Improve your focusing technique

Independent of lens quality, poor focusing technique will always prevent maximum sharpness, so follow these tips

BACK BUTTON FOCUSING (AF ON)

Assign focusing to the AF On (AF-L) button for locked focus, so that you don’t re-focus when lifting and re-applying pressure to the shutter button.

MOVE YOUR AF POINT

The focus-recompose technique fails to work at wide apertures, as the focused area is so narrow and may not cover your subject. Instead move the AF point in your viewfinder.

ZOOM IN USING LV

Assign one-touch 100% magnification to your zoom button for rapid sharpness assessment. Additionally, activate focus peaking to assist with accurate focusing.

CROSS-TYPE

Cross-type AF points are more accurate as they calculate focus on both vertical and horizontal axes. If your camera doesn’t feature all cross-type points, use the centre point only.

USE DOF PREVIEW

To assess depth of field, look through the viewfinder and press the DOF preview button, to stop down the aperture and reveal how much focus falloff will occur.

Above CAPTURE DETAIL HANDHELD With a steady hand and appropriate stance, it is possible to capture images containing fine detail without the aid of a tripod, such as in this image Right LOW LIGHT As image stabilisation technology improves, it is...