Tag Archives: zone focusing

Street Photography

Street Photography – Progress? – Part 4

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Street Photography

  1. Previous Attempts
  2. Zone Focusing
  3. Hyperfocal Distance
  4. Progress?
  5. Tips and Tricks From the Web

So far I’ve talked about street photography focusing techniques. I haven’t had much time to go and put those techniques into practice yet, but I did get 10 mins yesterday lunchtime and 5 mins the previous afternoon on my way to the train station, so lets see how I went

Hyperfocal Distance

This shot was taken with the K200D and Pentax SMC M 28mm f2.8 lens. I set the lens to f11.0, and approximately to hyperfocal distance (I used the Depth of Field scale on the lens focusing ring). I then set the exposure (Pentax M lenses must be shot in manual mode if you want to stop them down). I was then able to take a photo of pretty much anything that was more than about 1.8m away from me, and it should be in focus. This is the shot I took of some workers on their way to the train station. If you go to Flickr and view larger, you will see that the further away from the camera the worse the focus gets. Did I possibly focus too closely to get true hyperfocal distance? Something to work on for next time.

Zone Focusing

This shot was taken with the K200D and the Pentax A 50mm f1.7 lens. The longer focal length of this lens means that the hyperfocal distance is quite far, so you can’t get close to the subject, which means you end up cropping the shot to make them the subject of the photo. So when using a longer focal length I recommend using the zone method. I gave this a shot in the pedestrian mall yesterday. I set the lens to f8.0, and the focus to 3m on the focus ring distance scale. This is where I estimated most people would be walking by from where I was positioned. I then proceeded to snap away. This is 1 of the resulting shots. The focus was set a little in front of the couple I was photographing in this shot, so they are slightly out of focus, again something to work on. I will post another image tonight.

View on Flickr
Street Photography

Zone Focusing – Street Photography Part 2

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When shooting street photography it is often important to be able to fire off a shot without any delay or hesitation, from yourself, or your gear, to capture that moment of shown emotion or humor or who knows what.

Street Photography Series

  1. Previous Attempts
  2. Zone Focusing
  3. Hyperfocal Distance
  4. Progress?
  5. Tips and Tricks from the Web

Zone Focusing Overview

One of the techniques you can use to ensure there is no delay from your equipment is to pre-focus using the zone focusing technique. What this requires is a good estimation of distance ahead of time. The general idea is to set the focus to a given range (or zone) ahead of time, and shoot within this zone. This technique is very effective with older manual focus lenses but can also be used with autofocus lenses, set to manual focus mode.

How to Focus on a Zone – DOF Scale

Many (in fact all the ones I own) older lenses will have a handy DOF scale or guide built into the focus and aperture rings on the lens. This article has a fantastic shot and explanation of how the guide on your lens can help you. As I’ve said, you need to have a reasonably good judge of distance to use this method, but if you don’t, try it out, because you will soon learn to be able to judge the distances better.

Without a DOF Scale

If you are using a lens which does not have a handy DOF guide (most newer lenses do not) you can still use the zone focusing technique, however you will need to pre-calculate your DOF (use the online calculator here), or use an application such as Photobuddy to help you out (this is the what I do).

Does It Work

I have used this technique in the past with my 50mm lens. I set the aperture to f8.0, then focused to 8m on the focusing scale. This gives a DOF of 11m (5.3m to 16.3m) on my K200D (the sensor crop factor does play a factor here!). Then when shooting all you need to do is pick your subjects within that range.

Good luck with your Zone Focusing!