I stink at manual focusing

T

tony404

Well-known member
Its just enough off to be annoying. I got one of the knockoff view finder magnifiers thats not helping. I was spoiled with my dvx100a lol. I have a canon 60d, any article, tutorial videos or advice you can give me? :)
 
The magnifiers arent working? maybe just close your Fstop a bit to get more in focus then.. I cant think of anything to fix someones eyesight.. :p

<no offence>
 
Use the button in the top right corner. Should magnify x5 and x10. Find your point of focus and then set your focus. Click again to get back to normal. Works great for me.
 
I'm in the same boat

I must believe this is cured with practice

apart from that, magic lantern is a great bonus: focus peaking is very helpful, and focus assist (10x zoom while recording) is even better if you can forget about the framing for a few seconds; it should be working on the 60D relatively soon...
 
Yeah i found when i 1st started that i was always a bit on the soft side. What helped me was getting away from lenses that had a traveling focus ring like the kit lens and moving to old primes. I did that and practiced by shooting outdoors stopped down a little bit (like f8-f16) and slowly worked my way to shooting at the faster f stops.
 
Anyone know if there's an easy way to reverse the direction you pull focus on a follow focus with Canon lenses? When I want to focus on something further away I have to turn the dial towards me, not away from me.
 
tony404 said:
Its just enough off to be annoying. I got one of the knockoff view finder magnifiers thats not helping. I was spoiled with my dvx100a lol. I have a canon 60d, any article, tutorial videos or advice you can give me? :)
Click to expand...


The letus hawk really helped me!
 
tony404 said:
Its just enough off to be annoying. I got one of the knockoff view finder magnifiers thats not helping. I was spoiled with my dvx100a lol. I have a canon 60d, any article, tutorial videos or advice you can give me? :)
Click to expand...

The Hoodman "Cinema Pro Kit" may be the best solution for the 60D due to it's mounting method. A "crane" mounts into the camera hotshoe, suspending the loupe (with 3x eyepiece) just behind the LCD folded in with screen side out. Mounting or unmounting takes only seconds so you can get it out of the way fast to fold the LCD out for different angle use.

Mine migrates from T2i or 7D to my 60D in seconds. Any slight realignment of the loupe over the LCD takes 20-30 seconds or less.

One other benefit is that the eyepiece is diopter adjustable. Not having that function could be part of your problem.
 
I'm crap at manually focusing too...

While ultimately all these people saying practice is the key are right, the thing is--why not make it easy on yourself?? I got myself one of those zacuto v-finders and it is an enormous difference. Trust me when I suck at focusing and with this thing you really can't go wrong. I don't think it attaches onto the 60d but maybe look into what this guy's saying about the hoodman...
 
he said he already has a nice hood, but for some reason he says it's not helping

I have one too, and in my case it's DIY so no zacuto love either, but in my case it's working marvels: I totally agree that it's a must-have, I couldn't even consider using the camera without it (but even with it pulling focus is not easy: only having time to focus using the 10x focus assist will give me consistently perfect results)
 
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If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Be thankful for the internet. 20 years ago I had to travel to the west coast to get an education. The basics, what I learned, is everywhere online now. Perfect practice makes perfect.
 
close ur iris. Most Super 35mm films are shot at about f4 (approx. APS-C sensor size). I usually shoot at either f2.8( and thats on f1.4 lens) or f4 depending on the situation. Obviously for wide shots i stop down even more. But yeh..use f4 and see if its still difficult.
 
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