Transcription
[Music] Good morning. There's a little mistake that I almost always see beginner filmmakers make, which can really make your videos look amateurish, and it's quite easy to fix. The mistake I'm talking about is using autofocus wrong, and especially leaving it on all the time. But I think it's best if I just show you a few [Music] examples.
So, first example, and that is also likely the most common way of making this mistake: that is simply when you add camera movement to the shots. Like, let's say, for example, I want to make a revealing shot of the statues here in the background behind the tree, and I would just have my autofocus on, to tracking. Then I would start here behind the tree, and I would move it with the camera. And now what you can see in the shot is that the focus first was on the tree and then jumped to the statues, and that is not what you want. That looks pretty amateur. You want the focus to stay consistent.
Another example is when you get shots of yourself, even static shots like that one here. Cuz if you use autofocus, then it's very easy that the autofocus jumps between you and the background. Let me show you that. And now you should see that the autofocus will first jump from the background, from the statues, on me, and then back. So you also don't have any control over your autofocus. It's not always wrong to do it like that, because sometimes you want to enter the frame and you want the autofocus to jump on you, but in that case, your [for example], it's just distracting.
Another problem that comes from only using autofocus all the time is that you can't really be intentional with your shots, which is important because being intentional with your shots is a big part of storytelling. For example, you can also focus on something around you while you're out of focus, to show details of your surrounding while there is still a connection to you. And with autofocus, that's a hit or miss, because you can never be sure that the focus stays where you want it to be.
Now, the question, of course, is how can we fix it? And the first thing you have to do is to set up your camera in a certain way, because that allows you to use autofocus in combination with manual focus. So let's get into it. Let's show you how to set up your camera like that.
At first, you want to be sure that you can quickly switch between auto and manual focus. On most cameras, you can assign a button to switch between auto and manual focus in the menu. So when you press the button, the camera switches between autofocus and manual focus. That means that when you switch to manual focus mode, the focus stays exactly where it is, as I show you right now here with my hand. But you can still change the focus while you're in manual focus mode by pressing the AF-on button. So you can see here right now. So you have still full control over your focus, but but it always stays exactly where it is. On Sony cameras, that's called AF/MF selector toggle, but on other cameras, that can also show up as AFL for autofocus lock. On Fujifilm, for example, I found that to be the best solution. Because if you would set your lens to manual focus via the switch on some lenses, or you would use a manual focus lens, you would always have to turn the focus wheel to acquire focus, and that can take a bit longer and often times also means that your focus is off, because it's really hard to judge the focus on a small camera screen. And often times you also don't want to bring a bigger external camera monitor.
To make it even easier, you can also assign a button or a dial to switching the focus area, so you can quickly switch from wide to single point or zone autofocus. I use a dial for that, because small cameras such as the Sony a7c Mark I don't have enough custom buttons, and I want this functionality to be consistent between my cameras. From there, you can just select the focus area you want, press the AF-on button, and the focus goes where you want it to be. That's all you need to set it up. I would say let's get some shots now to show you how exactly that works in the field. Prepare this thing here to the Action 5 Pro on the Fuji XS20, so that I can show you all the time from the back what I'm doing on the [Music] camera.
At first, I want to get our sliding shot again from before, behind that tree here. So let me show you how that works now. So what I'm doing first is that I press my button here, which on the Fujifilm camera is set to the top, so the focus stays exactly where it is on the S. Now I would press the AF-on button again to make sure it's focused, but here I just press the button and it stays exactly where it is now, and then I can move behind the tree and I can do my sliding shot. Cu the focus stays exactly on the background, and now you can see that the tree is out of focus and we have the background in focus here, exactly as it should be. Of course, you can also do the exact same by having the foreground object, in that case the tree here, in focus, in case you want to do a sliding shot, maybe the statues there, for example. Let's do that quickly. So let's say I would get a sliding shot here of that statue, and I would press the AF lock button again, so it acquires focus. Okay, and now I can do my slide, and there I have a perfect sliding shot where also an object again stays in focus. I didn't focus on the foreground here, but you know what I mean.
And let me also show you the second shot that we kind of messed up before. And here, as you can see, I have set the focus point on the background, so the focus is on the background now. And if I lock the focus now, we have the AFL button, you see here, it says AFL in blue over the AFC indicator, and that means that the focus now is locked, so it stays exactly where it is. And now I can again press record and just walk through it, and there you see that the focus stays exactly where it is. Looks a lot better, right?
And I have two more examples here for you. At first, one that I often use when I'm feeling myself hiking and I want the focus to stay in one place instead of following me. That's, for example, the case in this shot here. So let me turn on the action camera now. You see here I have the focus point again where I want the focus to be later, so want it to be around there, and then I again press the AFL button, so the focus locks in place, press record and do my walk. So the takeaway from this shot here for you that I want you to keep in your mind is that whenever you have this situation where you're not really sure where you will walk later, just look at the ground or look at some plants around or whatever is standing there and try to acquire focus on a subject that it's really close to or in the same distance where you will walk later, and the focus stays there again, and you can walk around into the focus area. I just find that to look a bit better in such shots than if the focus would completely move over the ground together with me. [Music] There's another good example here, by the way, if you want to pick something up and you want the focus to stay where it is, which also looks better, then you should also use this technique. This is essentially what they do in Hollywood; they are very intentional with their focus. So this is also why that's switching between autofocus and manual focus all the time is an important habit that you should get used to when shooting videos. I made another video with six more habits that I show you there recently. I will link it here in the corner, so check it out. You will also find a link in the description in case the corner doesn't show up. So I hope to see you in this video, and if you found this video helpful, then consider subscribing for upcoming tutorials and camera reviews.