Focusing
Earlier this week meteorologists were calling for a huge ice storm to sweep the area. Tuesday morning I woke up to find a few teeny tiny icicles on the trees but that was about it. The worst of the storm passed north of us. While I am grateful that we were spared the sweeping power outages I was a little upset that I didn’t get a chance to photograph any.
When I came home from work later that day I noticed that the trees had quite a bit of raindrops still holding on. Of course, the trees with the most accessible raindrops were in my neighbor’s yard. I hope they don’t mind my taking the liberty of stepping a few feet into their yard to snap a few shots.
Sadly, my first few shots turned out to be disappointing. My current camera has no manual focus option so I had to rely on its auto focus. For some reason it couldn’t tell that I was trying to focus on the tiny branch with the even tinier water drop. Then I remembered a trick my husband had told me that his sisters told him about.
Simple focusing trick
- The problem. You want to take a close up shot of something tiny. Maybe it’s a flower or a little twig, like this example. Try as you might you just can’t get your camera to focus on the object you are trying to photograph.
- The solution. This would probably work with anything that is somewhat larger than your subject but since you will always have your hands with you, I’ll say hand. Place a hand directly beside or immediately behind your subject. Allow your camera to focus while your hand is in the frame. It might take a bit to play with the placement to get it right but you should be able to bring your subject into focus. (Obviously you would want to take your hand out of the picture before you take it.)
- The result. Once the camera is focused as desired, remove your hand and snap away.
Because of that trick, I was able to get the shot below and several others that can be found at my flickr account. I hope to write more how-to and tip articles such as this in the future so keep an eye out!
