Backlighting Photography Tips | Use Manual Focus
© 2013 Wazari Wazir | Mother and Daughter | Backlighting Photography | 50 mm | ISO 200 | 1/400 | F/2
Previously I’d wrote about backlighting photography tips, but that one focus more about getting the right exposure, because shooting into the light or backlighting can be very tricky to get the right exposure, using Program Mode usually is not the right choice because your camera meter can easily be fooled by the huge amount of light coming to the lens and most of the times, your subject will get underexposed. So the best thing that you can do to overcome those problems is to switch to Manual Mode and use Spot Metering.
The other tricky things when it comes to shooting into the light or backlighting photography is that, sometimes it can be a problem to get your subject in sharp focus, depending on your camera model, some of them tend to hunt but can’t really lock a focus, I’ve the same problem using my Canon 5D Mark II camera, it is very hard to lock the focus, maybe 5D Mark III have a great improvement over Mark II.
So how do I overcome the problem? I switch to manual focus, I’ve to focus manually to get a sharp image, at first it can be tricky to focus manually because you really can’t see the subject clearly because the backlighting is so strong. In my case, it is quite hard for me to focus on my daughter eye, I need to take few frames until I get something that is really sharp or acceptably sharp and I need to use fast shutter speed to prevent camera shake that will turn my focus point into something else.
To those of you who are still struggling to get a sharp image when photographing backlighting, I really suggest you to try switch your camera to Manual Focus, yes it will take few some time for you to get use to it but just give it a try. There is a reason why “Manual Focus” or MF/M button is there. Depending on your camera model, the location of the manual button may vary but normally it is located either at the camera body or on the lens itself.
Now you know what you need to do when dealing with tricky situation like backlighting. No matter how advance you camera model are, sometimes, we all need to get back to basic and learn how to shoot manual focus to get a better result just like in the old film days when everything was in manual, photographers still can get a sharp images covering Olympic Games with fully manual focus lenses back then. How hard can it be photographing a helpless baby that can’t run using a manual focus.
*Related Post : Backlighting Photography Tips
