Camera Focus Techniques

      When it comes to shooting a video or a photograph you always want to center the attention on a subject of preference. This subject or object can be focused or out of focus depending on your story telling. That is why is very important to know when to focus and when create a focal effect on your shots.

     Let’s start from the basics the first thing you have to know is that if you are shooting on automatic the camera will choose your focal point. To avoid this, you can change from auto focus to manually manipulate your focus point. It is important to know that the continuous focus from a video camera is very different from a DSLR camera. If you are shooting video with a DSLR camera you can use different modes to have control of your focus such as: Program (P), Shutter priority (Tv), Aperture priority, (Av) or Manual (M). Any of these modes on your DSLR will let you choose your focus point.

Depth of Field:

You probably heard about depth of field as well when it comes to focusing a shot. Depth of field is the range of distance that appears acceptably sharp. The depth of field varies on each camera lens, aperture and focusing distance. This is when you see your subject focused and the background looks blurry. Then, you can also manipulate your focus making the background sharp in focus and your subject out of focus. This effect is commonly use in films and TV shows to direct the audience’s eyes to a certain point of the shot.

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Achieving a good focus point:

The best way to achieve good focus is to zoom in as close as you can to your subject, adjust the focus ring until it looks very sharp and then zoom out and frame your shot. If your subject is a person, the best way to do it is to zoom in all the way into the person’s eyes; this will give a sharp image to the person and will make your shot look very sharp.

Even though you can manipulate your focus manually in production, you always have an option to add effects in post-production. For this you will need a software that can add some blurry effects in the points you select on your shot. As a camera operator and editor I tried to do the focal effects in production so I don’t have to add time in post-production. Now, you might feel more comfortable adding the effect in post, so if that’s how you feel, go for it.