Photography is a big part of blogging. Whether you take the pictures yourself or not, pictures are very important for your blog. Because taking pictures is such a big part of blogging I thought it might be fun to talk about that for once on my blog. So, today I’m going to talk about an aspect of photography I’ve recently been experimenting with: focussing manually versus using autofocus. If you’re interested in finding out what my experiences are and what the pros and cons of both ways of focussing are, make sure you continue reading!
First of all let’s briefly talk about what focussing is for those of you who are new to photography. When you want to take a picture you want the object of your choice to be ‘in focus’. You want it to be sharp. In order to do that, your camera has to focus on it. There are two options for doing that. You can either let your camera do it automatically or you can do it by hand, which is called manually.
When I first started experimenting with photography I always used autofocus. It’s easy, it’s quick and if you’re not that familiar yet with photography it’s possibly the best way to go. After taking pictures for over 3 years I still always used autofocus. Until recently. Recently I decided it was time for me to step up my game and start experimenting with manual focus.
Here are two pretty identical pictures. The top one is taken with autofocus. The bottom one is manually focused. The angle is a little different on both pictures which obviously affects the overall look of it, but when it comes to sharpness I feel like the bottom one is just a little more perfected.
The reason why I feel like the manually focused picture is better is because all the parts I wanted to be sharp, are sharp. I think it’s important that every piece of text is sharp and in the auto focused picture those letters just aren’t as sharp as they are on the manually focused picture.
Aside from that I think it’s way easier to get the perfect shot when you focus manually because you are 100% in control. When you use autofocus, the camera ends up deciding what it focusses on and how sharp the picture will turn out. Obviously you do have some control, you can roughly decide what it’s going to focus on, but it’s nothing compared to manual focus.
All together I think both pictures look good when it comes to sharpness, however I prefer the manually focused picture. It’s sharp in all the right places and I think that’s very important.
Pros and cons of autofocus:
- It’s easy to use, you don’t have to worry about how focussed it is
- Most of the time the picture ends up being reasonably sharp
- It’s quick: it doesn’t take as long to get the perfect shot
- It’s great for beginners
- It’s fool proof
- This mode is perfect for taking pictures of swatches and pictures of your face
- You only need one hand for this
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You’re not fully in control of what the picture will end up looking like
- The picture could’ve been more perfect if you would’ve focussed it manually
Pros and cons of manual focus:
+ You decide on what you want to focus
+ You can get the sharpness you want
+ You are in control
+ The picture might turn out not as sharp as it could have been
+ You can add your own touch to the picture
- It can be quite time consuming: It might take more tries to get that perfect shot
- You need two hands for this or a tripod
- It’s not great for taking pictures of swatches and pictures of your face
Overall I think both ways of focussing work really well and it depends on you which one will end up working best for you. I’m currently loving manual focus for product pictures and any pictures that don’t require the use of my hands, but for pictures of my face or swatches I still love using autofocus!
And that concludes today’s post. I hope it was somewhat helpful or interesting to you and be
sure to let me know how you make sure your pictures are in focus!
XOXO, Nicole.
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