P#8 Q6D: An Autofocus Technique to Improve Your Photography

Try this extremely useful technique involving autofocus

I have one more secret, and this one actually kind of really is a secret because it's a custom function in the camera.

Many of us have these high tech digital cameras, and you look at the instruction manual and it is two inches thick, and the last thing you want to do is read every word of the instruction manual.

They do everything, these cameras. It's just overwhelming. To go through the custom functions (which tend to be all these little extra doodads that you can make your camera do by changing the setting), is a little overwhelming for most people. So most people don't even go into that section.

Well, I have a custom function that many people's cameras will have. It's extremely useful for wildlife photography.

You can go into this certain custom function -- every camera is going to be different so I'm not going to say exactly which one it is -- but you can look through your custom functions and figure out which custom function to use in your camera.

It switches your autofocus away from your shutter button. You know, the button you press to take a picture.

Most of us shoot with our autofocus being connected to the shutter button, so every time you push your shutter button to take a picture, if your autofocus is on, it's going to autofocus the camera.

Well, that makes no sense to me. I mean... making a picture and auto-focusing are completely two different functions.

So I have switched my autofocus to be on a back button on the camera, so my thumb activates the autofocus, not my finger that takes the picture by pressing the shutter button.

It's kind of hard to describe on this type of podcast, but hopefully you're with me. What you're doing is you're switching your autofocus to be away from the shutter button, and to go to another button on the back of your camera.

There are several back buttons that are on the camera. What I've done is I've removed the auto exposure lock function on one of my buttons on the back, and I've just switched that button to be the autofocus button.

I won't go into any more details of how to do that. You can open your manual and figure it out, but real quick let me describe why it's a big advantage in the next post.

Summary

Try this technique to improve your photography. Switch autofocus to a button different than the shutter button on your camera, so you don't autofocus when you press the shutter button. Remember that taking a picture and auto-focusing are two different functions.