hey guys, i'm shooting on a canon hf g10 and i need some help with using manual focus. how do i keep a person in focus as they get closer to and farther away from the camera? i hate auto focus because everything winds up looking like a home movie with everything in the frame in focus. also, if i have two people in the frame, how do i quickly shift focus from one person to the other? any help will be appreciated!
need help with manual focus
- Thread starter mfparcher
- Start date
It sounds like what you want is shallow depth of field - i.e. only the subject is in focus, background and foreground elements out of focus, and the ability to switch or 'rack' focus from one subject to another. Unfortunately that's hard to do with a camera like yours because of the small sensor size - and it's the primary reason DSLRs have become so popular for shooting video over the past few years.
With your camera the primary way to achieve shallow depth of field is by staying zoomed in rather than using the wide angle settings. Also using the aperture priority mode and setting the aperture to the lowest value will help, but zooming in will produce a much more noticeable result. The problem with having to be zoomed in is you'll need to move the camera a lot farther from the subject to get everything in the shot.
With your camera the primary way to achieve shallow depth of field is by staying zoomed in rather than using the wide angle settings. Also using the aperture priority mode and setting the aperture to the lowest value will help, but zooming in will produce a much more noticeable result. The problem with having to be zoomed in is you'll need to move the camera a lot farther from the subject to get everything in the shot.