Hocus Focus

One area where photographers may get lazy about is focusing the camera. Most digital cameras do a pretty good job of auto-focusing now, so for many people it’s not something we even think about… unless there is a problem. Let me just say, though, that knowing how to focus – or what to focus on – is very important.

My very first camera was a Brownie camera that took 127 roll film. It was a hand-me-down from my mom. I don’t remember if I ever developed any of the film from that camera, but what I do remember was that it was very simple to operate. There was a film-advance knob and a shutter release. I didn't even know the concept of focusing. The next camera… the same thing. It was even simpler yet: A Kodak Instamatic that took 126 cartridge film. It was a no-brainer to take pictures with this thing. You pop in a cartridge, snap a picture, advance… and repeat until the little window said 12 or 24 (depending on how many exposures your film cartridge had) and then pop the cartridge out and develop the film. Developing the film was perhaps the most difficult task in the whole process because then I had to come up with the money to get it developed, send it off (which required actually writing things with a pen) or bringing it to a local store to have it developed. On these types of cameras, apparently the aperture was a very high fixed setting, so just about everything was in focus. For now, don’t worry too much about aperture (also called f-stop – it is the number after the f on your camera) because I will go into further detail later. Just store that in the back of your head and remember two things about it: 1) Aperture affects exposure and 2) aperture affects depth of field (where the focal point is – in other words where the camera is focused). Right now, I just want to concentrate on simply focusing the camera.

When my older brother got an SLR camera, he gave me his old 35mm camera… and I do mean old. What made it seem old(er) was that it had all these dials, levers, switches and stuff with numbers, settings and abbreviations that I didn't have a clue what they meant. One of the things that I did figure out was that the ISO (or ASA) setting corresponded to the film I was using. What I understood about that was that you could take pictures indoors with 400 ASA film (ISO and ASA mean the same thing, by the way – I’ll go over it in detail later… so don’t worry). The other settings and dials I didn’t know much about though. This camera was a non-SLR camera, so I had to frame everything through the viewfinder and hope for the best. The focus was pretty much guesswork. I had to estimate how far away the subject was and set the focus ring accordingly. After getting my pictures back from processing, I could tell that I was probably way off on some of them. It was quite disappointing. Here I had these high-quality blurry photos.

I took this photo in 1980 at Woodland Park Zoo (Seattle) of a hippo. I used an old 35mm camera with a manual "guess and click" type focus. I guessed wrong (as in almost all my photos with this camera). Notice how the branch to the right is almost in focus though, so there was nothing wrong with the camera.

Later, I got 35mm cameras that would indicate through the viewfinder as to whether or not the subject was in focus. This meant a lot to me. It was then that the quality of my photos started to get better – at least as far as being in focus was concerned. I had become more conscious about focusing and it became second-nature to me. I had then spent almost two decades shooting with 35mm SLR cameras. When we talk about “manual” mode on our cameras now, that is the way that all SLR cameras operated until fairly recently. There was no auto-focus or any automatic shooting modes. Every photo was set up manually. The best helps were the focus indicator and the light meter that was built into the camera. It was impossible to get by without using them.

I stopped shooting with film abruptly in 2002 when I bought my first digital camera (an Olympus D-40 point-and-shoot). The pictures on that camera were better than most of my pictures using any of 35mm film cameras. The only disappointments that I started to encounter were those encountered in low-light. What I really loved about the new digital cameras was the auto-focus. I learned that in order to lock the focus, all I had to do was to center the subject I wanted to focus, press the shutter button halfway and then recompose the shot. It was so simple. This is the way that the majority (if not all) digital cameras work using autofocus. You press the button halfway while viewing your subject in the center of the viewfinder and then you recompose (reframe) your photo the way you want and then fully press the button. These are the things that make us lazy and complacent. But things don't always work the way we had hoped, so then it is back to dissatisfaction and that cycle should take a person to wanting to do something about the problem. So, we have these wonderful cameras that do all the thinking for us, but there is that 10% of the time where the camera doesn't work the way we hoped it would.  This is where it is necessary to stop, think and intervene.

There are several instances where autofocus will not work or may not be appropriate, therefore you will have to either lock the focus using the aforementioned technique or manually override the focus (using the focus ring): 1) Sometimes there is an object in the way (say, a tree branch, a microphone stand, a chain-link fence or some other barrier) that the camera focuses on rather than your subject. 2) The surface of what you are focusing is not well defined. Some good examples of this would be: water, a shiny car hood, snow or negative space such as the sky (try to focus on a flying bird or an airplane sometime). 3) Your subject of focus is smaller than what your camera’s ability to focus on (like a person’s eyes… you almost ALWAYS want to have your subject’s eyes tack-sharp in-focus). 4) You PURPOSELY want to focus on something other than what is in the “crosshairs” of your viewfinder – and most of the time you DO (remember the “Dead-Center is Dead article). 5) The lighting is so dim that your camera may not have the capability to focus properly. Your camera relies on a certain amount of light in order to autofocus.

Here's a picture I took as an example. I wanted to try to "frame" my subject within the tree branches, but oops! The camera focused in on the tree branches instead. Ruined a good shot! Nice looking leaves though.

Here's an example of what I was trying to shoot. Even though in my opinion, this picture is less than ideal (because the branches are such a distraction) you can clearly see the face of the subject... and the branches (which are less important) are out of focus. I had to manually override the autofocus to get the shot the way I wanted it.

The rule to remember is that whatever you want to be most important in your photo will be what is in focus. Like any rule, that can be broken, but for the sake of following the rules (which is what you'll want to do 99.9% of the time) just remember that... for now. We'll go over creative composition and alternate focusing later.