NAIL YOUR MANUAL FOCUS - Why You Shouldn't Autofocus

Hey, what's up? Today, I wanted to vent a bit because I see so many people obsessed with how good the autofocus is on cameras that I don't think they know how to manual focus. And you know, manual focus shouldn't be forgotten. It is so important. It's one of the most powerful tools you have as a filmmaker to decide where your audience is looking and directing the story's intention. You know, on film sets, there's a whole person who just does focus. They're called a focus puller. And autofocus has its time and place. Autofocus is important. When you're vlogging, you need autofocus. And I'm new to the autofocus world. Just having joined YouTube a couple months ago, you know, getting a camera like the a7 III here has been amazing. I've really enjoyed not having to touch the focus. But there is times when you do need to turn the autofocus off and choose where to focus. So I wanted to give a couple quick tips today on how to improve those. So the number one tip I have is run a rehearsal. Practice your focus when you can. And rather than just trying to get the focus on the first chance and sending the editor all this blurry footage, ask your subject or the person, if you can in this situation, to practice their move. Even if it's, hey, can you stick your head out the doorway and so I can land the focus. That way, when you click record, you're not trying to find the focus. You already know where it's gonna be on your lens. It's okay to practice. It's okay to run a couple rehearsals. It's better that you feel confident in that scene than just giving a bunch of footage that's totally out of focus. Take, for example, this shot here where I needed to get this sticky note in focus being passed between the two actors. So I first got them to put their hands in frame so that I knew where the focus was gonna be. And then I just called action so that when they brought their hands into frame, I knew the sticky note would be in focus. This is important too because autofocus would be searching around the frame right now trying to find focus. Rehearsals are important and they're gonna improve your focus. So rehearse it, practice it. There's no shame in that. But what about situations when you can't practice? Maybe you're shooting a race and there's gonna be people coming around the corner. You can't just ask the leader in that race to, hey, can you go back to the start line? I need to practice my focus. So what you do is you find things in the frame that aren't going to be changing focus. So in this scene, I know the subject's gonna be coming from the right side of frame here. I just don't know how far from camera he will be. But I know that this tree and this bush are probably the same distance from the camera as he will be. That way I can focus on them so when he comes into frame here, I'll know he'll be in focus even though I didn't know where he was gonna be. And you can even zoom in on like a tree here that I know is the same distance from the camera. When he comes around the corner here, you'll see he's in focus because he's the same distance as this tree. The third point here is do small movements. One of the biggest mistakes I see is when people are starting trying to focus, they're retching on the camera, searching for the focus, and now they'll give me a shot that has a split second that's in focus and the rest of it isn't because they've been going all the way to the one side of the lens and all the way to the other trying to find the focus. But if you do small little movements, you'll be able to inch into your focus rather than overshooting and you'll actually know where you are on the lens of where the focus is rather than getting lost in this blurry space and ruining a shot. Do smaller movements. And also the advantage of smaller movements is you're gonna move your camera less where if you're totally moving your arm trying to get your focus, you're going to be shaking your entire camera. So for me, I just do small little little movements just like this. These moves are this small. Barely moving it. Rather than retching on it, trying to find my focus. Oh, drop my a7 III. Now, if you really wanna give yourself an advantage with manual focus, then consider getting yourself a follow focus. What I love about follow focus is they're naturally where your arm is positioned. This and this is not natural, but my arms naturally sit here beside my body and with my follow focus here, it's just where my hands go. So now rather than retching the camera side to side when I'm trying to focus, I simply move my follow focus back and forth. You notice the camera's not shaking much because this is naturally where my arms want to be. Put a link below to some of my favorite follow focuses that are affordable. But if you're operating and you're by yourself, definitely consider getting one of these. They are very helpful when you're shooting action sports or situations where you just don't know where the focus is gonna be. Little bonus tip here. I recommend shooting with external monitors or external recorders when focus is crucial because the little LCD screen on the back of your DSLR is a terrible way to judge focus. I can't tell you how many times I've been using that thinking I was nailing focus and when I bring it onto my computer, I realized I was off. Monitors like the small HD give you a sharp image on a bigger screen that help you be confident if you're nailing focus or not, especially when you turn the peaking on. Another little bonus tip here is if you zoom in on your image, you can grab focus and then zoom back out and know that your focus is nailed. Now, a little warning though, some cheaper lenses don't necessarily hold the focus when you zoom back out. But in theory, this should work for most lenses where you zoom in, grab the focus, and then zoom back out. And my last tip is practice. Practice, practice, practice, practice. You want to not have to think about focus. You want it to become natural for you. So getting out there and practicing is important. I just don't get why we do this as filmmakers. We wait till we're on set to start learning how to use our cameras. And we should just actually be out there shooting random things or getting a friend who's gonna run towards the camera and run back and practicing. I mean, athletes do this. They get to the field and they've practiced for months beforehand. As filmmakers, we just get to set, we get to the game time and we're like, well, let me figure out how to use this new lens. No, no, no, practice. You know, one of the most difficult things to focus on is a ball coming towards you, especially at a high speed. In NFL films, they still use manual focus. All their guys are on that using manual focus for those scenes. And this is an incredible difficult task. Get out there and try to do this sometime. Try to focus on a ball getting tossed 40 yards downfield and hold it in focus the entire time. These guys are magicians. I'm so impressed with their manual focus. But you know what someone told me that they do is in order to get on the team, the camera team, a lot of them will go out there and they'll get a tire swing and they'll push it away from them. And they'll sit there for hours with their camera lens, practicing focusing that tire as it goes away and comes towards them. Goes away, comes towards them. And they'll just sit there practicing that until it becomes second nature on how to focus. So practice, get to know your lenses. Different lenses focus different. Some of them are quicker. Some of them have a longer range to get to infinity. Get to know your lenses so that when you're in those situations, you can be confident and you don't have to think about your camera gear. You can think about storytelling, which is gonna create a better film. So anyways, I hope these tips help today. Manual focusing should never be overlooked. I don't care how smart these cameras are getting. There is a time and a place when you need to manual focus. And for me, it can be simple things like switching the camera between two people in a scene. You want to be able to control that and craft that as a director, as a cinematographer, and not just let your camera decide that. So I'll see you guys in the next one. I love making videos about stuff that you guys care about. So make sure to leave a comment below. And who knows, I might make a video about it next week. But appreciate all the support. Hit subscribe, like this video, share it if you love it. And I'll see you on the next one.