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Lesson Info

Custom Menu A: Autofocus/Manual Focus

Okay folks we have gotten to the monster of sections and so if I if I could go back to an olympus was sitting around the table deciding where the menu system went it would be kind of interesting cause I imagine they had like little playing cards where we have this feature where should it go like well that goes in the shooting menu and that goes in the playback menu but about every other second they've ago let's just put it in the custom in you let's just put that in the custom in you and so the custom menu really is a whole nother menu unto itself and so what we're going to do is we have subcategories abc well on past g in this which controls different segments of the way you can customize the cameras I mention before and this is a good thing there are probably more ways to customize this camera than almost any other camera out on the market and so we're going to dive through these and there as I say if you really think about things they did actually end up putting things in a pretty l...

ogical place and so we'll have to give him credit for that but there is a lot of options so the first grouping of options deals with auto focus and manual focus and how it is achieved and how it works and so for auto focus we have the standard options that we saw before single and continuous manual focus and then those two other ones for manual focus touch up and tracking systems as well in there and so some of the more serious photographers might like manual focus I often leave this camera in manual focus for modes that you will see here in a little bit I like having a back button focus set on the camera so that I can focus by pressing one of the function function buttons and you could re program that to any one of the other buttons on the camera with a little trick is I say that I'm going to show you here but most of the time my camera is in single auto focus if it's going to be in one of the auto focus modes you also have a separate selection so that when you switch it into the movie mode you can choose a different default focusing system than your camera would be in one of the other sections and this is why it's advantageous to use the movie mode when you were shooting movies is because you could have the camera set in 00:02:09.897 --> 00:02:12. a different way for shooting movies then you are shooting 00:02:12.61 --> 00:02:15. still photos and anyone who knows a lot about shooting movies and stills know that there's a very different setups that you want in your camera for doing that and this is one of those ways to help separate those functions settings in the camera fulltime auto focus I highly recommend turning off and this is where the camera will automatically focus at all times even when your finger is not down on the shutter release any time it's awake and looking at stuff it's going to be constantly focusing and that is gonna drain your battery's very quickly and I think it's very easy to press halfway down so I don't think there's a lot of need for leaving this one turned on the auto exposure lock and auto focus lock button if you recall is the back is the button on the back that's the function one button it's right at the the center of the lever that turns and it's so it's a little silver button and what's kind of interesting if you go into the specifics and we're not going to go through all the options here you have different modes that you can put this at and one of them is mowed three which means that the camera will then focus when you press that button so this will become a back button focusing it's not the most clearly labeled way of getting your camera into back button focusing but it works and once you figure it out it's fantastic and so some people like putting this in a continuous mode. Some people prefer it in a single auto focus mode, but if you use mode three it turns it into an auto focus override, which is kind of fun question can just a quick question because in almost every single photography class somebody asks about back button focus and why you would use it and so could you just touch briefly on the advantages of back button focus okay so we will do a little live demo for you so let's just put our camera let's see so I think we're in normal let me turn the camera back here so you guys can see me actually I want a little bit of a telephoto lens and let's use forty five portrait lands because I want a little bit of a telephoto look and what are we gonna focus on let's get a little bit bigger lends out there to focus on okay so we are in normal focusing mode which means and I'm going to get the center point activated here okay so I want the lens in focus right so we got that if I want to take a picture good we're done that's not a very good artistic photo is it and so what I want to do is I want to focus but I want it off to the side and in this there's a couple of different options if I just have the centre point activated it's focusing on the background what I can do is I can focus on the lands and then reposition but I have to leave my finger appear on top halfway down to take the picture and I would like to do that again okay so I focus over here and I recompose and I want to do it again so I gotta focus and recompose and this gets to be a hassle focusing and re composing and so there's a couple of different solutions and I know what some of you are thinking so I will go ahead and do it right now I could just move the focusing point over here and you know what you're darn tooting right I could just leave it there and now I don't have to refocusing but what if ah well wait now I want it on the left side okay well now I gotta press these buttons over here and now I want another left side now I could take my pictures and wait now I want it on the right side and so I got to keep fidgeting with the camera so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put my camera and let's go find this first auto focus we're going to go down to a t l and I'm going to turn this into mode three and in mode three one of the things that you will see it's down here at the bottom e l f l button now becomes single auto focus okay so that means the camera's going to focus when I press this little button right up here and I'm going to say ok, that sounds all well and good before I go too far, I need to make sure that the camera is in manual focus, so I'm going to do it here. I could have done it in the menu system, but I remembered it here. And just to show you the menu system, a f mode, I could go in here, and I could select lips, manual focus right there. Okay, so now when I pointed at my lands and I pressed down it's, an out of focus picture, well, that's, no good. So now what I can do is I'm going to do back button focusing, actually, let's. Make sure my focus point is in the middle. All right so now I press my button on the back to focus now it's in focus now without touching anything on the camera although I am touching the camera I can move it over here and if I press down it's not going to refocus and if I decide you know what no I want you on the left side it's going to rain it's not going to refocus and so once focus is set I don't need to mess around with refocusing and it's so it's really handy freeport for portrait when you're going to shoot a photo of somebody but you want to play around with the composition and you don't want to re focus over and over and over again every single shot especially if your subject or not changing and for many types of photography there is a photographer there is a subject and that distance is not changing and so in those situations back button focusing work's fantastic and so it's why it's been loved by so many kind of advanced photographers now the downside is is that in order to take a picture I generally I'm gonna have to take two button presses are going to have to press the button back here to focus and then I'm gonna have to press the one on the top to take the picture and so it's a little bit more work in that sense but it allows us to separate two very different functions, so that they're not tied into doing the same thing so there is a number of different focusing modes it does give you some fairly clear explanations of what each of these modes are doing and find one you like play around with it try something else try these different things to see which one works for you this is one that I like that I know a lot of other photographers like but that's just one of many different moments that you can choose from okay moving on next one is reset lands this won't have any impact on most lenses but there are some lenses that wind focusing this is a fly by wire system which means that when I am turning the focusing on this land I am turning electron I am turning a control in the electronics then focus the lands I'm not directly moving the lenses and occasionally on some lenses they have extension parts that will extend out in front of the lens and then when you power down the camera the lenses kind of sticking out in front and it's kind of out there awkward and what this does is it automatically retracts the lens into the camera body and so if you have one of those lenses and I think there's a ah fourteen to forty two that does that very few different lenses that'll do that but if you have those lenses it's probably not a bad idea to turn it on but none of the lenses that I have showing you here in the class have that most all of these this is an exception but most of them have kind of physical controls with the lens and they aren't automatically extending out like that bulb time focusing on this and so this would allow you to focus refocus the image while bulb mode is engaged bulb or time mode is a long time exposure usually thirty seconds or longer do you want to be able to focus the lens while you are doing your bulb shots? Most people don't want to touch the lands don't want to bump the camera but there are a few creative types out there who might want to play around with focusing while it is doing exposure and so this would allow you to go in and do that not very common most people are not going to be doing that the focus ring we mentioned earlier that you can turn it clockwise for nikon or counterclockwise for cannon and other most brands of lenses and so the arrows in these case points towards infinity case you're wondering and so depending on which camera system you come from, you can kind of customize which way your camera manually focuses manual focus assist is very cool for anyone who wants to manually focus on their camera and have a little 00:11:01.341 --> 00:11:04. elektronik assistance from the cameras. So let me 00:11:04.59 --> 00:11:07. show you a couple of videos of this working focused 00:11:07.4 --> 00:11:10. magnification is where it magnifies a small portion 00:11:10.9 --> 00:11:12. of the middle you can see kind of the crop over on 00:11:12.75 --> 00:11:16. the right hand side and we can navigate around kodak 00:11:16.46 --> 00:11:20. what's that that's like memory film from the old days 00:11:21.29 --> 00:11:24. and so you can check a magnified area to see if your 00:11:24.38 --> 00:11:27. image is sharply focused another option is called 00:11:27.03 --> 00:11:30. focus peaky and this is where it shimmers areas that 00:11:30.53 --> 00:11:34. are in focus in a color in this case white and you 00:11:34.88 --> 00:11:37. can see how we're focusing and moving that focusing 00:11:37.05 --> 00:11:40. a little bit forward and back and there's two things 00:11:40.69 --> 00:11:43. to know about this one is it really makes it easy 00:11:43.73 --> 00:11:45. to see the depth of field that you have and where 00:11:45.88 --> 00:11:49. you're focusing and for me number two it's very annoying 00:11:49.35 --> 00:11:52. to look at on a regular basis and so this is something 00:11:52.32 --> 00:11:55. that might be something that you would customize toe 00:11:55.55 --> 00:11:57. one of your function buttons that you would turn it 00:11:57.39 --> 00:12:01. on win and if you need it so that's a great customized 00:12:01.14 --> 00:12:06. feature to add in eyes under manual focus assist skin 00:12:06.42 --> 00:12:10. so you can either choose magnify or peking and I don't 00:12:10.72 --> 00:12:13. know it so I have the question right now that I'm 00:12:13.05 --> 00:12:15. asking myself but I'll ask myself out loud can you 00:12:15.63 --> 00:12:18. do both at the same time? I don't know and I will 00:12:18.27 --> 00:12:21. find out right now and so I'm going to turn magnifying 00:12:21.3 --> 00:12:25. on and I'm going to turn picking on, and 00:12:26.54 --> 00:12:29. it does both at the same time. Yes, so, yes, you can 00:12:29.49 --> 00:12:31. have your cake and eat it, too. 00:12:32.74 --> 00:12:33. All right. 00:12:35.99 --> 00:12:38. We're still on a folks page two 00:12:39.34 --> 00:12:42. home point. If you have a specific point that you 00:12:42.16 --> 00:12:45. want focusing to go back to on a press of a button, 00:12:45.84 --> 00:12:49. you can set one of the function buttons up to a home 00:12:49.1 --> 00:12:51. point where it always goes back to the same type system. 00:12:51.95 --> 00:12:54. So for instance, if you like it on all points where 00:12:54.47 --> 00:12:56. you like it on three points a little bit off to the 00:12:56.25 --> 00:12:59. left hand side, you can set a shortcut button one 00:12:59.4 --> 00:13:03. of the function buttons to be set home and program 00:13:03.12 --> 00:13:05. that in so that it just goes back there with one press 00:13:05.95 --> 00:13:07. of it button 00:13:09.28 --> 00:13:12. a f illumination. This is that little light on the 00:13:12.19 --> 00:13:15. front of the camera that will glow orange to help 00:13:15.04 --> 00:13:18. focus under low light conditions. It is very weak 00:13:18.78 --> 00:13:21. in wimpy and doesn't work over a very large distances, 00:13:21.5 --> 00:13:24. so I recommend just turning it off because it tends 00:13:24.24 --> 00:13:27. to be a little bit annoying sometimes for your subjects 00:13:27.09 --> 00:13:30. to have this light pointed at them, and it does so 00:13:30.48 --> 00:13:32. little good that's one of the reasons I'm turning 00:13:32.71 --> 00:13:35. it off is it's annoying, and it only helps out on 00:13:35.6 --> 00:13:38. subjects that are probably within one or two meters 00:13:38.54 --> 00:13:39. at the most. 00:13:42.45 --> 00:13:45. All right, next up is our face priority. We saw this 00:13:45.54 --> 00:13:48. before, directly on the back of the camera, with our 00:13:48.04 --> 00:13:51. aero pad. And we can go in here and choose the same 00:13:51.6 --> 00:13:53. functions and it's. Whatever function you have last 00:13:53.94 --> 00:13:56. chosen. And so you can kind of conflict each other. 00:13:56.95 --> 00:13:59. Because there are three different places. You can 00:13:59.02 --> 00:14:01. set this one on the back of the camera, too, in the 00:14:01.58 --> 00:14:04. super control panel and three here in the menu system. 00:14:06.79 --> 00:14:10. F area pointer is simply a little highlight that turns 00:14:10.58 --> 00:14:14. green. That shows you if your focus has been achieved. 00:14:14.48 --> 00:14:17. So this is kind of nice to have a little confirmation 00:14:17.27 --> 00:14:19. that, yes, you have achieved the right focus. The 00:14:19.69 --> 00:14:21. camera figured it out and is locked on.