Improve Your Focus

When you take pictures, do you find that you end up with a lot of shots that would have been great if they had just been in focus? Do you toss more images than you keep because of this? Let’s look at some ways to improve the focusing with your camera.

For the most part, these tips apply to those of you that have a DSLR versus a pocket digital camera. The latter usually presets focus for you and doesn’t give much leeway for adjustments.

When you focus, the camera is looking at parts of the image that have a lot of contrast and is using that to determine the correct setting. Rather than evaluate the whole image to do this, the camera looks at one or several ‘focus points’. You see these points designated as little boxes when you look through the viewfinder:

Canon 5D focusing screen, upper left focus point selected

By default, most DSLRs look at all points to decide on focus. However, you can override this and tell the camera to only use one point. Why? Let’s say that you are taking a picture of your kid, and you framed the image such that he’s in the lower left. By switching the active focus point to the lower left, you can use that box for focusing, and keep the framing of your original image intact. This will almost always give you better results than using all focus points, or doing the focus-recompose-shoot method that’s very popular.

Start by learning how to change the active focus point, and then explore some of these other options to improve your focus accuracy:

1. Increase your shutter speed – a slow speed (1/100th of a second or slower) means that some of your image may be blurry if you have a moving subject. Increasing it may keep more of the shot in focus.
2. Stop down the aperture – by this, I mean selecting a higher f-stop. For example, instead of f1.4, go up to f5.6 or higher. Higher numbers means that more of the scene will be in focus.
3. Use a small flashlight – if you are shooting in a dark environment, use a small light to illuminate the subject so that the camera can focus. Otherwise, the lens may be hunting around for focus and never lock on.
4. Support the camera – practice holding the camera still with your left hand supporting the lens from underneath. This will minimize camera shake.
5. Use IS/VR – if your lens supports Image Stabilization/Vibration Reduction, make sure that it’s turned on. This feature provides extra support in the lens for minimizing camera shake.

If you can put just a few of these techniques into practice, I guarantee that your percentage of ‘keepers’ will go way up!

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically for baby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters – a unique gift newborn children can keep forever. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.