goldengod

Soul by Bill Selak

That’s right folks, you need to learn to use manual focus or Bad Things will happen. Fortune-teller threats of calamity aside, you need to learn how to use manual focus for low light situations. Digital cameras have a hard time focusing in dim light and you have to be able to adapt.

Compare and Contrast

As far as I know, most consumer-level compact cameras and DSLRs use contrast measurement as a method of passive autofocus. Wikipedia explains it better than I can:

Contrast measurement is achieved by measuring contrast within a sensor field, through the lens. The intensity difference between adjacent pixels of the sensor naturally increases with correct image focus

In a low light situation everything appears dim and gray to your camera, even if you can see detail without much trouble. The camera will find it more difficult to determine the contrast and thus, can’t focus. Enabling the infrared AF-assist beam can help, but it’s not foolproof.If your camera is having trouble focusing, you should take the plunge. Switch over to manual focus to get the shot.

When to Use Manual Focus

The situations where I use this technique the most are concerts and night photography. I’ll often find myself switching to manual focus when I’m shooting in someone’s house without additional lights.

Unless you’ve really practiced this, bump your aperture up a stop or two. This gives you a bigger margin for error by increasing your depth of field. When you’re shooting under pressure, you need all the extra margins you can get.

Practice Makes Perfect

Using manual focus in these situations is great practice, especially for photographers like me. I’ve become far too reliant on the automated nature of modern cameras. It’s second nature for people to take shortcuts but going the long way will help you take better photos in awkward situations.

Any photographer worth their salt should be able to work in full manual, but it’s a skillset you need to work hard to develop.