All consumer camera’s these days use Automatic focussing. You press record, and without you knowing the camera focusses. Simple. The camera has been designed to focus on the object that is centrally aligned in the frame. With this comes an image where nearly everything in the frame is in focus, your audience will then be less able to judge distance between objects (Known as depth.) This suites most family’s or tourists who’s main concern is capturing happy memories. But what If you wanted to get a bit creative, and focus on specific areas leaving others out of focus? Well to achieve this you would need a camera that has manual focu
s settings.
“How do I know if the subject I’m filming is in focus?”
One quick way to manually focus is to zoom in on your subject until you cant zoom in anymore. Then use the manual focus settings until your subject is nice and clear. Zoom back out and you’re ready to go. If the distance changes between you (the camera) and your subject then you will have to re-focus!
”This seems like a lot of pointless work when the camera can do it automatically? “
Manual focus gives you more control over your whole shot, it allows you to tell stories as you focus from one object to another. As well as looking more professional, manual focus adds depth to your footage creating a mood and sense of distance.
“What is pulling focus?”
Pulling focus is when you focus from one object to another.
Top Tip Video #1 - How a professional changes shots using manual focus.
In this video shot by Sim Warren there are some examples of pulling focus, using a specialist 35mm DOF adapter.
Canon HV20 with DOF adapter. from Edit Crunch on Vimeo.
