Practice changing the focal points on the DLRS. Include examples of photographing the same composition with varying focal points.
You may have heard that cameras these days have dozens of focus points, which is great if you’d like to capture a larger object in a scene. What if there’s something very specific in the scene you’d like to be in focus though? What do you do then? How do you focus on just that? Can you tell the camera to pick just one of those dozens of focus point to use?
The Rear LCD Screen
Changing the Focus Point
In order to manually choose my own focus point, I’ll have to press the proper button on the back of the camera. In this case, that button is the one all the way to the right; right above the small magnifying glass with the + on it.
When I press that button, the current focus settings will come up. Because I already have this camera set to a manual focus point, the center point is highlighted. If I hadn’t set this camera this way, the entire center area may have been highlighted in orange. Also, if you’ll notice, the box to the left, above the focus points, is highlighted. That’s the mode I’m currently in. It’s called Manual Selection: 1 Pt AF. That translates into one point autofocus. What this means is that no matter what, the point at the center of the scene will be the point that’s focused on. That’s fine, but what if I’d like to change that point?
To move the focus point manually, I can use two different methods. I can either roll the scroll wheel on top of the camera back and forth. This will move the point to the left or to the right. I can also accomplish the same exact thing by pressing the left and right arrows on the back of the camera. If I wanted to move the focus point up or down, I can use the up and down arrows. I circled the arrow buttons in the image below. I also moved the focus point to the left a bit and circled that as well.
I suppose the question remains, what if I didn’t already have a single focus point chosen and set the way I did?
Changing a Focus Zone
To move that zone of focus points, I can again use either the scroll wheel that’s on top of the camera or the arrow keys on the back. It’s the same idea as above.
In the image below, you can see that I moved the focus zone from the center position to the left position.
Suggested template for reflection:
- What did you learn from this task? (Use “I can…” as a sentence starter)
- What did you like about this task?
- What was difficult? (Use “I am struggling with…” as a sentence starter)
- How did you solve problems?
- Is your image successful, if so, why?
- What adjustments (edits) did you do to your image? (include before and after and camera settings if available)
- What else could you change if you had more time or resources?
Photography with Tiffany 