Mastering zone focus on leica M

Manual focus techniques are useful to increase the success of getting the focus right for street photography.
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[@bernym4047]

I tried this method a couple of days ago before watching this and was quite surprised and pleased with the number of 'keeps' I got. Thank you.

[@MortenAlbekPhotography]

Good to hear that. It works better than it may seem.

[@ianforber]

Great video. I’ve never mastered zone focusing properly. I use 35mm and 50mm on my Leica M and I always use f11 or so to maximise the chance of hitting focus, along with using low-continuous drive mode. For many shots that’s ok as I want the background also to be in focus but I’m jealous of people who can manage to get pictures with shallower depth of field in faster moving environments. Do you ever prefocus at, say, two metres ahead and then fire the shutter when you judge someone walking towards is about that far away?

[@MortenAlbekPhotography]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I do set focus a little in front of people and also at closer distances from time to time when they are moving. Either by finding a spot to focus on a little closer and making the pre-fokus there. Or I try setting it directly at a part of the person and then push the focus a little closer and wait for them to walk into the zone in focus.
It all takes a little training and I have practised this for years so I often nail it. But as with autofocus there also are some that are missed.

[@mhaney1111]

Do you have an opinion on back-button focusing? It seems to me that it addresses all of the issues that you described and makes zone focusing easy. On some cameras like my Canon you can enable manual focusing while in AF mode so you have the best of both worlds.

[@MortenAlbekPhotography]

Yes and no. No, because everyone needs to find their own best practise and what works for one of us may not work for another. Also depending on the camera and lens you use.
Yes, because my approach is to practise one metod and be very good at it. Repeating is all it takes and manual focus isn't as difficult as it sounds.
It all depends on your way of shooting and what you photograph. Maybe not a clear answer but an honest answer.
If you shift too much between methods of operating the camera nothing becomes a habbit, and more time will be used on buttons than on taking the photo in the right moment.

[@Alcoleaa]

Awesome video, new sub, keep them coming, nice job.

[@MortenAlbekPhotography]

Thanks 🙏

[@Leicashootr]

Fantastic job 👍🏻

[@MortenAlbekPhotography]

Thanks. Glad you find it useful 🙂

[@USGrant21st]

I used a lot of legacy lenses, they are cheap and cool, but I found manual focusing pretty much impossible with modern cameras. Though most of them have some form of focus peaking, it's still too imprecise. In some cameras you have a "hamburger" that shows whether your focus is point before/behind the subject, it's very precise, but it takes incredible patience to use it, and even a tiny move of camera or focus ring causes a misfocus. Of course, sometimes you may not care, but if a person's eye on a portrait is not razor sharp, it will spoil the picture. You can see even a tiny misfocusing on 4k monitors. We got away with manual focusing in film days because the pictures were blurry for various reasons and usually prints were quite small in size.

[@MortenAlbekPhotography]

Manual focus do need practice and for some it newer become their thing. I just used a Sony camera with autofocus and face detection but the focus was on the glasses and not the eye. I would have liked to redo it with manúal focus to nail the eye on that one. There is a trade off to everything I guess. :-)

[@USGrant21st]

@@MortenAlbekPhotography practice? how much practice? I was using manual focus for several years before Sony finally made good lenses. Practice is useless if you are going against physics. You can't precisely manually focus for many reasons. You only destroying your eyesight.
As too AF missing an eye, that happened with some old Sony cameras and/or poorly adjusted lenses. It doesn't happen to most people nowadays. You are an order of magnitude more likely to miss an eye manually focusing.

[@MortenAlbekPhotography]

@@USGrant21st I can only say it works for me. I use both manually focused lenses and automatic focus lenses depending on the job and the mood. As I said it isn’t for everyone and that’s a personal preference. 😊

[@USGrant21st]

@@MortenAlbekPhotography fair enough, but you need to realize, what works for you doesn't work for the vast majority of other people, you shouldn't set novices up for failure.

[@MortenAlbekPhotography]

@@USGrant21st That’s taking it too far I think. I have been asked to do a video about zone focus. This includes manual focus and I don’t think I say anybody should do it but I explain how to if someone wants to do it. It isn’t so difficult to be honest.

[@jos_t_band3912]

What a hassle.

[@MortenAlbekPhotography]

Thats the deal with manual focus.

[@dayeah765caoni3]

@@MortenAlbekPhotographyawesome Chile’s response!