Basic photography skills have not changed since the 1970s. They’re still the same, and you still need them.
One of those skills is focus. With all the autofocus functionality it is easy to forget that you can do it yourself too. And you can get great results:
The most frustrating type of photography is manual focus/manual exposure of fast-moving objects like cats. Thank God they sometimes sleep:
And you learn from things that are difficult. So my advice: go shoot on manual focus for a day!
- Set your lens or camera to “M”
- Turn focus ring
- Go past sharp point; return; repeat, decreasing excursions.
- Shoot.
Takes a second or two. And you will understand depth of field better – and bonus: manual focus is needed when it is too dark to autofocus. Or when shooting macro. On some lenses, like my 45mm Tilt-Shift lens, it is the only way to do it.
And another bonus: you will need to think about each shot. The old skills weren’t so bad!
It’s too bad that when auto-focus was introduced the old split prism focusing screeds were discontinued.
The built in diopter is an improvement though. ‘Coarse you have to make sure it is adjusted to your eye, or you won’t have a clue if the lens is focused or not.
Eh! “screeds” should be “screens”
The new Fuji X100s has a split prism focus.