Manual focusing and close-ups.

Manual focusing and close-ups.

I spend a lot of time (nowadays) viewing photographs online, or just reading about photography in general, techniques, equipment, blogs etc.
Recently I have tried my hand at some close up and macro photography, and soon realised manual focusing was required.

I had mixed results with my first few forays into this. I had taken some shots of blossom in the garden, but clarity seemed quite poor.
I wasn't ready to blame the equipment but did consider that maybe very light breeze at the time was enough to spoil the focus at such a close range. I had used the largest aperture available to try and isolate the subject.

At the extreme end of the DOF scale, I needed to take several shots with the focus sharp at different points and focus stack them in software, purely to experiment with the technique.
I would start at the back of the subject, taking several shots moving towards the front. Then move the subject and do the same again, so I would end up with 'sets' of images that I could rely on to go together. While processing them, it occurred to me that none of the first and last shots were what I had expected, I was either missing a clear shot of the back, or the front.

Then the penny dropped. I wear glasses for reading.
While shooting on auto focus, I don't really take much notice of clarity in the viewfinder, but mainly composition. A quick test revealed the do-optic adjuster on the viewfinder needed to be almost the exact opposite of what it was originally set on, presumably how it came out of the box several years ago! As for the manual, well, I'd obviously skipped the first 40 or so pages of basic 'getting started' information.

But more to the point, in all the stuff I've read on photography over the last few years, I have never seen this part of the camera mentioned.

Tags: Macro Close up Manual focus