Focus, and focusing. From my A-Z series

I bought my first camera in 1974. It was a cheap Russian camera that took standard 35mm (what we now call full frame) film. It had the absolute minimum of controls. To adjust the aperture, you used a ring on the front of the lens, there was a little thing to turn for the shutter speed. To focus it, there was another slightly larger ring on the lens.

On the top of the camera was an eye piece, with a prism inside, so the you could see the mirror. What you could see, was what appeared to be two pieces of ground glass that moved with the focus ring. By turning this ring one way or the other, you could focus the camera on your subject. As you can imagine it took quite a lot of practice to get this right. Even then it was common for me to have several out of focus shots on a roll of film – expensive!

Autofocus

The development of autofocus to a long time, it started becoming mainstream in the early 1980s, I bought my first one in about 1990. I never asked how it worked, just accepted it and moved on. Even though I was still using fairly old cheap cameras, they had become much more sophisticated. Also at some point I bought the very latest invention, a zoom lens (more to follow in Z) Suffice to say they are an incredible invention.

Digital cameras.

I bought my first one in 2003, autofocus and an electric zoom! Camera development seems to have accelerated up to the development of the mirrorless cameras , which are just extraordinary in what they can do. There is a continuous stream of gizmos and wizardry to entice us into buying new cameras

The one I have now has a small wizard that hides in there somewhere. He can chase the focus point around the screen. I can lock the focus onto a human eye, or a bird or an aeroplane, and he will chase it around the screen keeping it locked onto the subject. This gets focus nearly every time!

Or of course, its extremely complex software, using AI, very sophisticated electronics and little motors to constantly adjust it. Whatever modern autofocus systems are phenomenal. By using autofocus, there is one, quite difficult task fully automated. I’m that there are people who don’t like it, I think its stunning!

The first image is slightly out of focus, I focused on the tree😬😳

#beautifulportraitsforbusyprofessionals