where your camera focuses be sure to use flexible spot focus area mode or you can also use the focus and recompose technique I showed you earlier you can go with whatever technique you feel is easier to use give each of them a try and stick with the one that you like the most okay so these techniques are great for static shots but how do you focus when your subject is moving if that's the case your best bet is what is called continuous autofocus we're now at this wonderful Mexican Street and I want to photograph classic colorful vehicles that are moving toward me I simply won't have the time to focus on them first with single-shot auto focus and then take the photo so I'll instead choose continuous autofocus setting your camera to continuous autofocus is quite simple actually but on your camera it may look slightly different than mine on this Fujifilm camera and many other makes and models the focus modes are switch on the body of the camera your switch may be on your lens or possibly accessed digitally within your rear LCD screen after you press your function or menu button I'm switching from the previous mode which was single-shot to continuous mode which is signified by the letter C some cameras will use the three letters AFC which is the same thing within the continuous autofocus mode you can still tell the camera if you want to choose spot auto focusing where you choose the initial focus location or centered where the camera will choose a focus point anywhere within the center area of your frame or wide where the camera can choose to focus on any object within the entire picture space because I will be photographing a car coming toward me from a certain location I will be using spot as my initial focus mode so I can initially focus on the car at the distance and then it'll track all the way toward me and I'll show you how that works one more point because I want to show you how effective this mode is for moving subjects while setting the camera to continuous shooting mode which is also sometimes called rapid-fire or sports mode this will tell the camera to take many consecutive photos back-to-back without the need of me continually pressing the shutter button okay so let's begin by doing a demo I'm gonna wait until a classic green San Miguel de n de taxi comes toward me now let's see if this camera can actually track the vehicle coming toward me all the way okay beautiful so I was able to get the the wonderful green taxis of sudden Miguel and the tracking looks good let me put these images up on screen so you can see now when we flip through the pictures what we can see is that the taxi is good and sharp and the background has a slight blur and that shows me that it's successful the camera was indeed able to track the distance between the camera and the vehicle even though the vehicle was moving toward me okay so that's a little bit how autofocus continuous works it's amazing for sports photography in any situation where vehicles or any object is coming toward your camera you may be wondering why don't we use continuous autofocus all the time after all it can track your subjects when it moves and it can also find a static subject and it's just so much more convenient not to switch between focus modes all the time well there are two reasons not to use continuous autofocus all the time number one is saving battery life it takes so much camera battery and processing power to use continuous tracking the other reason for not using continuous autofocus all the time is performance although continuous autofocus is amazingly smart at realizing where your subject is it's just not as good at setting focus for static subjects as single-shot autofocus by using single-shot autofocus for static subjects you'll simply get better results your photos will be sharper but if you want to have perfect focus on moving subjects you should go with continuous autofocus while single-shot autofocus and continuous autofocus are great for almost all photography scenarios sometimes they are not enough that's when you need to switch to manual focus to get a perfectly sharp image so what are the scenarios when you'd switch to manual mode for one it could be that the autofocus mode just doesn't work because there is not enough contrast in the scene for example when you want to photograph a wall or a desk surface also manual focus is the preferred focus mode for taking macro photos or it could be that maybe you want to take a perfect image and have the time to play around with your manual focus to get the exact photo that you want it could be a beautiful low-light cityscape or apposed portrait in studio conditions manual focus could work better in these cases as well in my case I want to photograph this beautiful yellow and I have a really nice trim on the upper section of the wall where we're going to have this beautiful dark silhouette of leaves now here's the problem the wall has no texture and no features you can see I'm going to put an example up on the screen right now it's beautiful yellow but there's nothing from my camera to focus on let me give you a demo here so I have my camera in autofocus mode and I'm going to attempt to take the picture in autofocus now what I hear is my autofocus motor is sort of searching or hunting for focus but it doesn't see anything that's why it's struggling and it's really not locking on to anything of any any contrast so it doesn't take the picture now it's true that I have a little trim of of leaves at the top but because I'm in centered focus mode there's really nothing to focus on this is where manual focus is going to come in so well because I can clearly define well do I want those little trims of leaves to have sharp focus or do I want them blurry to sort of pretend that they're shadows there's so much fine tune creative control when you're dealing with manual focus okay so let's see what happens when I switch to manual focus mode and on this Fuji camera it's a little switch on the body itself but as I said before you may access it on your lens or within your back LCD screen depending on your camera making model okay so now in manual focus mode I'm actually going to rotate my manual focus ring that's on the end of my lens and I have the exact scenario that I want I want the leaves to be crisp for this picture now I want to take one more picture where the leaves are not crisp but they are sort of out of focus to pretend that they are deep shadows so I'm going to turn my focus ring and I got the picture so I have two versions and this is only possible really quickly at least by using manual focus mode now there's so much more I'd like to tell you about digital photography and while I didn't hold anything back there's only so much I could share with you in such a short video and that's why I've recorded an entire video course about taking incredible photos with your digital camera and in case you rely entirely on your camera's auto settings this course will let you finally take your camera off of the auto mode so if you'd like to find out more about my digital photography course you'll find more information right under this video so take a look at my full digital photography course and I hope to see you there

Channel: Photography Pro

Views: 1,091,328

Keywords: photography pro, mark hemmings, learn photography, photography tips, photography, camera focus, setting focus, photo focus, photography focus, canon focus, nikon focus, focus settings, out of focus, focus camera, auto focus, manual focus, basics of photography, photography tutorial, photography tricks, photography hacks, photography mistakes, posing tips, vs, diy photography, peter mckinnon, camera, nikon, canon, dslr

Id: -SwqYcNVmNc

Length: 16min 19sec (979 seconds)

Published: Tue May 14 2019