hi guys welcome back to another five minute Friday with me international multi-award-winning portrait
photographer Jessica McGovern if you're new here consider hitting the subscribe button it
would be great to have you back today we're going to talk about something a little bit
different and i'm really hoping you stick with me because this is so important today i'm going to
teach you how to shoot efficiently so that you get better images in camera every time
not only better but better focus as well which is of course a win anyway let's get started.
So everything that you can see here set up is from Pixapro except for
the backdrop and the backdrop system which is from Click Props Backdrops it's amazing
i've also got my screen which is just recording my screen so that you guys can see the settings and
everything that's happening all of the links to everything here will be in the description below
so the chances are that you guys are shooting in one of three different ways we're going to focus
on the third one today but i want to go through two which are inefficient first the first one
ow the first one is where you go ahead and you focus with your focus point wherever it was and
in this case it's in the centre you focus and you shoot but then you just crop in afterwards okay
so that's method number one so you do your composition afterwards in editing the other
alternative that you see people do is that you focus and then you recompose and then you shoot
okay that is also a really common thing that i see now this is inefficient for a
very very very simple reason and with a human it's less obvious than it is with an animal
so why is it inefficient well if i grab my focus and recompose and then the subject moves
then the focus plane is completely different and my image is out of focus so then i have to go
and start the whole process again to start over now what i want to try and train you guys to do
is just flip it all on its head what i want you to do is change the order of things to compose
focus and shoot so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to compose so i'm going to
move my focus point before i've even bothered the subject before i've got the dog sat in a
way before i've brought the horse out to the woodland right get my focus point ready so i
have an idea of a composition in my head then i'm going to raise it up focus and shoot now with this
composition it's pretty boring picture but if i focus and then the subject moves all i need to do
is re-press my focus and shoot again therefore i'm not only improving my composition in camera right
maximising the pixels that i've got available i'm also making sure that i'm ready to refocus as and
when required which is absolutely invaluable when isn't this going to work it's not going
to work if you're using a Canon mirrorless camera any other Canon cameras are fine
Canon mirrorless camera if you're using the iaf you're not going to need to do this whole process
but it's still important that you compose in camera for every other camera
probably past 2012/2014 you've got enough focus points to make this work you don't need to be
doing the focus and recompose method or the focus and crop afterwards so this is a really
really simple tip so this works also for shooting portrait now i can't turn my screen around so this
is going to be a little bit different but what i'm going to do is just kind of prepare my focus point
down at the right hand side of my landscape screen which is going to be pretty central
when i flip my screen up so that when i shoot portrait and Dan does a nice little pose for us
i'm pretty much ready to go
Nice Dan you're going for it i'm here for it yeah
the sliding chair and serious pensive pensive serious
good that was strong and that hair light is doing a great job so by moving your focus point before
you even shoot you're saving time you're making it more efficient and you're improving your
hit rate in your shots really really simple tip that hopefully you can implement today tomorrow
whenever you're next shooting but the question i want to know answered is which focus method
are you using are you (a) doing focus recompose shoot are you doing (b) focus and then just crop
it afterwards to whatever it will work best in or are you doing (c) compose focus sheet
which is in my personal opinion the most efficient way so i'd really love to know which one you guys
are using was this useful for you have you tried this before how did it go for you let's go ahead
and have a chat in the comments and i'll see you guys next week for another five minute Friday.