I’m going to bet you that most of you don’t know the trick that I’m about to break your brain with. All the manufacturers like to spew at you is marketing jargon. And what’s more, most YouTubers and influencers don’t really know how to use their cameras all that well. You probably didn’t know that getting the fastest autofocus with any camera isn’t really about having the fastest focusing lenses or anything like that. Instead, it’s about foresight.
In a conversation I recently had with Reviews Editor Alberto Lima, he reminded me that using zone focusing is honestly so much faster than autofocusing in various situations. He was talking about photographing people at an event. But it’s also how many documentary photographers, photojournalists, and even some portrait photographers work. It isn’t about focusing in the moment, it’s about pre-focusing. That’s what zone focusing is, and we’ve got a lot of info about it.
You can do zone focusing with the autofocus lenses you currently own, but zone focusing is honestly best done with manual focus lenses. The reason is that autofocus lenses are designed and optimized for speed — so they don’t really allow for human touchups all that well. Trust me, if you’ve ever used autofocus and then tried to manually touch up the focusing, you’ll understand how difficult this is.
To zone focus a lens, stop it down and focus it out to a certain distance. For example, using a 35mm lens on a full-frame body, you can stop the lens down to around 6 feet away and anything from 5 feet to maybe 8 feet should be in focus. Ensure that the lens and camera are set to manual focus and then all you need to do is walk up to the subject, make a photograph, and you’re all set. That’s often much faster than using scene detection, face detection, etc.
Of course, this won’t really work at telephoto lenses all well. I’ve tried it before and while it’s possible, it’s really hard to do. I remember a decade ago testing the Zeiss 135mm f2.8 Batis lens for Sony and finding that zone focusing with it was almost useless.
So what kind of photography is zone focusing best suited for:
- Wide angle
- Normal focal lengths
- Street photography
- Event photography
- Photojournalism
- Documentary photography
- Portraiture
- Product photography
- Landscape photography
- Travel photography
- Real Estate photography
- Still life photography
- Architectural photography
- Astrophotography
- Fashion
The only types of photography where I wouldn’t really recommend zone focusing for are sports, wildlife, and birding. It can be really difficult because you need to use longer telephoto lenses and you’re also suffering from subjects moving very, very fast. That’s not to say that it’s impossible; it’s just really difficult because of how erratic the movements can be at times. So instead, it’s just improbable.
Zone focusing is also really best done with a lens that’s designed for manual focusing first and foremost. Those are the lenses I really try to reach for these days anyway for several reasons beyond just outsourcing the autofocus to the camera.
Eventually, we’re all just going to be creating the same images if we don’t take more creative control over the process of making them.