[Music] after talking to several
professional photographers recently I discovered they all share one simple yet
powerful camera adjustment that transforms their shooting experience right from the
start. in today's video I'm deep diving into this game changing technique and
how it can elevate your photography too [Music] so welcome back to another video so I've got
some settings or camera techniques I want to share with you today but I really want to di
Deep dive into the scenarios where you might want to use these particular settings it's
something I always change on every camera as soon as I pick it up the first time and I
know a lot of professional photographers use this technique as well later on we're going
to be heading out to do some Astro landscape photography as well which I'm super excited
about CU we meant to get a break in the sky about midnight so really excited about that
and I'll show you how to use this technique in the dark as well anyway lots to cover in
today's video so let's get stuck into it [Music] [Music] so the setting I want to focus on today no
pun intended is back button focusing but more importantly I want to highlight the specific
scenarios where this technique truly shines because I think it's an incredibly powerful
tool that can transform your photography when used in the right situations if you're not
familiar with this basically what we do is assign the focus acquisition to the rear
button on the back here instead of the more traditional method by half pressing the
shutter button now in default camera settings pressing the shutter button halfway focuses the
camera and pressing it fully takes the shot but this can lead to issues such as accidentally
refocusing when you don't want to which is obviously isn't very good but by separating the
focus function to a different button you gain way more control so the shutter button only captures
the image while the back button handles the focus in and this makes it much easier to maintain
Focus once you've got your focus locked into place so back button focusing is especially helpful for
shooting moving subjects like Wildlife because you can continuously track a subject by holding down
the back button while the shutter button is free to take shots whenever the moment is right you
know you're not worrying about losing focus so this is great for anything that is fastpaced
because you know you can maintain focus on a moving subject by keeping that back button pressed
but also shoot multiple images without having the camera refocus each time you press the shutter
button so before we get on to the next point which is super important I just want to touch
on what we'll be doing later on in the video So the plan is to head out to the sea stacks
down the Southwest coast of pem Brookshire and shoot the Milky Way because this time of the
year it's vertical around about midnight and I think if my planning is correct we can get the
Milky Milky Way directly behind the stacks in a vertical orientation and the forecast is to be
clear around about midnight so if all of this planning comes together hopefully we'll get a
really good shot something I've been wanting to do for a while so yeah tons of planning going
into this one so let's hope let's keep our fingers crossed that it all works out but we will see
but before we get on to that let's move on to the next point so another great reason for using
back butt and focus in is so you can easily switch between continuous and single Focus modes without
having to change of settings for example you can use continuous focus by holding down the back
button or you can achieve a single Focus lock by just pressing and releasing the back button
allowing for quick adaptability now I use this technique all of the time when I used to shoot
a lot of portraits so I would lock my focus on the subject's eyes using the back button to focus
recompose the shot without refocusing and capture multiple shots with the confidence that I'll
know you know that Focus will remain locked now if myself or the subject is moving moving I could
just hold down the back button knowing my focus would track the subject and for me this is one of
the biggest benefits to using back button focus in I think remember though you'll need to have the
continuous autofocus enabled if you want to make this work in this example I have my back button
pressed and as you can see it's maintaining Focus as I move closer to the camera in this example
I pressed and released the back button and the camera remains at a locked focal plane see how it
comes back into Focus as I return to my original position so for shooting Landscapes I leave
my focus mode in manual I then use the back button to focus on an object now once I've locked
focus by pressing the back button the camera won't refocus when I then press the shutter and it's
particularly useful when recomposing a shot after focusing on a specific subject I can now take as
many shots as I want knowing my focus Point won't change and this is how I focus for the majority of
my landscape images super simple but really really [Music] effective so it's time to fast forward
a few hours and please do join me at the stacks where we'll hopefully capture
this amazing Astro photography shot that I've been thinking about for some
time and then we'll come back and share a few more points about back
button focusing and why it can be so important I think when it comes to
astrophotography it's crucial to know the area well or at least to have scouted the
location during the day especially if you're near the edge of cliffs like I was for tonight's
shoot one unexpected challenge though was that the nearby oil refinery was gas flaring and lighting
up the low level clouds with a bright orange glow and I was really concerned at this point that
it might ruin the entire shoot despite that I set up my tripod attached my Fuji xh2 with a 13
mm VT TRX f1.4 and waited for about an hour for the skies to clear in terms of settings I plan to
shoot the Milky Way at 13 seconds F2 and so 3200 I found that stopping down from f1.4 to F2 really
helps to keep the Stars nice and sharp while 13 seconds is a sweet spot to avoid any Star trails
with this lens for this shot I'll be stitching a series of images together which will explain in
just a moment but here's the final image [Music] so I was actually quite pleased with the final
result and as you can see you know there was some cloud and Mist around on the horizon but I
think that does you know add I guess a certain amount of atmosphere to the image and I think also
the bright lights from the oil refinery actually help to shed some light on my foreground so this
image is a four shot vertical Panorama all shot at f2 the Milky Way shots are 16 images stacked for
noise reduction and the foreground is two Focus stacked images One focused on the stacks and one
on the immediate foreground so yeah in total this is a combination of 50 light frames and a further
20 I think dark frames which helped to reduce the noise even further and I think I'm super impressed
by the level of detail I was able to pull out of the nebulosity in the Milky way especially
especially in the lower part so in terms of focusing I put my camera into manual mode I took
the foreground images first I use my head torch to light up the stacks and the foreground and use
my back button to focus on those objects which I think is really helpful the stars are obviously
much more difficult this you've really got to dial that focus in with the focus ring typically I
will focus to Infinity zoom in on my LCD and just back off the focus a little bit until the Stars
reach their smallest the better your LCD screen is the easier this is yeah a couple of different
focusing techniques there to uh try out next time you're out and about in the dark and it's so
difficult isn't it working in the dark especially when you're right next to the edge of a cliff but
thoroughly enjoyable anyway I do hope you enjoyed this week's video if you did be sure to give it a
like and why not subscribe for more weekly videos like this up here you'll find another video that
you might like and over here there is a link to my ebook all about landscape photography composition
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reach new places anyway until next week take care