Sharp As A Tack – How To Get Your Subject In Focus

Accurate focus is one of the most important elements for a good photograph. If the wrong thing, or nothing, is in focus the image simply holds no interest.

Achieving accurate focus can be one of the hardest things to do–especially for us vision impaired photographers. Luckily, modern digital cameras generally have excellent autofocus systems.

Today’s modern digital cameras all have some method of automatic focusing. The good news is that their systems tend to be very accurate. The bad news is that they don’t always know what you want as the main subject in your photo.

No worries, though. It is pretty simple to help your camera know what to focus on.

In most digital cameras the autofocus watches several zones within the image area to find a focus point on a probable main subject. The problem comes when the camera dutifully finds and locks focus on a subject other than the one you wanted to be your main subject.

With most digital cameras today, when you press the shutter release halfway down the camera will try to find something to lock focus on. If it finds something in the image area that it can focus on, it locks focus and alerts you with a beep and an indicator in the image area to show you what it has focused on. Pay attention to where the camera has focused. Is that the subject you were wanting to focus on? If so, you are set. Go ahead and take your shot.

If the camera identified the wrong primary subject, release the shutter button and try again. This time try placing your main subject in the center of the frame before pressing the shutter release half way down. Watch for the indication of focus lock and note whether or not it is on your main subject. If so, keep the shutter button pressed halfway as you re-align the camera to frame your shot the way you want. Then press the shutter button the rest of the way down to take your picture.

That’s all there is to getting your digital camera to focus where you want it to.