A Little News

I don’t know if it shows how young some of you guys are or how old I am, but someone left a request for a manual focus primer in the comments to an earlier post. It really hasn’t been all that long ago that there was no such thing as autofocus. Or has it? Maybe I really am that old! I know that some of my beloved children think I am older than Noah and a whole lot more conservative. But they are teenagers.

Back to manual focus. I sometimes think that the actual craft of sports photojournalism has been changed/diluted/ruined by the advent of autofocus. There was a time when a person who shot sports was truly gifted, especially with the fine art of focusing. I have been on the sidelines at big football games and shot near a Sports Illustrated shooter and wondered how the heck he was able to focus when he was blazing through a roll of film on every play. Now the AF handles all that pretty close to flawlessly. That means almost anyone can shoot sports action now, at least in theory. There are still truly gifted sports shooters and the truth is that AF does not make a great sports action photographer. Like any other feature on your camera, AF is just a tool. A skilled shooter takes a good tool and makes great photographs. An average shooter takes the same tool and makes average photographs. So, AF opened the door to more and more people being able to shoot sports but the truth is that AF didn’t really transform everyone into a sports shooting guru.

Rant over. Now back to our regularly scheduled post. Manual focus actually has some advantages over AF. The prime advantage to manual focusing a sports event is that manual focusing causes you to concentrate. The biggest difference I notice, aside from the number of sharp frames, is the difference in my concentration levels. When I manual focus an event I tend to be much more sharply focused on what is actually going on in my viewfinder. AF allows me to relax a little and that is not always a good thing. I do better work when I am sweating a little.

Another advantage manual has is it frees you from that center spot AF mark in your viewfinder allowing you the freedom to actually frame an image rather than being dependent on your subject staying in the designated focusing area. Yes, I know, there are several AF settings that purport to actually track a subject as it moves out of the center AF sensor but I have never learned to trust them when a real picture is on the line. I notice that my photos are framed better when I shoot manual. I can see equally well in the edges of the frame as I can the center so I don’t have to worry about the AF spot.

Obviously, AF has its own set of advantages which I don’t really need to go into since we all know and love them already. Suffice it to say, both Nikon and Canon cameras AF better than I can focus manually. It is no contest especially at night. I do okay in daylight events but night events are much tougher and always have been.

The question remains, how do you develop your manual focus skills? Tip number one: don’t try. The harder you try to manual focus a sporting event the worse you will do. If you need to practice, go out to a street and shoot sequences of traffic moving toward you. (Don’t stand in the street to do this or someone will be taking your photo as you are loaded into an ambulance!) A street where the traffic is moving a 35-40 mph is about right. Slower might even be better. Basically you want to disengage your brain and just react to what you are seeing in the viewfinder. It is a bit like a major league hitter who is trying to hit versus a major league hitter who just steps to the plate, sees the ball and smacks it. The more you think about it the worse you will do. In other words, “trust the force Luke.”

Tip number two: Make sure all your lenses focus in the same direction. I once carried a Tamron 180 that focused the reverse of the rest of my Nikon lenses. Drove me nuts! Sounds dumb but make sure they all work the same. It will save you mega grief.

Tip number three: Have a plan. If you think a play may be made in a particular area, prefocus in that area and then just tweak the focus as the players move there. I love to do this in baseball because the action can be somewhat predictable especially if you understand the game. This is also known as zone focusing. Zone focusing used to save my bacon shooting basketball in the days before AF.

Tip number four: Use lenses designed to be manual focused. The Nikkors of yesteryear, ie: the ones before AF, were wonderful lenses. They focus like a dream. I can’t even begin to follow focus with an AF lens in manual mode. They are simply not made to do that. I usually don’t even attempt to manual focus an AF lens. It is just no fun. If you have an older Nikon manual lens, it will work on your AF body in aperture priority and manual exposure modes. Try it.

Tip number five: You can do yourself a favor by limiting the photos you will have to shoot following focus on players moving directly at you. You can improve your odds by making the plane of focus more shallow by shooting at angles where the action moves parallel to your position as opposed to perpendicular to it. It is much easier to shoot a player moving across your field of view than it is to shoot a player moving straight at you.

Beyond those tips, you just have to practice and be persistent. Most of my best sports images have come from that beat up old 400mm f3.5 manual focus lens. I use it all the time and that is the key. I don’t have to think about it. I just pop it on and go.

About the photos: The top photo is from a Hartselle High school baseball game. The ball was hit to the right fielder and was fading away from him. He is diving to make the play on the ball. I shot with a Nikon D2Hs and the 400mm f3.5 manual lens wide open. The photo is just a tad soft and requires a bit of sharpening in Photoshop to make it workable. The second photo is from a tennis match and the focusing here is mostly incremental rather than a large differential so it is relatively easy to focus. This is also a D2Hs and a 400mm f3.5.\

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.