Hi, I’m Doug McKinlay and you’re watching AdoramaTV. Today we look at some tips and
tricks
on zone focusing.
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Stay focused with Doug McKinlay.
I'm using the Fuji X-100 T camera
it's a really nice and compact camera. It has a 16-megapixel
CMOS APS-C size sensor, which is the same size a sensor in a lot of SLR’s.
It has a sharp f/2, 35mm equivalent lens.
Perfect for street photography. Now looking at the body
you might be fooled into thinking it's made by certain a German manufacture,
but it's Fujifilm. So we are going to look at zone focusing.
So what good is it? For me as a reportage photographer,
documentary photographer, travel photographer, what does is it allows me to shoot quicker.
It takes one piece of the puzzle out. Now in a quick changing situation
it's going to be to my advantage. Basically what we're gonna do is where gonna
set this little
Fuji camera at f/8. So you need to find the
hyper focal distance of that, which is about 10 feet. So half that distance,
about five feet is going to be where the camera will start to see things sharp
from there to infinity.
On the lens barrel itself it only has the f numbers. So we have to check the
focus
through the viewfinder.
Okay so I've got it set for around
10 feet. So half that distance is
from 5 feet to infinity things should be sharp. Now that frees me up a little bit.
Allows me shoot from the hip,
allows me to shoot quickly without having to worry about focusing and I should get
acceptably sharp images. Just keep in mind the shutter speed
will change as the light changes. Also you may have to adjust the aperture as
well.
If your going from light to dark keep mine too
that will also change the hyper focal distance. So you'll have to adjust your focus as
well. I’m off to the market to get some good pictures.
Well the markets really starting to kick off now. So now we’re going to go and practice our zone focusing.
and practice our zone focusing. Before we head off into the crowd we're going to make sure the
cameras set up properly.
Fortunately the paving stones below me are grey, so we can use that as our grey card
to make sure we get our meter right.
Okay, let’s go.
The hardest part about zone focusing I think is
estimating your distances. So
if our hyper focal distance is 8 and we’re shooting at around 4 feet
to infinity, we have got to try and figure out those distances.
When your first starting this, no harm in using a tape measure on an inanimate object to figure
out your distances.
Now one thing about hyper focal distances is
it changes with the aperture. Each aperture will have a different
hyper focus distance.
It changes with the camera format. From 35mm to medium format or even
point and shoot.
So you have to find out what your hyper focal distances are for your particular
Camera.
So getting to grips on zone focusing is a matter of practice, practice and more
practice.
Keep in mind the local rules and regulations concerning
street photography. Every county’s, every country's different. There is no point getting
in trouble
for taking pictures we're not supposed to. That’s it for me.
I’m Doug McKinlay for AdoramaTV. Don’t forget to subscribe to AdoramaTV for
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