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The Pitfalls of the Focus-Recompose Technique
Digital Outback Photo casts doubt on a photographic technique that I use all the time - select the centre autfocus sensor on my camera, point it at the part of the photo that I want to be in focus, then reframe the image as required. Sounds like a familiar technique that yo use too? Well, at least in Jonathan Wienke’s opinion, this will cause the focus to fall behind the subject, instead of on it, which is pretty critical in situations where you have a very shallow depth of field available. Wienke’s suggests that we should all use the autofocus points that is nearest to the subject instead to achieve correct focus, which does mean having to faff about with changing the autofocus point…
“The error introduced by focus-recompose is greater with shorter camera-to-subject distances. If you are using a telephoto lens and focus-recompose on a football coach on the other side of the field, the error introduced would only be a small fraction of an inch and would be dwarfed by many other factors such as subject movement, photographer movement, and the fact that depth of field at 50+ yards distance is usually at least a few feet; even an inch of error in that case is about as significant as a fart in a tornado. But when shooting portraits at close range with wide apertures and the resulting narrow depth-of-field, it can really cause problems.”
Website: Digital Outback Photo - Why Focus-Recompose Sucks
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#1 Olivier_G
Mark,
The end of your comment: "Wienke's suggests that we should all use the less senstive edge autofocus points instead to achieve correct focus..." is at least misleading.
The author suggests rather that we should use the closest AF point to the final position in the composition, in order to minimize the angle variation of re-composing and thus the focusing error.
His conclusion was: "It is far better to use a less sensitive/less accurate autofocus sensor on the edge of the frame that will at least attempt to set the correct focus distance than to use the more accurate center sensor that is guaranteed to focus behind where you intended." And this is not exactly what you stated...
His article is excellent, and I will try to apply this rule (choose the right AF point) as often as I can, that is: if I have enough time to change AF point + recompose...
Olivier
11:48 am - Friday, January 21, 2005
#2 Mark Goldstein
Good point Olivier! I was fresh from reading about the example
I will update my comment so that it is more accurate.
11:52 am - Friday, January 21, 2005
#3 phule
I honestly don't understand the point of his article.
Focus and recompose is a method. One method out of many.
It is no more a "rule" than Sunny 16 is.
Beyond: "It doesn't work for everything" what exactly is the point of this article?
4:25 pm - Friday, January 21, 2005
#4 Salem
I stopped using focus/recompose a while ago... but not cause of focusing. The ETL on Canon bodies is linked to the active focus region which caused more exposure problems then focus problems for me!
4:35 am - Saturday, January 22, 2005