Quick Exercise: Focusing

This is a really simple exercise that will help you think about focusing and depth of field. It’ll only take you a minute. Grab your camera.

Find a place where there are things at various distances from you– pretty much any place will do. Put your camera into manual focus mode, and turn the focusing ring all the way either direction.

Look through the camera and see what, if anything, is in focus. We’re not trying to focus on any particular object, but rather just look to see what’s already in focus. Keep looking as you slowly turn the focusing ring all the way to the other extreme. If you want to, repeat this a few times.

As you turned the dial, you probably noticed that things close to you came into focus first and then the farther-away ones did. (Maybe it was the opposite direction. It all depends upon which direction you were turning the ring.) You can imagine that your focus point is a person who walks closer to you or farther away from you as you turn the ring. The person will always be in focus, as will some area around them.

Now look at the top of your lens. You’ll probably see a bunch of numbers with an infinity sign (a sideways figure-8) at one end. Those numbers indicate how far away the focus point is at any given time. If you turn the focusing ring so that the focus is at infinity, things far away from you will be in focus and stuff that’s close will be blurry. You’re smart– I bet you can guess what happens to far away things when you turn the focusing ring the other way.

Next up: another way to look at depth of field. (It’s important. I’m going to repeat myself.)

Next lesson:  Depth of Field: Another View