Photography Article Why Won't My Lens Focus?|Photography Artist Statement

When I first upgraded to my DSLR camera and started the usage of it considerably, I found myself going through an entire style of issues, and for a lot of them, I couldn?T discover easy answers on-line or in any of my starting pictures books. I realized a whole lot later that some of those problems were so fundamental and fundamental that specialists who had been capturing for a long time had probably forgotten that they had ever not recognised the way to do such things.

This is the first article in an occasional series aimed at beginners called “Things Experts Forgot to Tell You” or “Things that You Forgot you had to Learn.” Maybe you’ve just purchased your first DSLR camera or perhaps you’ve had one sitting around for awhile that you’ve been meaning to start using.  The next big steps are getting out there, figuring out what you and your camera are capable of, and learning where to get answers to your questions.  While the first two steps are up to you, this series is an attempt to briefly cover some of the questions that might not have yet occurred to you to ask.

Why Won?T My Lens Focus?

Trust me, it’s not because your lens is broken.  Early on, I was convinced that I had broken my lens while trying to do some close-up photography.  I had gotten the bee on the flower nearly in focus and then my lens would make this terrible grinding sound and get stuck.  I was worried that something had gotten caught inside the lens itself and that the damage would be irreparable.  Neither the camera’s manual nor a quick search of the Internet provided any clues, and it wasn’t until sometime later that I found there was a very simple explanation.

Each lens has a minimum focusing distance, which is a measurement of how close you can get to an object and still be able to focus on it.  This measurement is usually written on the lens itself somewhere.  For my Canon lenses, it’s written on the barrel of the lens, indicated with a little flower symbol.  For my kit 18-55 mm lens, the minimum focusing distance is 0.25 m / 0.8 ft.  The weird noises and inability to focus were caused by the fact that I was too close to the bee.

Out-of-recognition foreground plant with an in-recognition historical past. I fell sufferer to the minimal focusing distance.

This early image of mine demonstrates the trouble of minimal focusing distance. I desired the leaves of the plant in focus, but the autofocus on my digital camera saved deciding on the mag within the history. I sooner or later gave up and just took the picture as is, not figuring out that I best needed to get a little similarly far from the plant to maintain it in consciousness.

If you are feeling constrained by means of the minimal focusing distance of your lens, there are a few cheaper solutions. Close-up lenses act as a magnifying glass and will let you focus on gadgets a good deal closer to the lens. You can study all about near-up lenses and their advantages in this article. Purchase near-up lenses on Amazon.

Another reason that a lens may have difficulty focusing is because there are simply too many options for it to choose from.  This is particularly a problem if you have ever tried to photograph something obstructed like a bird in a tree.  You understand that you want the bird in focus, but the autofocus can get ‘distracted’ by all the various, overlapping branches in the way (or the film on your dirty window) and choose something other than the bird.  The best strategy here (other than trying manual focus) is to move yourself and the camera around until you have an unobstructed view of the bird.

Here the camera decided that I wanted the nice foreground branch in focus instead of either bird in the background.

Moving around slightly and waiting for better lighting gave me a much cleaner shot.

This photo become taken four minutes after the image above.

Bohemian Waxwing at Dawn by Archaeofrog on Flickr Finally, your lens might have difficulty focusing because of a lack of contrast.  Autofocus relies on a contrast between the focus point and its surroundings.  If you try to autofocus on a blank wall or background, your camera will likely hunt back and forth without settling and maintaining focus.  To overcome this, you may have to put something on or against the wall or background for the autofocus to latch on to.  Similarly, your camera will have a much harder time focusing in low light, as a lack of light contributes to a lowered contrast.

Trying to focus on this blank wall  was not working.

In the picture above, I used the pictures framed on the blank wall to set the focus. Then I used the 10-second timer on the camera to put myself in the shot and check on the focus. After that, I switched the focus to manual to keep it in place, took the pictures off the wall, and was able to take a series of pictures of myself attempting classic Peter Pan poses. A bit of work in Photoshop combined the best pose with the best shadow for the final image.

Final Peter Pan photograph displaying both the photos mixed for the final product.

Peter Pan through Archaeofrog on Flickr So, if you are having problems getting your lens to recognition, reflect onconsideration on whether or not it is probably for one of the reasons above.

• If you're nearer than the minimum focusing distance of your lens, you?Ll both need to again up or use some thing like a near-up lens that modifications the minimum focusing distance.

• If your autofocus is having trouble locating what you need in recognition, you may want to transport round for an unobstructed view or supply guide cognizance a try.

• If your camera can?T find cognizance due to a lack of comparison, positioned something up in opposition to what you want to awareness on and use that. Or use a flashlight or different lighting to add comparison to a dark scenario earlier than switching to guide to fasten the point of interest in vicinity.