Hi!
 

In some of my recent critiques of landscape and close-up photos, I’ve mentioned the importance of careful focusing - both when you’re looking to keep the entire image sharp from foreground to background and when you’re aiming for a more abstract, shallow-focus image.

Some of you reached out in response and asked for guidance on how to focus in the field, so today, I’m going to share with you some tips and resources for mastering focusing in a variety of scenarios.

I’ve also included a couple more critiques, as well as the dPS bi-weekly challenge. I hope you enjoy!

The dPS bi-weekly challenge: night architecture

From Sime:

Night Architecture! Architecture at night... after the sun's gone, before the sun's up? It doesn't need to be in a city, find something appealing about your house at night. A detail or a well lit tile - see how you go. Remember to tag your post with #dpsweeklychallenge and #dpsnightarchitecture on our weekly challenge page or on social media!

How to focus effectively

For a lot of photographers, focusing is one of the toughest skills to master. It involves a slew of options, and the right approach changes depending on your camera model and the scene at hand.

I also want to emphasize that there’s no single best way to focus your lens. Different photographers have different preferences, and that’s okay. 

But if you find yourself struggling to focus correctly - whether that’s all the time or in specific scenarios - I have some recommendations you can use to nail focus more consistently:

1. For standard stationary subjects, try the focus-and-recompose method

When you’re dealing with subjects that are relatively unmoving and that don’t involve ultra-close focusing (e.g., a building, fruit on a table, a sleeping dog), I recommend using the focus-and-recompose method.

We have a comprehensive article that walks you through the details (you can read it here!), but basically, you set your camera to its AF-S focusing setting (also known as one-shot focusing) and its single-point AF area mode. 

(AF-S tells your camera to lock and hold focus when you half-press the shutter button, while the single-point AF area mode tells your camera to focus on the area covered by one small AF point.)

Then, when you see a subject you want to photograph, make sure that it’s covered by the single AF point. (You should completely ignore framing/composition when you do this!) Half-press the shutter button to lock focus, and then - while still half-pressing the shutter button - recompose the frame so the composition looks perfect. Finally, fully press the shutter button to take the photo!

2. For moving subjects, continuous AF with tracking is generally best

When you’re photographing action - sports, wildlife, people dancing at a party, etc. - the focus-and-recompose method will generally be too slow. By the time you’ve locked focus on your subject, and before you get a chance to properly compose your photo, they’ll likely have moved!

That’s where continuous AF and AF tracking comes into play. Now, different cameras offer various settings and capabilities here, but in general, you want to set your camera to its AF-C focus mode (also known as AI servo). That way, when you half-press the shutter button, the focus won’t lock; instead, your camera will continuously acquire focus, even as your subject moves.

It’s not enough to just use your camera’s AF-C mode, however. You want to make sure that your camera is using the right autofocus points, too, so that it follows your moving subject around the frame. Fortunately, most cameras now offer outstanding AF tracking modes, so that’s what I’d recommend you try. The latest and greatest mirrorless cameras even offer AF eye tracking and subject tracking modes (such as vehicle tracking, bird tracking, and more), so those are definitely worth trying, as well.

With AF-C and tracking enabled, when you half-press the shutter button, your camera will follow the subject around the frame. Then, when the moment is right, you can fully press the shutter button and nail the shot!

3. For landscape and macro photography, try focusing manually

The recommendations I shared above will work well in most situations, but landscape photography and macro photography are two potential exceptions. 

For landscape photography, you can use the focus-and-recompose method, but if you want to keep the entire scene in focus, you have to be careful. Depending on your aperture setting, the depth of the scene, your distance from the subject, and your focal length, you may need to get the focus point just right in order to keep both the nearest foreground elements and the most distant background elements in focus.

Therefore, some landscape photographers prefer to focus manually, often with the Live View zoomed to 10x for increased precision. 

However you choose to focus when doing landscape photography, if your goal is to keep the entire scene sharp, you’ll generally want to set the focus point to the hyperfocal distance. (The hyperfocal distance is the point at which you maximize the depth of field, so that everything from half your focus point to infinity is sharp. For more on hyperfocal distances, check out our guide!)

To find the hyperfocal distance, you can use a calculator (there are plenty of apps that offer this!). Another option is to focus about a third of the way into the scene, or to estimate your distance from the nearest foreground element and focus on the point that’s double that distance.

As for macro photography: Whenever you’re photographing at high magnifications, your camera will struggle. That’s why I almost always switch over to manual focus when doing close-up work; it lets me set the point of focus in the exact right spot!

4. Consider back-button focusing

By default, cameras acquire focus when you half-press the shutter button, then they take the photo when you press the shutter button the rest of the way.

But there’s another option: you can set a button on the back of your camera to command your camera to acquire focus, and make your shutter button only good for firing the shutter. 

This approach - known as back-button focusing - can offer a lot more flexibility, as it allows you to use the back button to focus as needed, and it also allows you to lock focus simply by taking your finger off the button. Some photographers swear by it, and so I definitely recommend you check it out!

For an excellent explanation of back-button focusing, give this article a read!

Critiquing your images

I have a couple more critiques for you today, and as always, I want to say a big “Thank you!” to everyone who sent in images for critique. Even though I don’t get to every image, I absolutely love looking at each one, and I make sure to add each one to our critique “pile” for future newsletters!

(For those of you who would like to see your images critiqued in a future newsletter, just hit Reply to this message and send along a file or two! But make sure you mention that the images are indeed for critique in the email body or subject line, and please make sure the files are JPEGs and at least 1000 pixels on the long end!)

First, we have a colorful seascape from Natalie B:

What I like:

• Natalie, I really appreciate the simplicity of this image! It almost reminds me of an abstract painting. You have a rectangle of textured water juxtaposed with a rectangle of sky, and the color contrast (between the cool water and the warm sky) adds to the effect.
• Speaking of colors, I’m a big fan of the pastel combination here! The pink and blue work really well together.
• I like your choice to include a smaller subject in the water (the silhouetted rock with the two gulls). It adds some interest and gives the eye a resting point but doesn’t dominate the scene. It also gives the shot a sense of scale!

Ideas for improvement:

• The horizon is looking a bit crooked - I’d recommend straightening that up in post-processing!
• I’m noticing some image-quality issues on my monitor. It looks like this might have been a heavy crop and/or shot with a high ISO and then noise-reduced, which has resulted in a loss of detail, especially in the water. In general, a little bit of cropping can be okay, especially if the image was tack-sharp to begin with and shot at a low ISO, but a heavy crop will degrade the image quality substantially. (If you photograph on a smartphone or a point-and-shoot camera, it’s also important to make sure that you’re not using the “digital zoom” option, which actually just crops the image in-camera.) I’m personally not against cropping, but I’m fairly crop-averse. Whenever possible, it’s best to get in close by using a longer lens or by moving forward (i.e., zooming with your feet!). In terms of ISO: When shooting in low light, such as at dawn and dusk, you’ll want to make sure your camera doesn’t bump up the ISO or apply noise reduction without you knowing. If possible, shoot in RAW, use a tripod, and keep your camera set to its base ISO value (often ISO 100).
• One more suggestion: I’d play around with different framing and positioning, just to see what you can come up with! Right now, with the centered horizon, the shot feels perhaps a little static. It could be very cool to include more sky in the photo, for instance, or to go a lot wider, or to position the silhouetted rock more toward the edge of the frame.

Next, we have an intimate flower photo from Peter H:

What I like:

• Peter, I really like the mood in this image; it feels very somber. I often recommend avoiding flowers with imperfections (such as wilting petals), but for this shot, I think it works really well.
• I like your choice to get in close and almost completely fill the frame with those two flowers side by side, but with one flower center slightly higher than the other to break the symmetry and keep the image more engaging.
• The color palette is simple and lovely! I really appreciate the way those pinks and whites dominate much of the frame, but with those little yellow accents adding interest.
• Great choice of angle here; I like how the flower centers are almost perfectly parallel to the camera sensor.

Ideas for improvement:

• When I view the image large on my monitor, I notice a softness across the frame; it looks like it might be caused by heavy noise reduction, or perhaps by a significant increase in exposure during post-processing. The image contains all those intricate details, and I would love to see them even more clearly! My recommendation here is to be very careful when it comes to ISO settings and noise reduction; use a low ISO whenever possible, and if you need to bump it up, make sure any noise reduction applied during post-processing is very natural. If you did use a low ISO but boosted the exposure in post-processing, that can also create noise issues. Do your best to avoid significant underexposure in the field, even if that means using a tripod.
• To my eye, the image is a bit dark, and I’d love to see it just a hair brighter. (On the other hand, the darkness contributes to the somber mood…)
• While I really appreciate your close-up composition, I’d encourage you to go a little bit tighter to eliminate the slivers of green around the edges of the frame, which interfere with the uniformity created by those two flowers. With this type of shot, the more you can fill the frame and eliminate extraneous elements, the better! It’s not that you should always avoid including background elements in close-up flower photos, but in my experience, it’s good to either commit to including a fair amount of background around the flower(s) or get so close you rid the frame of the background entirely.

Thanks again to everyone who sent in photos, and I hope you have a great week ahead!

Talk to you next Saturday,

Jaymes Dempsey (and the dPS team)