Photography

24 readers

1 users here now

A place to politely discuss the tools, technique and culture of photography.

This is not a good place to simply share cool photos/videos or promote your own work and projects, but rather a place to discuss photography as an art and post things that would be of interest to other photographers.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

communick@viewfinder.pro

When do you use manual focus? (alien.top)

submitted 1 year ago by DiablolicalScientist@alien.top to c/photography@viewfinder.pro

172 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I feel like autofocus is so good. Are there times that you use manual focus? When I am looking through the view finder it almost seems impossible to actually manual focus a shot anyway.

Am I doing something wrong here? Just checking. Thank you.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] csl512@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

When it's necessary to fool new photographers into thinking they're doing it wrong for not going full manual everything.

When AF is unavailable, wrong, or will otherwise get in the way. AF might rack all the way across the range if your AF point goes from the subject to something it can't focus on like a featureless sky. Sports photographers might pre-focus to where the action will be instead of relying on AF tracking.

If what you're doing plus automation gets you the results you need, you're fine.

You didn't say what gear exactly you're using, but manual focus on a digital camera with live view using magnification is great for macro. Back-button focus is popular for separating AF from metering/shutter release.