Tighten up your MF technique
Get to grips with EOS camera handling
The key to faster manual focusing is knowing which direction you need to rotate the focusing ring to move the focus closer or further away. If I haven’t used manual for a while, I have to remind myself that ‘right is tight’. On EOS R System cameras, you can change the direction that the focusing ring needs to be rotated for lenses that use electronic focusing (which is all RF/RF-S lenses, all EF/EF-S STM lenses and some EF/EF-S USM lenses).
Some lenses have a long ‘focus throw’ which means that a greater rotation of the focusing ring is required to move from the closest focusing distance to infinity. Lenses that have a short focus throw are good for action and other subjects where autofocus speed is important. A long focus throw is better for situations where you want to make small, precise adjustments, such as when you’re shooting close-up subjects and working with at a wide aperture and, therefore, with a minimal depth of field.
If you’re photographing close-up details with a macro lens, then you will probably want to factor in the magnification. The greatest magnification is achieved when the lens is set to its minimum focusing distance. To achieve this, set the lens to MF and rotate the lens to the closest focusing distance, before moving the camera closer or further from the subject to finetune the focus.
With your landscapes, you can manually focus at the hyperfocal distance in order to maximize the depth of field – or depth of sharpness – for a given aperture. There are several apps that can calculate this distance for you. Many lenses have a distance scale that enables you to manually set the focus at the hyperfocal distance. Canon EOS R System cameras can display the focus distance in the viewfinder as you focus, which is even easier – you can customize this option under ‘Shooting info. disp’ in the Shooting menu.