Prefocusing

The fastest and most convinient way to focus your camera

In this lesson we’ll show you one of the most basic focusing tricks called prefocusing. It’s a useful tool that can be applied in most scenarios, handy for beginners and pro photographers alike.

It’s important to know >> the shutter button has 2 (two, zwei, due) pressed states:

  1.  Half-pressed >> your camera wakes up from sleep mode, initiates exposure metering and tries to focus your shot (read more about whether that actually happens in this article)
  2. Fully pressed >> the camera takes a photo based on the above settings/metering

<<  See image to the left

Attention! This is an interactive block. Follow the instructions and the icons to see where to click! 🙂

Prefocusing is also great when for instance you want to capture someone “flying” through the air on a bike or a motorbike. After all, you wouldn’t be able to ask your subject to hold still while you set the right focus… But! If you go with the above method, you can simply lock your focus on a point that your subject will pass through when jumping with the bike.

This is an easy procedure to make sure your shot will come out sharp.

Prefocusing also helps you avoid shutter lag.

A prefocused camera will take a photo much faster (the lagging is minimized), which will make it a lot easier for you to catch just the right moment.

About the author:

Bence Gyulai is a photographer and professional photography teacher. Grand Prize-winning photographer of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, regular invited speaker at photography events, founder and host of visualgangster.com.  More info & images >>