What is Manual Focusing?
Manual focusing is where you adjust the camera so that a specific item or person is clear or you can do the opposite and make them blurred and not so clear to see. When filming it is useful to use manual focus if you wish to control the clearness of something without relying on the camera to focus on whatever is wants. This is done on most cameras by rotating the lens wheel on the front of the camera.
What are the benefits of Manual Focus?
Manual focus allows the person using the camera to be in control of what is in focus and what is out of focus. In some films, manual focus is needed to portray and capture certain shots to get across important people or objects that are key to your story line.
Below are two different types of focus terms that will be useful if you wish to focus or blur out certain parts during shots in a filming:
Soft Focus
Where the image is in focus but the edges of the object are slightly blurred, as though they are blurring into the out of focus
background.
Sharp Focus
The image outline is in full focus
and is sharply detailed. It means that the image in the foreground of this image stands out against the background more than if it is soft focused. This is all down to the pull focus.
What is Depth of Field?
This is the distance between the nearest object in focus to the camera and the furthest object in focus.
The two types of focus we have been looking at are:
- Shallow Depth of Field
- Large Depth of Field
Focus Pull
Focus pull is where the camera is taken from one depth to another in just one shot. If the camera focus has a shallow depth of field where the background is not in focus but the foreground is during the shot the camera focus switches so the foreground is out of focus but the background is in focus. A common example of a focus pull is in a movie where someone is being followed and you wish to show the victim or person being followed in focus to start with, then focus pull so that the stalker is in focus instead.
Here is an example we created when testing out how focus pull works.
Now here is a clip from the latest James Bond film Skyfall. This clip shows focus pull being used when Daniel Craig (James Bond) holds up the gun. The focus pull switches between the actor being in focus then the gun. This happens at 0.49 seconds so watch out for it.
