How to Use Focal Lock
At a recent wedding I handed my camera over to a friend to take a shot of my little family and I. We posed for a few shots, looking forward to getting home to see how they turned out (it’s amazing how few shots we have with the three of us all in them).
I didn’t think to check how they came out on the LCD after my friend took the shots and it wasn’t until I got home and downloaded them on my computer that I realised we’d been victims to the old ‘focus between the heads on the background’ mistake. The shot was similar to the one to the left where the couple is out of focus but the lady in the background between them is pin sharp.
You can see what’s happened immediately when you look at the images - my friend quickly raised the camera to his eye - put us in the middle of the frame assuming that the camera would know where to focus and took the image.
The camera unfortunately didn’t know where to focus and decided that the it would focus upon the garden behind us. As a result we were treated as the foreground and thrown out of focus.
This is a common mistake that many digital camera owners make (I’m sure we’ve all done it). Digital Camera manufacturers are now making cameras with ‘face recognition’ technology to overcome it (where the cameras look for faces and make sure that they are the focal point) but most of us are stuck with cameras that don’t have this yet and need to learn about ‘focal lock’.
It’s a very simple technique and something that virtually every digital camera (and most film cameras) have the ability to do. Here’s what you do:
- Pose your subject.
- When framing your subject put the central point of your frame on the point that you want to focus upon (the face of a person is generally the best point).
- With the subject’s face in the centre of your image half press down on the shutter button (not fully). This will tell the camera to focus on that point.
- Without letting go of the shutter (it should still be half depressed) move your camera to frame your shot as you want it (ie the person’s face doesn’t need to be centred now).
- Once you’ve got the framing right press the shutter the rest of the way and the shot will be taken with the right focussing even though the centre of your image might not be the person’s face.
This technique is not just useful for taking photos of people when they’re not central in your shots but can also be used in many other types of photography. For example in Macro shots when you want to place the insect or flower that you’re photographing off centre (using the rule of thirds) you might want to use focal lock. Similarly if you were taking a landscape shot but wanted to focus upon a house in the foreground that was off centre rather than the horizon you’d use this technique.
This technique is one that most people know but it’s something that beginners should master in the early days of their photography as it’s something you’ll use constantly. It might take a little practice but after a while it will become second nature to you.
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November 10th, 2006 at 1:17 am
To take this idea to a logical conclusion in the case of handing off the camera: If you can, prefocus the image for your ad-hoc photographer, hit the manual focus button (my Canon PowerShot S2 has this easily available, THEN hand it off. That may beat trying to explain the normal process to someone on the spot.
I’ll have to try to remember to do this next time.
November 10th, 2006 at 4:34 am
This is a good technique, but only if you are far enough away and using a large enough aperture -otherwise you will still be left with a image that is out of focus. Most of the time this will work, however, if your DOF is shallow, the image will be out of focus.
November 11th, 2006 at 1:20 am
@babbling dweeb
Indeed, this technique should work for regular people shots at good distance (1 meter ?)
For macro shots at low aperture, change your AF zone to where you want it to focus or simply manually focus.
November 12th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
As a newcomer to photography (I bought my first camera a digital Canon S3IS in July 2006)I wanted to take some photos at my Daughters Wedding and I was mistified why a painting on the wall came out in perfect focus whilst they were a little out of focus.I now know why thanks to your tip on Focus Lock.
Thanks Darren
Regards Fred
November 16th, 2006 at 3:06 am
In the case of using a DSLR, One of the documents on the Canon website (can’t remember now, it was a tips and tricks pdf of sorts) warns against using this technique, instead it says you should manually select your focus point so that the focal point used for focus is over the subject.
This is the way I have always handled this situation, but is no good in the case where you are handing the camera over to an inexperienced user.
December 29th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
Could this be why I got a perfectly focussed shot of our caterpillar one time (manual setting on a Canon Powershot SD700 IS) and then could never repeat it? As I zoomed in or out, I would see the image come into focus, and then it would settle just past that point - very frustrating! Is this the problem, then? Because I felt like I had the worm in the middle of the frame when I focussed…
Esther
August 11th, 2007 at 9:54 am
While I’m (sort-of) flattered that you chose my pic to illustrate your point, I should point out that it was taken on film, with an Olympus Trip 35. This camera has set focus positions, and I had forgotten to adjust before shooting. What I got was interesting, but I actually digitally blurred the above version in order to *decrease* the clarity of the background, to a point where I felt that the subjects were less swamped by it.