Zone focusing – a useful technique. A guide for the Fujifilm X100 and beyond… | Paul Russell
Zone focusing is a useful technique for manual focus cameras, and for cameras with a slow autofocus. It involves setting the focus to a certain distance and then relying on depth of field (the zone) so that everything that you want to be in focus will then be sharp, or sharpish, in your photos.It was the method relied on by old masters like Cartier-Bresson, who didn’t have autofocus cameras.* It’s useful for wide-angle lenses, as they naturally have a big depth of field.I use zone focusing for street photography on my Fujifilm X100 because the autofocus isn’t really fast enough for many situations where you need the camera to focus instantly. Using the manual focus mode (switch on the side set to MF) and setting the focus distance to about 11 ft, I know that at f/8 the focus will be good from 6 feet to almost infinity. In manual focus mode on the camera, you don’t have to wait for the camera to focus – it’s instant….