A few weeks back my friend Evan Baines posted an image that he shot during a wedding. He had a 21mm, set it on f/8 and zone focused. His goal was to stop thinking about technicalities and start focusing on emotion and composition. Ever since I saw that post, I have really wanted to take this challenge myself. Too often I think I (we) lean on depth of field as a crutch. So, this weekend I set my 24 on f/8 and shot for a little while on one of my camera. I only did it for about 15 minutes by I can DEFINITELY see myself doing this more. It was SO helpful.
Here's a few of my favorites from the short period of time. If you get a chance to do the f/8 Challenge yourself, post some in here!
i like the idea, but i dont think it would do anything to me. it would increase keepers ratio at expense of more heavy background (i would have to start thinking more about background knowing i shoot at f8) and that's all. I don't care much about focusing or settings during documentary.
I have my camera in M mode, +/- adjust something when i enter another room but most of the difficult time, just have auto iso to help, other time just guessing and focusing manually. I throw some photos with good content which was ruined by bad focus, but manual focusing produces only minor-bad focus, only auto focus can produce completely OOF image when it hunts.
mineymole wrote:
I can't agree with you more Tony and was just discussing this with Alan.
Haha! I was shooting from the hip with my 28 at f/5.6 with marginal success. Next time I'll try looking through the viewfinder.
BTW, street shooters have been doing this (using hyperfocal distances) for years. The images posted above are great samples. In good light, you can get some really good stuff.
Totally. I was mainly trying it at the reception during dancing. It was very low light, and my mark 3 was having a tough time nailing focus. So, I just rocked it to f8, focused manually, and went for it. It worked great! I plan on trying this much more often in regular situations.
I dig these Tony. That ceremony shot is especially pretty dang cool if you ask me. I shoot a LOT of my dance floor reception coverage at f/8 with a wide lens, zone focus, and look for a lot of layers of expressions and action. I feel like I should start transitioning this to other parts of the day though. I've recently started incorporating it into my preparation coverage here and there when using my rangefinder, just because I feel like that camera was built for it.
