What is Single Point Autofocus?
- Action Photography - Using one small area or point to set focus improves our tracking ability and will usually result in more sharply focused images when using continuous servo autofocus.
- Macro or Close Up Photography - Especially if we compose the main subject off-center, dynamic area AF will often set focus for the background or will hint back and forth. Single point autofocus can be adjusted on most modern cameras to allow for off-center subject placement.
- Portrait Photography - Very useful with Back Button AF or any Focus Lock feature our camera may have, single point autofocus is an important tool for portrait photographers, for some of the same reasons as listed above for close up photography.
- Small Product or Still Life Photography - The same reasons as portraits, not all products or still life compositions are composed alike, single point autofocus lets you decide on what is in sharp focus, perhaps to accentuate the product or an aspect of the still life.
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What is single point autofocus and how can it be used to improve our photography?
Single point autofocus, which some brands may call single servo autofocus, is the camera using one small area for determining the autofocus. It’s a setting that gives you some extra control when using autofocus.
Single Point Autofocus vs Single Shot AF (AF-S)
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Reading the terms, it could be easy to confuse the AF-S setting with single point autofocus, but these are describing different tools and controls.
What does single shot autofocus mean? AF-S is the setting used that prevents the camera shutter from actuating unless the AF is confirmed. The setting is great for most of our photography, but for action photography, using continuous autofocus (SF-C) or continuous servo might be a better choice since it lets us trigger the shutter without a focus confirmation.
Single point autofocus is how we tell the camera what area of the viewfinder we want to use for determining autofocus. In other words, AF-S is what the camera does, single point autofocus is what it’s focusing on.
How to Change Single Point Autofocus
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How to change single point autofocus will depend on your exact camera model. Cameras of the same brand might have different controls, so you’ll want to look at your instruction manual or a guidebook specific to your camera for finding the settings.
On an entry level camera or any camera older than a few years, the way to change to single point autofocus is probably going to be accessed by the camera menu. Look for the AF controls in the menu, they won’t be too deep.
For intermediate, prosumer, and full-fledged professional level cameras, there is likely to be a dedicated camera body control for this function. With some cameras, even if they don’t have a specific control button, wheel, or joystick, the menu allows you to set up existing buttons or switches for alternate use, such as changing focus points.
Once you find the actual single point autofocus control method on your camera, take some time to practice with it so you’ll be totally familiar with it in a picture-taking situation.
Why Use Single Point Autofocus?
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Why would we want to use single point autofocus? In a word: control. Current autofocus technology is amazingly accurate and often far quicker than we could manually focus, but the camera still needs to be told where to autofocus in a lot of common situations.
Here are a few examples of when to switch out of whatever dynamic area AF our camera uses and instead use single point autofocus:
Find out where the control or menu setting is for single point autofocus in your camera and use it to control the superb AF technology for the results you want.
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