Focusing

John. Of course I meant depth of field. The fingers don't keep up with the brain these days. I thought that even when focusing manual that you had the choice of which metering function to use.

You do. Auto exposure is fine, adjusted by using the exposure compensation facility if required, as usual.

No, not really. Most photogs would carry two or three bodies. I'd use 3 Nikon Fs with 35, 28 and 21mm lenses on them. You'd reload in a lull but always had a loaded body to hand anyway.

And as Al says, you wouldn't just hose away at anything, you'd pick your shots because woe betide a photographer who sent back 10 films with 2 good pix on them. If you had 4 photogs on the story, someone back at the office had to wade through all their stuff looking for the gems. That took time and that's what no-one had enough of!

The best photogs sent back fewest films with most good pix.

So definitely get it right first time in the camera. Somewhat different to today I suspect.

If you don't mind continuing this - so you shot film, back to the office and that was pretty much the end of it for you? They processed and selected?

Mike

John..I am now totally confused. When taking macro using manual focus would you advise Multi segment..centre weighted or spot metering and how does the Focusing Area settings affect this on the K10? I am shooting small insects not much bigger that a thumb nail but the pic is spoilt because the immediate area around the insect is out of focus. (Apologies for being a problem person)

You're not a problem person at all thoramay, just someone trying to absorb a lot of new information all at once. We were all there once and sometimes it seemed impossible!

Right, now we have the focusing sorted, perhaps using manual focus by preference. The exposure will happily be sorted out by the camera using either Centre Weighted or Matrix (multi-segment) but probably not Spot metering for now.

As you are focusing very close indeed there is very limited depth of field (DOF), which you see for yourself in that the surroundings are out of focus. Therefore you need to use the smallest aperture possible - if necessary right down to f22 or f32. To do this with a reasonable shutter speed you might need to use flash or at least for the ambient light to be quite bright. Aperture priority auto exposure will enable you to select the aperture you want.

Use of a trpod will help accurate focusing on a fixed point if the subject is still.

If the subject is moving, such as perhaps Damselflies out in a meadow, then it's down to chasing them, focusing as best we can and shooting fast. High ISO will help. Or we select a popular landing spot, pre-focus on it, sit back and wait. For this we can use the tripod again. Add a stool and flask of coffee.....

It's down to practice after the basics are sorted out. Sue and I shoot things like Damselflies on the run, and her hit rate is amazingly good, getting better all the time. Just keep shooting.

Thanks again, John. Your short lesson has cleared much of my confusion...More to the point....my mental picture of you and Sue chasing damselflies is precious. Would love to be around to take a pic. The Gallery would love it.
regards Thoramay.

Yes, they did that back at the office. You'd have an appointment with a despatch rider at a given spot who'd take your (and your colleagues) film from you.

Some of the pic eds I've worked with have had an incredible eye for picking out the best 5 pix from maybe 400 frames in a minute or two.

One of them, called Alan Reid was pic ed on the London Evening News and I would genuinely prefer him to pick out and mark up my stuff than do it for myself. Never taken a picture in his life which cleared his mind of all the rubbish technicalities that bog us photographers down. All he saw was the picture - which is all a photograph is about, in the end

standing on your head during a riot seems like a very bad idea....

?

Going on from this, I took some pictures at a folk festival last week inside under lights. Now I tried spot focus and also had a go at manual focus and the pictures I took with focusing manually seemed a lot sharper than the autos.

Is this something other people have found?

Is it a co-incidence, or something to do with flashing lights and moving subjects?

Cheers,
Andy

Basically, with practise and good eyesight, your eyes are a better judge of focus than a computer.

It's much quicker, too because you can focus anywhere on the screen instantly.