5 occasions where manual focus is required

Nowadays, digital cameras are more and more convenient, and have advanced functions. Using autofocus can also take pictures accurately. So why do we still use manual focus? Undoubtedly, manual focusing is much more troublesome than automatic focusing, but it still has its necessity and practicability. This time, we share with you several occasions where manual focusing is required.

1、 Shooting in low-light environment

Have you ever met that the field light is too dark, even if you can clearly see the subject with your naked eye, but when you lift the camera and press the shutter halfway, you find that the camera can’t focus, even if you press it, you can’t take pictures? In fact, autofocus is quite dependent on the light of the scene environment. In the low-light and low-contrast environment, the camera can not focus accurately, and even let you miss the shooting opportunity.

When shooting in a low-light room, when you find an excellent shooting instant, you find that you can’t focus because of insufficient light, you can solve the problem by using manual focus immediately.

1、 Macro photography

Have you ever seen an object taken in close range? No matter how hard you press the shutter halfway, the camera still cannot focus? Or have you tried to see that the image has been wandering between focusing and defocusing, and can’t always press the shutter to take pictures? This is because the depth of field is too shallow, so that the camera cannot find the focus, so that it cannot focus automatically. At this time, manual focusing can solve most problems.

The depth of field at macro range is too shallow to make the camera unable to find the exact focal plane with AF. Whether you are shooting flowers, insects or other objects at macro range, manual focusing can let you accurately focus on your desired focus.

3、 There is an obstacle in front of the main body

If the composition of the subject is simple, then the camera is actually capable of accurate autofocus. However, if there are other objects between the camera lens and the subject, autofocus will often focus on the foreground object instead of your subject.

For example, when you go to the zoo to take photos, manual focusing will be a good choice. If the animal is trapped in an iron cage, you will find that after many attempts to autofocus, the focus will fall on the cage net and the animal will never be photographed. At this time, if you use manual focusing, you can adjust the focus to the small animal. In addition, some people use autofocus but forget to turn off the focus sound effect. Diagonal honey often scares away small animals and misses the opportunity to shoot.

4、 Use real-time viewfinder to focus

If you use Live View to capture still life, you can zoom in the image to let you see whether you have accurately focused on the object you want to focus on. If the focus is not accurate, it will be very troublesome to test every time you use auto focus. Instead, you can directly focus on the object you want by using manual focus.

For example, if you meet a star on the street, but there is a large group of people in front of you. If you use auto focus and then hold up the camera to take pictures, the focus of the image will fall on the masses. Even if you just hold up the camera by feeling, it is unknown whether you can clearly take the desired subject. Therefore, with Live View, you can know exactly what kind of picture you will take, and then focus on the desired object with manual focus.

At the beginning, people may be a bit in a hurry when using manual focus. They feel that they can’t find the ideal focus by focusing. But in fact, as long as they are used to it, manual focus can solve many problems that will occur when focusing automatically. When there is a problem with autofocus and you can’t shoot, try using manual focus. It will greatly expand the time you can press the shutter!

5、 Use old lens

This is not a reason. Of course, you need to focus manually with a manual lens! The problem is that AF camera is so good, why use MF lens? There are many reasons. For example, many legendary lenses, such as Leica and Zeiss, do not have auto-focus function. Many famous lenses in the MF era cannot be replaced. The imaging of old lenses has a special taste. Second-hand old lenses are of high quality and quite cheap The most important reason is that today’s micro-single cameras have enough adapter rings to eat all kinds of old MF lenses and make the old lenses reborn!

Canon FD lens is assembled on Sony 7 series micro single camera, and it is reborn!