Photography Tips: Under what circumstances should you give up autofocus and use manual focus?

The camera almost automatically focuses, do you still need to focus manually? If you think so, you are wrong. In many cases, automatic focus is still needed. If this happens, you should turn off the AF system and restart the camera. Back to manual focus. 1. Low light environment In a low light environment, the contrast of objects is very small, and the AF system relies on light and contrast to work. Your camera may have a focus assist light. But in an environment like the one pictured above, the focus assist light doesn’t work either. Although the above image looks normally exposed, the light was actually very low. The exposure time of this photo is 30 seconds. 2. Low-contrast objects When you are facing a place such as a smooth wall, it is impossible for the camera to focus no matter how bright the light is. You can focus on other areas with detail, hold the shutter button halfway to lock focus, and then pan the camera to recompose the shot. Or focus manually. 3. Photographing Wildlife Most wild animals have excellent hearing. No matter how good your AF system is, it will always make noise. Even the softest focus sound has the potential to disturb an animal. If you want the most natural-looking photos, turn off autofocus. 4. Photographing landscapes When photographing landscapes, you generally want to keep everything clear from the foreground to the mountains in the distance. This requires closing down the aperture to increase the depth of field and using a hyperfocal distance to focus. Remember to turn off autofocus, otherwise the camera will refocus when you press the shutter, usually at infinity. 5. HDR Producing HDR photos requires that all single photos must have the same focus point. If you use autofocus, the focus will change slightly in each photo. 6. Shooting moving objects When shooting high-speed moving objects, the camera will try to change the focus as the distance changes, but it usually fails. The photo below uses autofocus and burst shooting, and the results are not ideal. Then I turned off autofocus and used manual focus to pre-focus on the landing point of the car, and the result was much better. 7. Shoot through glass Shooting through glass is generally not a good idea. Should be avoided as much as possible. But sometimes it's unavoidable, like on airplanes, in aquariums, etc. The problem with the AF system at this point is that it may focus on reflections or glass. So close it. 8. Photographing Portraits The golden rule when photographing portraits is to focus on the eyes. In addition, large apertures and shallow depth of field effects are often used. But if the AF system focuses on the eyebrows or nose, the eyes will be blurry. 9. Macro Autofocus is difficult to work with for macro photography. At this point, the depth of field is extremely shallow and the camera cannot determine where to focus. You have to take control. 10. Use the rule of thirds to compose a photo. If the camera’s focus point is fixed in the center, or there are not enough focus points on the edges, it will be inconvenient to use the rule of thirds to compose the photo. In most situations, autofocus is undoubtedly of great benefit, but there are times when manual focus is the smarter choice. In some of the situations listed below, the autofocus does not always work well. At this time, you should turn the focus button to the M position and then adjust the focus manually. Don’t forget, switching to manual focus can also function as a focus lock. Sometimes you can use this principle to focus on an object first, and then compose the picture. As long as you shoot objects at the same distance, you don’t need to focus again.