TheRightPic.com

As I learn about photography there are many mystical things that are becoming (kind of) clear to me.  One of them is how the heck people manage to focus on something that isn’t in the center of the picture. 

With my Sony DSC-H5 it is pretty easy to switch your focal point, as long as you are using one of the modes that allows you to change settings.

 I like the “Program Auto” mode, which is signified by a “P”.  It is next to the all-purpose automatic mode, which has the standard green camera icon. 

Ignore this please: (Note to self: bring another camera so you can take pictures of your camera, genius).

Anyway… gulp, once I switch over to Program Auto, by turning the large mode dial on top of the camera, I still have a lot of the helpful settings by default but I can mess around with them to help me take better pictures.

The one I want to talk about is the Focus button, which is up near the actual shutter release (taking pictures) button.  

 By default, the camera is in a Multi-spot focus mode, which basically means it is going to try to focus on as much as it can that resides in an area that is indicated by wide brackets in the viewfinder.

This is a good general focus mode, but what if you want to point out or focus on a certain area of the picture?   

If I press the focus button once the focus goes to a much smaller center focus bracket.

If I click the focus button again it goes to a flexible focus mode and now I can use the control dial on the back of the camera to move the focus bracket to whereever I want and it will focus on that area.  This is how I focused on different areas of the drinking glass pictures that I took.

The last mode is a manual focus mode.  If you select this mode you can use the dial on the back to try to focus the camera yourself.  This mode is scary but it is possible that the camera will just not focus on what you want highlighted without using this mode.  Play around with it a little before the day you are supposed to be the photographer at your best friend’s wedding.

If your camera does not have a focus feature, another way that you can do this is by cropping, or cutting out, part of the picture so that the focal area is not centered.  Of course, this is a drastic way to change focus, since it cuts out part of your image, but this may actually be desirable because this will also help focus the attention on what you want to be highlighted.

Play around with setting the focal point of your pictures.  This is a powerful tool for improving your photos. 

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