Manually focused
First of all, Auto-Focus is a luxury not a necessity. Back in the old days, I mean the days right after the dinosaurs disappeared, I had to focus my own camera; oh the horror!!
Imagine working for Associated Press and United Press International (like I did) and covering sports; the NFL for example. A pass play is called and the receiver and the guy covering him ( a combined weight between five and six hundred pounds) heading your way…in a big hurry. You have a 200mm lens on and it’s the days before auto-focus so you have to follow them coming at you while continuously trying to keep them sharp; by manually focusing. It’s extremely difficult.
Nowadays, all those SI photographers standing on the sidelines have cameras that focus automatically; as well as doing everything else for them. Hell, who can miss?
I digress
Have you ever tried to focus on something in front of a wall and your auto-focus sensor goes nuts? Well, this could be caused by a lack of subject contrast, or the auto-focus system is not able to detect an edge in order where to focus. Well, what do you do? You set your camera to manually focus and…no problem!
I will often have a student that has taken my online class with the BPSOP, or in one of my “Stretching Your Fame of Mind” workshops tell me that in a similar situation they will auto focus on the subject and then refocus on the background.
Manually focused
Well, that’s all well and good if you have all day. What if you have just seconds of beautiful late light? Those additional steps can make the difference in losing the shot altogether.
For me, I manually focus all the time when I’m shooting environmental portraits. I will often put my subject close to the edge of the frame (mostly looking out of the frame). The reason I like to do this is to generate Visual Tension. I will compose my shot and since I have my subject close to the edge, I manually focus on the person and then determine what DOF I want.
From almost fifty years of shooting, I know that light is so fleeting and if I take just another second, I’ve missed the shot.
Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime. I just announced my New York, New York Workshop beginning September 17th ,2019 and ending at noon on the 23rd. This will be my second workshop there and this time we’ll be shooting in all the five boroughs.
JoeB
