Great street photography has been made for nearly a hundred years and some decades
before autofocus was even invented. And there are still photographers today who do
not rely on autofocus and still produce fantastic work. So how do they do
it and how can we do it as well? In this video, we're going
to find out and I'm going to show you exactly how you can do
this.
The first thing we need to do is to understand this technique, the
technique referred to as either zone focusing or range focusing. But I'm just
going to call it zone focusing. This method works by selecting a zone of
your focal range to keep in focus. I always thought it was some sort
of crunching numbers or an ancient art that was unlearnable today, but since I've
been trying it, it really works. And in fast paced street environments, I've
actually found in some cases it's more reliable than modern autofocus. But I'll
explain more about that later. First, I'm going to show you how to physically
perform zone focusing. So, in order to use zone focusing, the best lenses you'll
actually want to use are manual lenses. And if you want to save a
lot of money, you can focus on getting manual vintage lenses. And on top
of the lens, this is where we have all the information we actually need.
The first layer at the bottom or closest to your camera is the aperture
ring having all of your different f stops. Then the next row above this, this
is where we can see our focusing zones. And you'll notice the f stop
numbers starting from the centre and moving outwards. And this is because the
smaller the f stop, the shallower the depth of field and the smaller the
zone of focus. And lastly, on the top row, furthest away from the camera,
we have our focus distance. And as you will know, as you rotate the
focus ring, you change the distance that your focal plane is actually at. This
distance will be at the centre of your zone of focus, with then the
corresponding f numbers below that being at the closest and furthest away area
of that zone of focus. If I have an f stop of eleven and
I focus to just over two metres, I can have my range of focus
from 1.3 metres to infinity. So meaning that anything beyond 1.3 metres for me,
is in focus. This is the largest zone of focus I've been using, but
you can play around with these much more, especially at closer focal
distances. This ability to get everything from, say, one, three metres all the
way up to infinity in focus, might sound like a really simple principle, but
there's a very important reason why you should care. If you're used to shooting
on a digital camera with modern lenses, especially modern mirrorless lenses, then
you'll have probably noticed that a lot of the time, manual focusing is kind
of an afterthought so we've become used to using autofocus as a default and
in most cases that autofocus is going to do everything you need it to.
But in some street photography scenarios, especially with kind of reactionary close
ups, autofocus can really let you down. This can be because your autofocus either
doesn't find your subject or you've got a manual autofocus point on a different
part of the frame. But in these scenarios you can count on zone focusing
because you've already got that range in focus. So it doesn't matter how much
time you have between raising your camera, pressing the shutter and getting the shot.
And not only can it be more reliable in these situations, but it's
also a very useful skill to develop if you want to shoot some 35
millimetre film or you want to experiment with using vintage lenses on your
mirrorless camera when using these manual focus vintage lenses, rather than looking
for your viewfinder and trying to land critical focus. If you can set your
F number to a spot where you have a good range in focus, then
you're actually going to save time when shooting and land more of your images
in focus. If all this is getting you very excited to start zone focusing,
especially with a 35mm camera, slow down for a second because you don't
want to start burning through hundreds and hundreds of pounds worth of film. The
best way to start practising this today is using a digital camera like a
mirrorless or dslr and then using a lens adapter and your vintage lens. This
is my Minolta 50mm 1.8 And this is an adapter from manalta
to Sony. Vintage lenses tend to be fairly affordable and these adapters cost
a few pounds each. This means that you can practise and become familiar with
different zones of focusing without having to worry about burning through say for
me at the moment it's about 50 pence per shot in terms of buying
the film and getting it developed. When I've been doing this on my A7C, I actually keep the LCD closed and use it like a film
camera just with a very bad EVF and a horrible sounding shutter. Remember
that if you want to practise zone focusing today, you don't have to jump
onto film straight away. You can practise with vintage lenses on digital. This will
save you money on film and also will help you learn a bit more
because you have a bit more flexibility in terms of shutter speed and ISO
to balance your exposure. One thing you will learn the hard way if you
go straight into shooting film using zone focusing is that balancing your exposure
versus your depth of field of what you're going to have in focus can
be quite tricky. You can either under expose your shots depending on the light
and your f stop or you could actually get a lot of motion blur that
you didn't plan on by compensating for your higher f number with your slower
shutter speed. This is part of the reason why getting practice using vintage
lenses on digital camera could help you if you don't want to burn through
loads of cash on film. If you are going to practise this on digital
camera, I would suggest turning off your LCD display and relying only on the
EVF and the OVF if it's a DSLR. And on top of this, I
would also turn off any focus assisting features you might have, like focus
peaking, and try to just focus on measuring the distance with your eyes,
whether you use feet or metres, and then using the actual focus distance on
your lens. Especially if you're doing this on digital camera, you don't have to
worry about getting lots of shots wrong, and you don't have to be aiming
for super avant garde shots in the first few tries. By still using your
viewfinder though, you get to look at your metering. So if you're balancing,
say, on a specific ISO and then using a specific F stop, you can then
play around with shutter speeds to know how much control you'll have in certain
situations. On digital, of course, you have the advantage of being able to
bump up your ISO to whatever you want and be able to crank up
your shutter to be able to compensate. But this is all very good practice
for when it comes to shooting on 35mm film if you choose to
down the line if you want to get the full 35mm experience. But
while shooting on digital, start with Zone focusing on vintage lenses. And then don't
forget to pick up my film emulation preset packed, where you can emulate films
like Kodak Gold and Ilford HP5 and many, many more. I'll drop a
link in the description and the pin comment below. This video I've been
practising using Zone, focusing both on 35mm film and adapting my old
Minolta lenses to my A7C. I've been using the same Minolta 28mm f 2.8, which, because of its wide focal length, actually offers
larger ranges of focus, making this practice a bit easier. That is, compared
to something like a 50mm, which has much smaller zones of focus. All
of my shots on 35mm film have been on Ilford HP5 plus,
looking at my shots between the two, the limitation of film versus digital is
quite obvious because my ISO on my film is at 400 on HP5,
whereas on my A7C, at some points, I even just had my
ISO in auto mode so I could have the best settings for zone focusing
on my A7C. I could have my shutter speed at
1/250 or 1/500 while still having my F stop at eleven, meaning I have a
very nice range of focus. However, looking at this first roll of HP5
that I've shot and halfway through my second role at the moment. But looking
at that first roll, I can immediately see the shots that worked and the
shots that failed. And because you shoot so few, you can actually remember each
one and what you were doing, what you were thinking and what went wrong.
Something that I picked up straight away from shooting film again, was that
actually taking time to find the shots that you really want to get and
then playing with Zone, focusing to really dial it in? Made much more. Of
a difference in terms of going for the shots that really interested me versus
on digital, where I tend to kind of spray and pray. Practising this method
on digital is definitely the way to go. And if you have better luck
finding affordable primes or vintage primes that you can adapt to a
digital camera, it's going to make your street photography process quite
interesting and fun to do. I found the last time I went out with
my A7C and 28mm zone focusing, I took a couple
of my favourite shots I've taken in a while, and I don't think I
would have seen and got those shots the way that I did if I
was relying on autofocus. I don't know about you, but I find personally, when
I shoot on digital, I shoot everything. I shoot every man, woman and their
dog. And part of the reason is that on digital, you have unlimited shots,
essentially. Like, if you have a thousand shots on an sd card, it's going
to be difficult to get through all of those in just a short street
photography walk. Whereas, however, if you're shooting on a 35mm camera,
you take each of those shots much more seriously because, you know, you only
get 36, they cost money, and you don't want to take multiple shots at
the same moment. Looking at the shots I got on the role of hp
Five, I can definitely see the shots that worked. And those are the ones
where I actually took time to really focus on. Okay, what distance have I
got to be able to shoot at? A couple of them, I was waiting
for subjects. A couple of them, I happened to turn and find subjects. And
I'm still going through my second role at the moment. And I think there's
going to be a bit more hit and miss because I've been experimenting
with closer focus distances as well. From the last time that I went out
shooting on my A7C zone focusing, I think I finally started to
realise what makes me tick. And I think the reason why zone focusing has
helped me do this in such a short stint is because you're no longer
thinking about, where is my autofocus point? What autofocus mode am I on?
Actually trying to look at the screen to make sure you've got focus in
a flash. Having your zone focusing set up and then just being able to
move into a scene, lift your camera quickly or even shoot sorted from the
hip and then just get a shot takes away a lot of that pressure.
I think this is allowing me to start taking photos of things that
naturally interest me versus getting photos of things that I can easily
set up. And speaking of things that interest me, that might interest you, you
should go cheque out this video right here on a $300 street photography camera
setup. It looks vintage, it's affordable. It's got a long focal length. Give
it a watch.