How To Use Focal Lock

Why is Focal Lock important?

Autofocus is often not the most reliable tool for focusing when the subject is at the side of the frame. Focal lock is built into all modern digital cameras as a way of correcting that; it allows you to select what you want to focus on by pointing at it and then moving your camera back to how you had it composed previously.

How to use Focal Lock

Using Focal lock is very easy to do and is useful for beginners to know as it will help them create sharper images. A lot of people use it because they don’t want the hassle of using the selective focal points in their camera’s viewfinder for fear of forgetting to change it back when they need it, or the difficulty of doing it quickly.

Without focal lock, you’ll often find that when you compose a photo where someone is at the side on the image, that the autofocus will struggle to decide what to focus on and end up focusing on the background, or in between two subjects. To use Focal lock, follow these 3 easy steps:

1 – Compose your shot. The rule of thirds dictates that people will often look better off center, however the autofocus doesn’t know this so will likely pick the background to focus on.

2 – Move your camera over to the subject so that they’re easily selectable by the autofocus, depress the shutter release button half way and allow it to focus. You’ll often see focal points light up red in the camera’s viewfinder and hear a beep when this is done.

3 – Being careful not to release the shutter, move the camera back to how it was composed before and press the button the whole way. You’ll see that the camera did not refocus and the exposure came out as desired.

As you can see, this is very easy to do, so there’s no reason to have out of focus photos anymore. One thing to be careful of though is how much you move the camera after you’ve locked the focus. If you have a wide aperture, you’ll have a shallow depth of field, so even slight movement will send your photo out of focus.

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment and we’ll get back to you. As always, if you have any photos that you feel could be used on this website, click on the ‘submit a photo’ section at the top and have your images seen by thousands. Enjoy!

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