Making movies
There’s a lot of mumbo jumbo around focusing, so we aim to conjure up the mojo of moviemaking sharpness Focusing your skills
PART FIVE
This series is designed to help novice filmmakers get to grips with the essentials of making movies. In every 2023 issue so far, we have been covering key parts of the process, including camera skills, audio advice and editing tips. Follow along each month and, by the end of the year, you’ll have all the advice to be the next Spielberg! Your teacher is Adam Duckworth, editor-in-chief of our sister title Pro Moviemaker. This instalment covers focusing while filming.
WORDS BY ADAM DUCKWORTH
HELPING YOU FOCUS Extras like a follow-focus and external monitor make all the difference for shooting movies
IF YOU’VE BEEN taking photos for many years, you may remember the switchover to autofocus from all- manual. It took some people a long time to trust the camera to do the focusing, but now it’s by far the most commonly used method of keeping your images sharp. Manual focus is usually reserved for macro work or architecture – shots with the camera locked down on a tripod. In the world of making movies, that transition from manual to autofocus hasn’t happened yet. Manual focus is still preferred by serious filmmakers, although AF is coming on in leaps and bounds, and is often the easiest way to get going when starting with video – if you choose the right settings. Why video AF is more complex With stills, you want AF that acquires focus as quickly and accurately as possible and stays locked onto the subject. When it’s in focus, you take the shot – not before. The AF usually needs to lock on to a static subject or keep up with a person or object in motion, and stick with them. Aided by face detection, eye detection and all the other mod cons that have come along largely thanks to on- sensor phase detection in higher-end mirrorless cameras, AF for stills has
and controlled, ideally speeding up in the middle but slowing down as the new subject comes into focus. This is possible in some advanced systems, where you can set the focusing speed and have a way of controlling where the focus point is going from and to – often with a touchscreen where you tap to focus on a subject. Alternatively, some AF lenses even have start and finish points controlled by buttons on the lens or by software, such as in Tamron’s latest lenses that you can plug into your computer or control via smartphone. Know your AF system Many cameras use a less advanced contrast-detection system, which can make AF look even worse when shooting video. This system keeps focusing as it detects the image is coming into focus. But it carries on until it recognises the shot is now going out of focus, then quickly reverses to go back to where it believed the shot was sharp. This back-and-forth hunting is what gave video AF a bad name. Mirrorless cameras have led the way with systems that combine
never been better. Some advanced cameras let you take or upload a photo of the desired person so the AF knows who to look for. You can even tell it which eye to focus on – and the dreaded AI is only pushing AF technology ever further. In stills shooting, if the camera suddenly loses focus then snaps back to sharpness again, you may have an un-sharp shot or two but you’ll just take more photos. For example, take a bride and groom walking down the aisle. If the camera misses focus then quickly re-acquires it, you’d keep shooting and still have lots of images to choose from. In video, however, if the camera suddenly goes out of focus then back in again, it looks awful and the shot is often ruined. In the bride and groom example, the video is useless as a continuous take. Not ideal. A traditional movie shot is the focus pull. This is where the focus racks from a near to a far subject – or vice-versa – to move the viewer’s attention through the scene. If you shot this with really fast AF, the focus change would be far too quick and jarring. It needs to be slow
“Manual focus is still preferred by serious filmmakers, although AF is coming on in leaps and bounds – and is often the easiest way to get going” MOVING AND GROOVING A momentary slip in focus can ruin a shot – which is why focusing in filmmaking can be a different beast to what photographers are used to
Issue 107 | Photography News 27
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