From the title, this might sound like a very basic beginners article.
But I wanted to explore and lean into how I use AutoFocus (AF) not so much as a guide for others, but to understand how it influences my favoured style of photography, and vice versa.
Here’s the basic process, and why it looks like it does. Obviously this is my personal preference, and yours will almost certainly look different.
1. Ensure the camera is set to spot focus, or centre focus, or whatever the particular camera calls it.
In other words so it locks focus on one small point in the centre of the screen, and doesn’t use any kind of multi focus points, or an averaged focus across the whole screen.
Why?
Because the majority of my photographs are of objects that take up a relatively small part of the overall frame, are in sharp focus, and often have the background blurred, ie a shallow depth of field (therefore a large aperture). So I need and like this precision.
2. Find your overall composition, decide what you want to be in focus, point the camera so the central focus point is on that chosen subject, and half press the shutter button.
Why?
Essentially you’re telling the camera what you want it to lock focus on.
3. Still holding the shutter button halfway down, recompose the scene as required.
Explained another way, move the camera so the subject in focus is where you want it positioned in the overall scene.
Why?
Because more often than not you don’t want the subject in focus to be dead centre in the frame, as generally a photograph is more interesting if it’s shifted to one side, horizontally, vertically, or both.
If you frame how you want the final image to look first, then half press the shutter button, the camera will focus on what’s in the centre of the screen, which probably isn’t what you want it to be focusing on.
4. Once the composition is how you want it, press the shutter button all the way.
Note that in step 3 you need to keep the subject in focus on the same plane as when you lock focus. The camera has locked focus at a certain distance, and whilst you can move left, right, up or down without changing this distance, you don’t want to move closer or further from the subject, as it won’t then be in sharp focus, especially if the depth of field is shallow.
Why?
This final step just captures the composition you want, with the subject you want in focus.
And that’s pretty much it.
Now I know some cameras have fancy multi focus points, and phones today have clever face recognition focusing and so on, which makes life easier for family snapshots for example.
But for my slow, measured, out in the field (or woods) photography, I just like the simplicity of the single focus method described above.
And not unsurprising, it’s very close to the way I used to focus with manual focusing lenses on film cameras.
How about you? How do you use AutoFocus, and how does it influence (and how is it influenced by) the subjects and styles you favour with your photography?
As always, please let us know in the comments below (and don’t forget to tick the “Notify me of new comments via email” box to follow the conversation).
Thanks for looking.
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35hunter 
…and then I discovered back button focusing (“,)
But that’s all in the past now. “F8 and be there” for me all the way as you know.
Last last image? ferns growing in the back seat of your car? :-))
Thanks Anton. I’m not sure I’ve ever used back button focusing but I have had cameras where you can set up different buttons to lock AF and AE, and I’ve used that in certain circumstances. Usually locking exposure first then recomposing to lock focus, then recomposing again if necessary before shooting.
But most of the time this is too much faffing around, and I just use the combined AE/AF lock (usually with a half press of the shutter button) which works fine for 95% of my shots.
The last image is of a Suzuki SJ jeep dumped in the woods near where I live. It’s been there at least six or seven years now, and I return now and again for another few shots and to see what state of decay it’s in. I love photographing decaying stuff, as you know!
Hi Dan.
Since I like shooting wide open so much, with autofocus I tend to rely almost exclusively on single point. Other modes, I find very distracting.
On the subject of focusing, that’s something I’ve been really enjoying about the Minolta SRT 101…..the viewfinder being so big and bright! It’s been a bit of a revelation, manually focusing for every single frame 🙂
-Jason
Hi J, thanks for your thoughts.
This reminds me I’ve had a couple of DSLRs the had the option for multiple AF points in the viewfinder and I hated them, so distracting seeing little coloured squares popping up all over the place! Hence why I enjoy just a single small square in the centre of the frame.
I’ve been meaning to talk to you more about your Minolta. I had an SR-1S and an SRT-303, both pretty similar to your 101. Glorious old mechanical beauties. The 303 had metering I think but I never put a battery in and relying on Sunny 16 or used my phone light meter. Wonderful viewfinders, it does spoil you and coming back to a DSLR is so disappointing.
Probably the most impressive viewfinder I’ve ever used was the Contax 167MT.
Wonderful beast of a camera, super smooth and the vf was not only very large and bright but had the purest screen I’ve ever used, just pure matte, no centre circle with the microprism aids or anything.
One thing I would love about the 303 is that it shows the aperture in the viewfinder. That’s been a real challenge for me with the 101, having to look on the lens (although I’m getting good at guessing where I’m at by feel). Thank you for sharing those links, I appreciate it!
This is another reason I enjoyed the few times I really got comfortable with one camera and one lens. Though with an SLR I mostly used f/5.6 as a starting point (with a 50/55/58mm lens) then adjusted as required based on the depth of field I could see in the viewfinder, I did get to know how many clicks from wide open to f/5.6 and so on. So I could focus with the lens wide open then stop down the required no of clicks to f/5.6. Depending on the lens, the max aperture and whether it has half stop clicks or just full click stops, this varies, so you need to get to know just one lens.
But having said that, even better was using a preset aperture lens like the Helios 44-2, starting wide open, focusing, then stopping down purely on what I saw in the viewfinder. I didn’t care if I was at f/2.72 or f/ 5.23 or whatever with those clickless lenses, I just adjusted based on how it looked. Very liberating!
By the way I meant to say the MC-Rokkor lenses are an absolutely joy, which do you have on your 303?
All I’ve got for the Minolta other than a big telephoto lens that I’m not really interested in using (too big and unwieldy, back in the day my father used it to take pictures of wildlife in the woods behind our house), is a Rokkor Minolta 55 mm, 1.7. It’s a pretty nice place to start with this camera…..