Zone Focusing for Dummies
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- Опубліковано 27 січ 2020
- Focusing videos number 2 and number 3 out:
*Distance Scaling* (INTERMEDIATE):
• How to focus on Film l...
*Focus by FEEL* (ADVANCE)
• How to Focus by FEEL o...
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ig: @jae.fotos (street) / jae.fotos
ig: @jae.rose (personal) / jae.rose
Speaking for all of the dummies out here, THANKS for this easy to understand video on zone focusing! :) Keep up the great work...
in the old film days with a mechanical camera/lens we called this pre-focus. Doing weddings the rule was f5.6 everything 1/3 in front of the subject and everything 2/3 behind the subject would be in acceptable focus and it worked great. Now with the digital days I do trust the distance scale and it works great. For the record I think if you came from the film world that you do have a leg up on digital. Great video !!!!!!!
this is the kind of explanation I needed! I understand now why 80% of my shots are out of focus! lol. thanks you for this video!
This is so far the best explanation of zone focusing! Thanks a lot bro!
dude thank you for this video, I've watched so many and this one just helped make everything click
No problem brotha. I greatly appreciate your time and comment. Sometime down the road I'll make a "focus by feel" video.
Thanks for this video Jae, from one "dummy" to another. I used to shoot film back in the 70's and 80's but like most of us older farts, got away from it for a long time. I just ordered a Yashica Electro 35 GSN and never had a rangefinder before and sure never knew how to read all those hieroglyphics on the lens barrels. This was enormously helpful, thank you... stay safe during the CV pandemic!!!
I'm going to start shooting film on street soon. Thanks for helping me "shoot faster". My wife wont appreciate it.
hahaha, i'm glad this will help. And through my experience, the faster you shoot, the more you end up doing it and being alone :) Hashtag The Lone Shooter. Sorry, to the Mrs.
I knew what zone focusing was and had an idea of how it works but what I was confused about was how I know the amount of range that's in focus at that particular aperture. I didn't know what the scale meant under the feet/meter scale and now it all makes sense. The only video that covered all of the aspects in full detail, I appreciate you!
No worries!! If you stay tuned, within the next couple of weeks, I will drop a video on "focus by feel," where you don't depend on zone focusing, you can do it through intuition, muscle memory, and feel :) Next level shit haha.
@@jaeAre200 Hell yeah bro, I just copped a leica Q - went from fuji to sony in seek of full frame cause leica seemed too overpriced for me, but I made the plunge on a great deal for the Q and so glad I did, I'm a huge fan of the analog/retro style of cameras. Haven't gone out to play yet with it but I wanted to learn as much as I could about manual focusing cause I want to prioritize that from now on for my street shooting. How do you incorporate your zone focusing at night? That could be another video. Btw, I saw you in one of lintaro's old videos a while back, nice to see you doing your own thing my man.
Thank you for making this video! The visuals and the simple explanations gave me a little bit of confidence. Now to actually use the concepts ... stay tuned.
I do a quasi zone focus. When I bring my range finder to my eye, I'll do a "loose focus", even if the focus is not spot on. It's still within the "zone" or margin of error where zone focus takes over. If the person is far from me, I quickly throw my focus to near infinity and quickly bring it "closer" until I get it close to focus. If the person is near me, I do the opposite, I throw it to 3 feet (close focus) and quickly flick the focus further until I'm "near" focus.
Hasn't failed me yet, and dont need to worry about "am I in zone or not". Unless I'm doing some incognito, hip firing kind of street photography.
This was an awesome tutorial to watch. You didn't come off full of yourself. You spoke to, and not at us newbies to zone focusing. You made me want to purchase a manual lens for my dslr.
This has been really well explained. I liked the fact you wrote it down and made it more visual and easy to understand.
Appreciate it! I'm glad this helped. Some time down the road I'll do a similar video on "focus by feel." Stay tuned.
Love your humor and style! Best zone focusing video
Dude, this is the first time I actually understood 100% of it. Bought a rangefinder film camera a few days ago and was pretty confused about the whole focus thing. Thanks!
Great video! I unfortunately learned this the hard way with lots under focused behind the scenes shots with my telephoto. I’ve gotten better through trial and error, burb his definitely helps visualize and make more sense of the extreme narrowness of depth of field with longer lenses and shorter one as well. I definitely have to play around with this. I was actually looking for zone system videos to visualize my exposure and this popped up and is something I’ve wanted to learn more about but didn’t know the term.
Great vid Jae. Thanks a million. Very clear and concise
Didn't expect to stumble upon video this productive. This will help a lot, thanks!
Glad it was helpful!
This is a great explanation. Thank you.
Wow I now truly understand and appreciate zone focusing.. thanks for the great content 👍
Yup the best video! Thank you! Watched 5 videos and still did not understand it. This was very clear and made it a lot easier. Thank you!
Yea this was perfect, like a few others said everything just clicked.. thanks for this video, keep up the good work 👍
Glad it helped. Thanks for the comment and the watch.
Thanks for this... I'm a total dummy and a newbie to photography and this video helped me understand what the focus scale on a lens actually tells you XD .. makes me a lot more confident that I can creatively compose a shot now without spending ages looking through the viewfinder and checking my DOF preview. Great little lesson.
This video was amazing. Great job with examples and explanation. You are helping make it possible for me to shoot my Leica M3 now without needing the camera fixed lol.
Best video about zone photography 🙏
You're fun to listen to. Informative stuff, thanks!
Really useful video Jae, well done! Finally a comprehensive, step by step guide to zone focusing. Keep up the great work ; )
Thank you so much, I felt this video needed to be done and in a certain way that you should need to see this video ONCE and thats it. I hated youtubing 9 videos to figure this out. So I just figured it out myself haha.
jae rose I know exactly what you mean. Btw no idea why you don’t have a lot more followers. You got a great channel. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time anyway. Look forward to your next video 👊
@@TheLoneRangefinder Very very kind words. Thank you. Ehhh, in due time the followers will come I suppose. I'm not too worried about it. I have my own professional photography career I'm trying to worry about and this channel is my way of GIVING BACK to the photography and street photography genre that has helped me sooo much.
jae rose Thanks for the sub 😂 You’ve radically increased my following 🤣🤣🤣
@@TheLoneRangefinder Boom!! haha. Like attracts Like. Sub attracts Sub haha.
Loved your analogy
This was sooo helpful, thank you so much!
Brilliant! Thank you! 🤩
No worries. And thank you for your time and comment :)
Thanks for this! It totally clicked in my mind. I just started learning film photography with my vintage camera.
Thanks for this, this is the best explanation that i needed. I subscribed
Great video Jae! I missed most of my zone focusing shots before you explained it to me.
Haha, all good man! Glad I was able to help.
Thanks for this easy to understand video on zone focusing! Mycket bra!
Thank you for this!
I'm watching this holding my 50mm and thank you so much, I'm starting now with street photography and your videos are helping me a lot! :)
Thank you!!! I try to make videos that I wish myself had when I was first starting out, so I'm glad this is helping :) Enjoy the journey!!
Wonderful video, thanks!
Thank you for making this so simple. Getting back into film after more than 25 years and need this refresher.
Niiiiice!! Welcome back!!
Thank you for this video!
What a brilliant way is to explain the concept!
Haha, thanks so much! It took a little while for me to think, "How can I make this to where a simple person like me could understand this??" Boom!! Appreciate the watch and you taking the time out to comment.
Your zone focusing is just outstanding, now I have to try it and will let you know how did it go...
All about understanding and taking advantage of the depth of field of your lenses. Great explaination.
Yesss, indeed. Thanks for the watch and comment. Much appreciated.
This is how folk should learn focusing.. Top stuff jae
Just started with my film photography journey and this video was extremely helpful! I would love it if you made a video on "how to focus by feel". Thanks so much!
Hey, thanks! In the description, I have videos 2 and 3 of my focus series. I suggest watching them in order. But the last is "focus by feel"
This was quite helpful. I also laughed out loud at the metaphor of a condom and zone focusing. Thank you.
Hahaha, glad this helped and entertained a little bit. Thanks for the watch and taking the time out to comment. Much appreciated.
Great explanation, explained it in a very simple way, thanks very much
Great video and really clear... and yes would like to see the next one where you focus by feel.
Me too!
Thank you! The new video of FOCUS BY FEEL is uploaded. Hope you like it...go get it.
Great video - thank you so much!
Great tutorial, thanks man!
Now I finally get it! Thanks
haha, like i said, the videos on youtube weren't sufficient enough, so i had to learn it on my own with like 5 wasted rolls haha. Glad it helped though. Appreciate the time and comment.
This was awesome 👍🏼
I think zone focusing is still very applicable to digital slrs, as is hyper focus. I also love using a Ricoh GRiii because it's setup to show you your zones.
Wow that was really helpful! Very easyto understand
hey there! this is the first time i learned about zone focusing, and i understood the basics of it from your video! but as with other videos or articles i've looked into, you all referred to a manual slr, so you have exact control over the focus range in that case. on the other hand, i got a konica c35 ef for my first film camera and it uses zone focusing (fixed? 4 different settings), but i have no control over aperture (i can lock exposure though) and shutter speed.
do you have any insights how i can utilize zone focusing with this kind of camera? i'm still learning and practicing, but would greatly appreciate if you could give me some direction. thank you so much, i love your videos!
i work as a cameraman and i still found some information here helpful that I didn't really get before! thanks for this
Thanks for sharing that. It is really useful.
Pretty amazing video, I'm getting there slowly, thanks to you
Great vid.. very informative as easy to understand.. much appreciated..
Appreciate it man! Glad it helped. I might do an advanced level, "focus by feel" video :)
I finallh undertand it. Thank you
Thank u for this
Excellent! Thanks man.
No worries. Appreciate the watch and you taking the time out to comment.
what a great video. Thanks homie
Come for the tips. Stay for the condom analogy. Hahaha! Keep it up Jae!!!
Appreciate it brotha!! Since 18 yrs old, I've come a loong way...wait what.
That zone focusing analogy got me to subscribe
same
Hi man,
Best explanation yet. Wish I knew all this 30 years ago. D
amazing video brotherr
Great video! Might have been good to mention lens diffraction at f/16 so people are aware of the tradeoffs between improved zone distance and sharpness.
Thanks for that video!
Your actually not explaining zone focus, your showing hyperfocal distance because you using the infinity mark, zone focus is using the lens movable distance scale to line up the chosen f stop with the fixed f stop scale then reading from left to right between the two f8 marks and that gives you your zone of focus, infinity focus and zone focus are two different approaches
Martin Henson Yes, Exactly Martin. He is talking about the hyperfocal distance mostly use in Landscape Photography.
@@aungwinhtut6028so what is the difference between what he is showing and zone focus?
The difference is almost semantics. And why I PERSONALLY feel there are good teachers and not so good teachers because one stresses overall comprehension of an idea vs little details to stress that don't play much signficance in the overall-understanding. The difference is simply using the infinity marker as your end point ("HyPeRFOcal DisTAncE") (as I start beginners off with in the beginning of the video) and then ultimately moving your "end point" or "zone" to the F Stop given ie F16 or F8 on the lens to whatever distance suits your needs (where I eventually move the discussion in the video when there is less light to give proper exposure. So maybe they didn't watch the entire video???) thats it!! haha. It's actually laughable how negligeable it is, when you know the difference. And if you physically show someone the difference on the lens between the 2, you would look like an idiot for even stressing the difference.
That's not at all true. Just because he's using infinity as the upper constraint of the focal zone, doesn't mean he's describing hyperfocal distance.
To give you an example, on my canon FD 50mm f/1.8 lens, if I set my focus as he is showing here, with my aperture set at f/16, I have a focal zone ranging from ~2.5m to infinity. But the hyperfocal distance (calculated from the formula H=f^2/Nc+f, where f=50mm, N=f/16, c=0.029mm, giving H=50^2/(16x0.029)+50) is actually ~5.5m, meaning anything beyond this distance will be "acceptably" in focus. This doesn't mean that the range from 2.5m - 5.5m won't be in focus, but will be slightly less in focus than anything beyond the hyperfocal distance calculated. So he actually is describing zone focusing since he is discussing the ranges of focus for specific aperture stops, and not specifically the distance beyond which everything will be acceptably in focus. Hyperfocal distance is often confused to mean any focus extending out to infinity, but that is not accurate. Optics is the *focus* of my profession - see what I did there?
Wow dude.... thank you so much. Super helpful
Glad it helped!
Great video and thanks....
Thank you so much
Nice explanation 👌. I like the idea of mastering the camera eventually!
Thanks for the explanation.
Glad it was helpful!
Great video. Thanks for making this video.
Glad you liked it!
Thank you!
Nice to see you use an Olympus OM. Still the best SLRs made, in my opinion.
I've had to resort to using zone focussing on occasions. I shoot live music in small, mostly badly lit venues around London. Usually I shoot digital, but also take my OM1 or OM2 to shoot B&W as well. A little while back I bought a Samyang manual focus lens, but DSLRs are terrible for focussing manually as they don't have fresnel or split screens like you get on the OM, so I've had to zone focus with it, shooting wide open, because of the low light. Thankfully it's a 14mm f/2.8, so really wide, which does make it easier, and I'm usually really close to the band. Unfortunately, the lens doesn't have a DoF scale on it so it's mostly guess work, but most of the shots are sharp enough. Anyway, it's only rock'n'roll.
Mannnn, I certainly do not envy you trying to zone focus in dim places. Thats rough. BUT, the good thing is you have these tools to lean back on. You sound like you know what youre doing, so I feel bad for those who just do digital and have to HEAVILY rely on their machinery instead of sometimes doing it the old school way. Oh, and the OM1 is just a sexy looking camera all together. I believe it is up there with the Leicas with best looking cameras.
@@jaeAre200 I'm old school because I am old (or at least was born quite a while back). I love the OM cameras and have been using them since the 70s - not the same one as that original one died from abuse, although I still have the corpse. These days I have 3 x OM1, 2 x OM2 and an OM40, plus lenses from 24mm f/2.8 up to 180mm f/2.8, plus a bunch of winders and a couple of flashes. I do need to stay away from eBay, but I can't resist a bargain. I have them in the knowledge that they will outlast any digital camera, just as film will out survive any digital files.
So glad to find this video. I recently acquired a a Kodak Signet 80, (1958 Rangefinder)
I had been doing the whole focus via bringing the double image together FOR EVERY SINGLE shot... what a bunch of shit that was.
Anyway, I’ll give this a try.👍
Hahaha, for streetphotography, I have a rule, if the camera is to your eye and you have to focus and compose it, your too slow. In a month or so, I will have my final "focus series" video out where you can focus by feel. So when the light goes down and that "zone" is narrow as fuck, you can still nail that focus at F4 and below :)
Merci. I started to think that I was really stupid because I saw a lot video without understand. So, you saved me, even if it was english I understood a lot more than all the videos I saw before. :)
Well, you're not the only one, that's why I made this video because I felt stupid too. And I knew there was a better way to explain this haha. Glad the visuals help if my actual language didnt so much haha.
Very fantastic video bro! What is the road we should go down with our m6 in order to intuitively grasp the concept of focusing by feel like you have in time? I really enjoyed the video
Thank you! I just posted the last installment of my focus series. The FOCUS BY FEEL video is uploaded. Have fun and good luck.
That analogy in the beginning got me cackling 🤣🤣😭
Also this is a _phenomenal_ explanation. You deserve more attention!
Hey Jae! I didn’t “zone” out😁 awesome video, great-information, Thanks. 😎👍✌️
Well, I'm glad this was able to reach you in your specific time zone (see what I did there?)
jae rose Yrah, you’re “focused” on your audience-that’s awesome 😎📷✌️
Hey man, wicked video and a great explanation. Was just curious how you find exposure at f8 wandering round London, sounds like your pushing a stop or 2 most of the time on the stock itself but do you find you have issues with your shutter speed that you have to go a bit too slow to capture people wandering about without motion blur? Do you have a speed say 1/100-1/250th that you don't go slower than so you don't get heaps of motion blur? I have an M6 too and its great for shower shutter speeds and one of the advantages of a RF but just curious where you think the limit with what you can get away with is. Great channel though man your videos and thoughts about the analog life are real interesting/inspiring.
Many thanks for your sharing
Dude i did not understand the condom thing haha but this is the best tutorial about zone focussing i’ve ever seen! Thanks man! Great explanation!
Very very useful, thank you
Glad it was helpful!
Man! Should have seen this earlier. I think I missed one really nice shot. Hope it’s okay when I get the film back.
Hahaha, I feel you. I'm sure things will turn out just fine. Thanks for the watch and comment.
depth of field preview button for slr's is the missing piece! great vid bro! do the focus by feel vid!
Hahaha, I totally forgot about that button. Honestly, I've never used it, maybe once for portraits. But on the streets, that's the last thing i'm worried about when I have a split second to take my shitty photo :)
Thanks super helpful 👌🏽
Glad it helped!
Thank you...
Super useful ! Bravo
Glad you think so! Thanks for the time and the comment.
This vid really helped me get to grips with understanding zone focusing better. I have two questions: 1) what shutter speeds do you personally use when zone focusing?
2) I have a Minolta Hi-matic 7s ii with a fixed 40mm lens. Do you have any settings recommendations? I'm so new to photography but most vids are for 35mm lens. ✌🏻
Thank you!! I try not to shoot anything under 1/125 ss. As for the 40mm pancake style lenses, hmm...it's close to a 50mm so that "zone" becomes a little tight, so i would recommend trying to shoot at F16 IF YOU CAN on a sunny day, so you may have to lower your shutterspeed to 1/60th, which is still fine. OR start pushing your film +2 stops so your rating your 400 speed film at 1600 and that should let you shoot at F16 or so. Good luck! Have fun! Also, messing up a few rolls is just part of the process, so don't be discouraged. I shot 20 bad rolls until I figured out what the hell I was doing.
@@jaeAre200 Thanks so much for the advice & encouragement 🙂
Thanks hombre!
Great explanation. DoF app works wonders too.
Thanks for the video man, I'm shooting a Pen F with a 24mm lens making it a 35/36mm equivalent and I'm trying to figure out how I'm supposed to zone focus with this thing. Anyone know if DOF is affected due to the crop? Not sure if I should be looking at the distances on the lens or if I'd have to be going based off what a 35mm lens would. Anyone know?
Lmao you said trust it and I'm literally like... man this ain't gonna work. Ima do it though!
at first i was like wtf but nowwwwww i get it. thanks
I think we were all like this haha...glad it helped.
Great video. Thank you for sharing. I’m new to photography and I’ve just bought a Nikon z50 with a kit lens, DX 16-50mm. Can I do zone focusing with this kit lens? It does not have a ring to turn to infinitive. Should I buy a 35mm prime lense then? Please kindly advise. Thanks.
This is great provided you lens is correctly calibrated!!
Thanks for the video Jae..great explanation, but what about shutter speed? You still have to adjust speed on shots?
Hey no worries!! Yeah, unfortunately you still have to control shutter speed. So when I'm shooting my Leica M6, I'm only physically turning my shutter speed to match each lighting condition i walk into i.e.. shadow area, bright area etc. UNLESS you have a camera that is aperture priority, then my friend, you pretty much can point and shoot.
Every single video I watched today about this topic all had a hipster beanie on 😂 I was very surprised 😂