How to Pre-Focus a Point and Shoot Camera, and Pose Your Subject

Okay, now that my computer is behaving itself....

If you've ever tried to capture a shot with a point and shoot digital camera where the main subject is off-center against a nice background (which you'd like included), then you probably know that sometimes that main subject is out of focus while the background is as sharp as a tack. The reason for that is because the camera's viewfinder was not positioned on the most important part of the composition, but was instead placed on the background on which it automatically focused.

You can remedy it in a safe, easy way by pointing at your main subject and taking the shot, but that will cut out some of that nice background you wanted to include. You can also step back a good deal more and take the picture from a distance and then crop it in your photo editing software, but that's not a good method either -- your capture will suffer.

So, that leaves pre-focusing your camera.

Point and shoot cameras have the handy capability of locking, or pre-locking, the focus at any point during the process of composing a photograph.

All it requires is first posing your subject were you'd like them in relation to the background -- usually off to one side or the other -- then focusing your camera directly onto the subject. When you're completely focused, press the shutter button halfway down and hold it there then move your camera into position to include the background elements you'd like. Then all you have to do is hold your camera as still as possible and press the shutter the rest of the way down.

That's all there is to it...mostly.

The actual act of posing, or positioning, your main subject is also an important aspect of digital photography. Some folks seem to have a natural knack for it, but others struggle for years to get it right. Trial and error can help with that, but for those who don't want to wait as they learn, there are ways to actively and immediately improve your compositions. A couple of my friends told me about a valuable and inexpensive resource called photography posing secrets that can be instantly downloaded from the web. I don't usually spend any money at all on my ventures, so I was skeptical, but from time to time I do come across something that's actually useful so I make a point of mentioning it publicly and I do believe this guide is immensely useful, plus it comes with 5 free bonuses.


When possible, I like to provide examples of the things I speak about here so below are some photos I took real quick to illustrate how utilizing the pre-focus feature of point and shoot digital cameras can save some of your shots. Not the best examples, but I think they show what I mean. I did not pre-focus on the first image and only the background leaves were in focus. I did pre-focus for the second image and the berry is much sharper and clearly in focus.


This example is out of focus.


This example is in focus.

That's it for today. Happy photographing, and good luck with all your main subject posing.