How well you focus a picture can make or break it. Moreover, knowing what to focus on is also very important. With action such as sports, the moment is often over as soon as it has begun, giving you only one chance to capture it. Today’s auto focus cameras are quite quick and accurate but the photographer must know how to use their focusing system correctly.

Most auto focus cameras use a central point of the viewfinder as the point of focus, so in this case, whatever is in the middle of the frame will be what gets focused on.

Modern advanced cameras, especially single lens reflex (SLR) models, often have multi-zone focusing. These are specific zones that you can either set, or the camera will follow the movement of your eye and select where you are looking. Pretty cool eh? However, even with these extra focusing areas, you still need to know how to set up the camera properly, so as I always recommend, read your instruction booklet and get familiar with all the controls.

A sure way of focusing properly (at least with practice), if you have this option, is to keep the camera on manual and focus it yourself, assuming you are comfortable doing this. If not, just leave it on automatic. Either way, you still need to know a few things about focus, so keep reading!

Now, where to focus?

If you are photographing landscapes, you need to decide what the main subject of the scene is, and focus on that. If it’s a person with a nice scene in the background, you will focus on the person. If you are photographing a beautiful building with nice flowers in the foreground, you could focus on the building, letting the flowers remain out of focus in the foreground, but using them to help frame the building. Alternatively, you could always use the flowers in the front, letting the building go out of focus. This would make a good stock or travel photo, suitable for a title or type to be added. What would I do? I’d shoot it both ways!

In other than landscape or scenic photography, you focus on the subject’s eyes. People looking at your pictures will always be drawn to the eyes of who or whatever is pictured. This applies to portraits, sports, animals and birds. Never mind their outfits, their hands, the background, or whatever they are sitting on…whatever. Focus on the eyes and the rest will look right too.

If your subject is moving, a multi-zone, eye following focus system can greatly aid getting the area in focus that you want. I still like manual focus for sports, and learn to ‘follow focus’ to follow the action while keeping the focus sharp on the moving subject. It takes some practice, but can give very rewarding results. If you have an all automatic ‘point and shoot’, you may be limited to keeping the subject in the centre. Better to re-crop later than to not get it in focus though!

With portraiture, it may be necessary (probably desirable) to place your subject in other than the very centre of the frame. Single point focus systems almost always read from the centre of the viewfinder, which can present a problem when re-framing. However, most will ‘pre-focus’ by letting you depress the shutter button half way down to lock the focus, re-frame it, then depressing it further to take the photo.

On multi-zone cameras, you can simply select the appropriate zone where your subject is.

When focusing, just remember…the eyes have it!