Focusing assistance
Fine-tune sharpness with these useful features
Whether you’re shooting with an EOS DSLR or a mirrorless camera, you can take advantage of focusing aids to help you manually focus close-ups with precision. These are accessible when viewing the Live View image, so you need to be viewing the scene on the rear screen of a DSLR, rather than through the optical viewfinder.
The most familiar aid, and arguably the most useful, is the ability to magnify the image up to 10x. Position the focus point on a detail that you want to focus on, then tap the magnify button to cycle through the different magnification settings. You can also move the focus point around the screen while the image is enlarged, in order to check the sharpness of other areas, as well as activating the depth of field preview.
The trick to manual focusing is to focus slowly back and forth over the detail you want to be sharp in order find the sweet spot. You may also find it easier to do this initially at the 5x magnification setting before fine-tuning the focus position at the 10x setting.
Some EOS cameras offer manual focusing peaking, which adds a coloured outline to details that are in focus on the display. You can’t use it at the same time as Live View magnification, but it’s a simple way to check the focus is in the right ballpark. The overlay moves across the image as you focus back and forth, so you can quickly see which areas are sharp – you can adjust the level and colour of the peaking to make it more obvious (head to MF Peaking Settings in the Shooting menu).