Look sharp
Motorsports, wildlife and children are especially challenging to keep sharp, but accurate focusing is well within your grasp if you follow our experts’ tips
Pros pass on their expertise for keeping shots of children, wildlife and motorsports pin sharp
Photographing wildlife is challenging, capturing great images of moving animals even more so – they’re often fast, unpredictable and erratic. The ability to acquire and maintain focus on active subjects is an essential skill if you want to capture pin-sharp, dynamic shots – it’s one thing you can’t fix in Photoshop. The latest autofocus technology has dramatically improved our hit rate for wildlife action, but understanding the capabilities (and limitations) of your camera, and how to utilise its range of AF settings is still vital.
1 Go off- centre if time allows If you use the ‘focus and recompose’ central point technique with a long lens and shallow depth of field, then the focal plane will change slightly, which can result in a defocused image. To avoid this, if we’re photographing a subject that is rooted to the spot (i.e. we’ve got time), and we want the point of critical focus to be off- centre, we will select a suitable off- centre focus point, rather than focus and recompose with the centre point.
2 Stay single, stay simple We both use a single, usually central, focus point for most of our shots. It’s a cross-type sensor, offering the most responsive AF performance for moving animals. For a static, off- centre subject that might not hang around long we can focus and recompose quickly, rather than waste precious time choosing off- centre points. A single point means we have absolute control over where we focus, vital for good wildlife images, where it’s crucial to ensure key elements like the eyes are sharp. 3 For tricky subjects, think expansively With erratic and fast-moving subjects, it’s often hard to keep a single focus point on the target, so we’ll set AF to use a nine-point array, rather than single point (‘point expansion’ in Canon, ‘dynamic-area’ in Nikon). We rarely go bigger than nine points, because then there’s more chance the camera will lock onto the wrong bit of our subject (a flying bird’s wing tip instead of its head, for example), or onto background/ foreground clutter. We find point expansion works best when shooting moving subjects against a clean background like blue sky, rather than a ‘hectic’ background, such as woodland.
4 Give your AF a hand AF can struggle in low light, or with low- contrast subjects. Give it a hand by using a shorter, faster lens (say a 70-200mm f/2.8 rather than a 100- 400mm f/4.5-5.6 – then crop in post-processing as necessary), avoid using a teleconverter (these reduce the light reaching the AF sensors), use a focus limiter switch to reduce the amount of hunting your lens needs to do when acquiring focus, and switch off image stabilisation/vibration reduction (which slows focus acquisition and is redundant at high shutter speeds).
5 Be precise For critical focusing on static subjects, we’ll also use Spot AF mode, which uses a smaller, more targeted area than the standard setting. Spot AF is also good when shooting through obstacles such as grass or flowers. It’s redundant for moving subjects, when it’s impossible to be so precise about where you aim.
6 Don’t be over- sensitive Many DLSRs allow you to adjust how long the camera will wait before refocusing if you accidentally move the focus point, or something momentarily gets in the way (‘tracking sensitivity’ in Canon, ‘focus tracking with lock- on’ for Nikon). You might think greater sensitivity is best for AF on moving subjects, but it makes it harder to hold focus on an erratic subject. Shooting with long lenses, we often dial down sensitivity by -1, so the camera is slower to lose focus. When using shorter lenses, where it’s easier to keep the focus point over the subject, we dial in +1, for greater sensitivity.
7 Use back button focus Many DSLRs have an AF- ON button on the back, or an AE/AF button that can be customised for focusing. By using this, and disabling focusing on the shutter release button, it’s possible to use predictive autofocus all the time. Press the back button to focus continually on a moving subject, release when your subject stops moving and the focus is locked. That way, if your subject starts moving again you’re primed to follow focus immediately by pressing the back button again. No more switching between one-shot and continuous focus. Some DSLRs have ‘hybrid’ modes, which automatically switch between one-shot or continuous focusing for still or moving subjects, but they can be unreliable.
8 Tweak the parameters As well as tracking sensitivity, our Canon cameras allow us to tweak ‘Accelerate/Decelerate Tracking’, controlling how the AF handles fast-moving subjects that change speed suddenly. Few of our subjects move at a steady speed, so we set this to +1. The higher setting of +2 is more responsive, but less stable. We leave ‘AF point auto switching’ at 0, as we rarely use multiple focus points. ‘AI-servo image priority’ determines how much time is allowed for focus before the first and subsequent frames are taken. We set this to give maximum emphasis on focus rather than speed, for both first and second images in a burst. If all this sounds confusing, many DSLRs have a range of AF setting ‘recipes’ to choose from – called ‘cases’ on our Canons. 9 Use AF for macro ‘grabs’ Our macro work generally demands manual focus and a tripod, as AF is rarely precise enough. But AF predictive tracking can work with close-up ‘grab shots’ when we don’t have a tripod handy, and/or when our subject is constantly moving, like a chameleon on a wind-blown reed or a butterfly on a leaf. It’s not an exact science, so take plenty of pictures.
10 Be action-aware By default we set our cameras to predictive autofocus (AI Servo on Canon, AF- C on Nikon cameras), which means that we’re always ready to shoot wildlife action when it kicks off. Using this setting the camera will continue to track a moving subject after locking on. We can easily shift to one-shot for static subjects, but moving subjects often don’t give us enough time to go the other way.