F/22 and manually focused a third of the way in.
As I hope a lot of you know, I’ve had a post come out every five or six days for seven years, and the ideas for these posts come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.
It can come from the following: A word or phrase I hear on the TV, a song title while listening to the radio, while reading a novel, a comment said to me from one of my students that take my online class with he BPSOP, or in one of my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conducts around our planet, or just recently a woman that signed up for my six-month mentoring program. It can basically come from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep; even in my dreams where I will wake up and immediately write it down; least I forget by morning..
This time it came from a woman that is currently taking my mentoring program, and it came about from a discussion on depth of field.
While skyping and sharing the screen, we were looking at the photos she had submitted for the critique. I saw a common thread while looking at all her images, and that was areas that were in focus and areas that should have been; or areas that should not have been.
When talking about it she admitted that she really had no idea what was going to be in focus until she looked at them while sitting at her computer; not in her best interest.
Why I asked??? Because she depended on her digital camera to always decide for her…WHAT???
Until we started to work on her shooting in the manual mode she always shot on some program…mostly aperture or shutter priority. Here’s the inherent problem with that: You won’t know what’s in focus before you click the shutter, and you really should.
I see it all the time when one of my students is totally bummed because she or he wanted something in focus but it didn’t turn out that way. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to correct after the fact.
I make my life simple…If I want everything in focus from the front to the back I stop down to F/22 and focus a third of the way into my composition. Of course you would want to manually focus to make sure. Remember that auto focus is a luxury, not a necessity.
Ok, so you say that in order to shoot in ideal light (very early or very late) you would have to increase your ISO, because in order to stop down that much you would be shooting at a slow shutter speed and couldn’t hand hold your camera.
I never worry about that because when I’m working under this kind of light I never change my ISO…WHY YOU ASK? Because I’m always on a tripod!!!!!!!
And so my fellow photographers, next time not only bracket your exposure, but bracket your DOF as well. It will give you a whole lot more choices, and the more choices we have the better our chances to come back with a wall hanger…focus on the focus!!
Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and check out my 2018 workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
JoeB
