Hello everyone! Today we start with a series of tutorials with which we will learn how to get the most out of it to our camera, whether it is compact, professional or semi-professional. We will learn to use different functions of the camera in a simple way.
That is to say, above all, the explanations will be simple, detailed, accessible to everyone and the best thing is that we will not even need to buy any specific materials, we will do everything in the easiest, most effective and economical way possible. Having said that, let's go with the first tutorial: What it is and how to use the approach.
Focus is a camera mechanism that allows us to focus on elements that are at different distances from it, or in other words, we will achieve the classic effect in which one element looks sharp and the rest looks blurred, like we can see in the photo above. In it the flower is focused, it looks sharp, and the background of leaves is slightly blurred. This can be achieved in two ways, through autofocus or of manual. Below I explain how to apply this technique.
On compact cameras:
Most work only with autofocus or autofocus, so they usually focus only towards the center of the photograph. If we want to photograph something that is not in the center, but on one of the sides, we probably will not be able to make what interests us look sharp. Fortunately we can fix this in a very simple way, using the focus lock.
If you look at your camera you will see that you can press the shutter button (the one to take the photo) halfway, when you press it halfway a soft "beep" will sound and/or a light will light up on the screen. This is used to focus on what we want to appear sharp and, as long as we keep the button halfway, the focus will be locked. When we have it focused where we want, we press the button until the end and that's it. Let's see it in images to understand it better.
In the following image we have a figurine. Since we did not use the lock, the camera automatically focused on the center and the figurine on one side looks blurry.
To make this photo look good, we will do the following: Center the image, so that the figure is in the center. Press the shutter button halfway to focus and hold it.
You already have the focus locked, now change position until the figure is where you like best, in my case I leave it on the right side. Once you have it where you want, press the shutter button all the way and that's it. You now have the photograph just the way you wanted.
In professional or semi-professional cameras:
With these we can achieve focus in different ways: Doing exactly the same as we explained previously, configuring it manually or directly using the autofocus, which in cameras of this type have more options than in compact ones.
To set the focus manual We will use the ring that is near the lens, it is a kind of wheel that we can move by turning it to one side or the other. To use it we can look through the lens and turn the wheel until we focus on what we want or we can look at the small window that is right next to it, a scale in meters will appear there and you can select what interests you the most, for example, if you are going to Photograph an object that is 2 meters away, move the ring until you mark that distance and that's it.
This option is highly recommended when we are going to photograph something that will happen very quickly, for example, a skier jumping. We calculate more or less at what distance this will occur, for example it could be 4 meters, we mark it on the ring and we are ready to catch it in action. If we used autofocus in this situation we would probably lose the opportunity to get a good photo of the moment.
And that's it for today's tutorial, we already know how to use the focus, so now let's practice!