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Live and in focus…

4 comments
  • Nick's Blog
Jun 26 2013

Yesterday (at ridiculously early o’clock) morning I joined two chums for a shoot in an area allowed to grow wild to encourage natural regeneration. We were after anything really but dragonflies and damselflies in particular. These are critturs I have never really tried photographing seriously before and I was mentored by Alec Stewart, a good friend and, to me, a real expert in this field. Out of all the hints, tips and help I was given yesterday one tip rose large – the use of live view to focus with.

It is such a simple and obvious technique when I thought about it – yet with my landscape work I had not really given it thought, so, now that I do, I pass this on in the hope it may help you too.

When your composition is lined up (in my case a very still and dew laden common blue damselfly) flip the camera into live view. Then carefully press the magnify button and place the focus box/circle/area to the critical area of the shot – I mostly aimed for the head but this may vary depending on just what you are photographing. Make sure the focus mode is in MANUAL when doing this for best results. Auto focus will hunt for a subject in poor or low light, especially if it is moving (as my subjects were – blown gently on reeds). Remember even a very GENTLE movement in macro photography will seem like a seismic disaster when looking through the screen!

Use a cable release or self timer and, when you feel the area covered is pin sharp – shoot!

This gave me an excellent return in terms of sharp pics and I was delighted with the results.

Give it a go – I am SURE your photography will improve.

PS – do be aware that this will mash your battery so always charge up before you leave and take a spare too. (no, I didn’t and don’t ask awkward questions)

Common Blue Damselfly

« Yorkshire Dales Photo Workshop 14 to 18 June 2013
Day of Judgement… »
  1. Alan Coles 

    Some excellent advice Nick.

    June 26, 2013 at 9:07 am Reply
  2. Judi Lion 

    Excellent advice as it really does show that the subject you thought was in focus may not be! Another good tip is to use mirror lock uo too which helps further reduce any movement,

    June 26, 2013 at 11:14 am Reply
  3. Darin Lynch 

    I have been exploring this. I experimented in Colorado last weekend with “Hyperfocal Distance” and found it didn’t do anything for me and I couldn’t get any improvement over Infinite focus and F11-F16. I tried close focus (3-4ft) to capture the near-ground area better but it didn’t really seem any different to me and just slightly compromised sharpness of distance objects. 1/3 of the way into the frame for me is already infinte focus. I do bracket for HDR though, which is a more advanced way to capture all of the dynamic range in a scene rather than just combining a properly exposed sky with the foreground. What you are wondering about is something macro shooters do called focus stacking. I haven’t tried this but in theory it would work for landscapes. I’d like to know if anyone here does this. A simple search for “focus stacking landscape” gives some reading material.

    July 26, 2013 at 9:19 pm Reply
  4. silver price 

    While our eyes work like a fixed 50mm lens, camera lenses allow us to capture much wider perspectives, or allow us to get closer to our subjects. Without understanding the relationship between lens focal length, aperture and camera to subject distance, focusing for landscape photography can get rather difficult. For example, if you were photographing starfish on a beach from a close distance and wanted to get the background horizon to be equally sharp as the starfish, which would you focus on – the starfish or the background? Would you be using a wide-angle or a telephoto lens to get both in focus? What aperture would you be using? A good landscape photographer should know answers to all of these questions and come up with the right solution to the problem. For example, I would have certainly used a wide-angle lens (since long focal lengths would only isolate the subject more), a relatively high aperture number between f/8 and f/16 and would have focused on an area somewhere between the starfish and the background. Where exactly would I focus? This is where you need to understand what hyperfocal distance is and how to find it.

    December 3, 2013 at 10:30 am Reply

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