Do you ever have trouble getting accurate focus? It can be touch in low light, when you’re close to your subject, or if your eye-sight is less than perfect. In this short video, I show you how to use live view to improve your focusing.
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Video Transcript
Do you ever struggle with getting accurate focus in your images? Hi, I’m Julie from Ultimate Photo Tips, and in today’s Two Minute Tip, I’m going to share with you how you can use live view to improve your focusing. Now the trick here is going to be to turn on live view, and then zoom in on the part of the image that you want to have sharp. This is a great tip to use for close-up where you need really perfect focusing, but you can use it anywhere.
Alright, let’s get started. On this camera, this is the button right here (A) that I’m going to use to turn live view on and off. This right here (B) is what I use to move my little zooming square around, up and down, and left and right. You’ll see what I mean in just a moment. An this right here is what I use to zoom in (C). Now of course, on your camera, the controls will likely be a little bit different, but I’m sure you’ll have something equivalent.
© Julie Waterhouse Photography
(A) Turn on live view, (B) Move the zoom box around, (C) Zoom in.
Let’s go ahead and turn live view on. Now you can see that I’m photographing a close-up of a flower. Now what I want to make sure is that the thing that’s closest to my lens, these petals right in here, I want to make sure that they’re nice and sharp. So what I can do is move my little square right over the petals that I want to make sure are sharp.
© Julie Waterhouse Photography
Zoom box is over the area that I want to be sharp.
Then I can go ahead and zoom in. And I can zoom in by a factor of 5 times or even 10 times. Once I’m zoomed in, I have this little image in the corner which shows me a dark spot relative to the overall frame so I can get some context. That dark spot is where I’m zoomed in in the whole image.
© Julie Waterhouse Photography
Zoomed in 5x.
Now that I’m here, I can go ahead and make fine adjustments to my focus to make sure that the tip of this petal right here is nice and sharp. I can check it at 5x as well. If I’m satisfied that it looks good, then I can zoom out, and then go ahead and take my picture.
That’s it for today. For more great tips, come on over and join me at ultimate-photo-tips.com, and while you’re there, don;t forget to sign up for my newsletter. That’s where I share insights and inspiration that I don’t share anywhere else.
Happy shooting, and I’ll see you next time.
