SELECTIVE FOCUS
TECHNIQUES - Selective focus
When you focus your lens on a subject you are in effect telling your camera what you want it to record, so it is in your interest to be specific.
In the example below for example, the thought process would belike this; is it the Seagull (a) or are the yachts (b) the subject or point of the composition? They are both in your field of view but they are about 200 metres or more apart from each other.
If it’s one or the other, why? what is your reason? does it just look good? or is there another reason.
You can have both in focus, but it means you will need to increase your depth-of-field (DoF). But by doing this, your shutter speed decreases, therefore you will need a tripod, by the time you set this up the bird may well have got bored with you and flown off. So if you like the scene, frame it quickly and decide at the same time which part of it you want in focus. If there is enough sunlight to have a large DoF, then do this, otherwise decide what the focus will be, the bird or the yachts? If it’s one or the other, make sure that your aperture is wide open, say around f5.6 to unsure there is no DoF.
In a situation like this there are two ways to select the focus.
1. You can use manual focusing. This means get the exposure you want, then turn auto focus off, manually focus and shoot.
2. You can use your focus memory button. As above, set the exposure, then auto focus on the seagull, keep hold of the focus memory button,
reframe for the entire scene as above, then shoot. This will hold the focus on the bird, not the yachts.
All photography and text © Jon Davison 2021