Focus and exposure question

[Cpalmer03]

Hey everyone.

I was watching Ben Long's Foundation of Photography series and had a question regarding one of the techniques he used.

I put my auto focus only on the middle point. Would hold down the shutter button half down on my subject, but then move the camera to reframe the composition while still holding down the shutter halfway to keep they focus point.

Problem was. After I did that and kept it halfway held down, the exposure would be way off either way over or under.

Am I using this technique incorrectly. I saw him do it on a video. It was in a lighted room with consistent lighting.

 

[aavivi]

Yeah, that when you use your thumb to press that AE-L button... For me, it might just be enough of a pain, so I just move to manual...

 

[OrionsByte]

When you press the shutter halfway down, it locks both the focus AND the exposure. So depending on what's in the scene before you recompose, it's probably throwing off your camera's metering.

There are a couple ways you can account for this. The first would be to use your AE-L button to lock the exposure separate from the focus. So you would compose the scene, hold down the AE-L button, find your focus target, press the shutter halfway (while still holding the AE-L button), recompose again, and shoot.

The other way to do it would just be to dial in some exposure compensation. For instance if you focus and recompose and the scene ends up too bright, you can dial in some negative exposure compensation and just try again.

Ultimately though, you're going to need to get away from using the center focus point all the time. Your camera has all those other ones for a reason and learning when it's advantageous to use them would be a good thing to work on.

 

[dianaeftaiha]

sounds like youre doing it right! just to be sure, when you take the shot you dont take your finger off and re-press right?

 

[Cpalmer03]

Thanks for all of the responses. The person who owned the camera before me had switched the settings and controls so the e lock wouldn't work. But I got it now. Thanks again!

 

[Garbz]

When you press the shutter halfway down, it locks both the focus AND the exposure. So depending on what's in the scene before you recompose, it's probably throwing off your camera's metering.

That's not right. Nikons limit the exposure adjustments when you halfpress the button down and are shooting with Matrix metering on but it still allows quite some latitude in automatic adjustment. They don't limit at all when shooting centre weighted or spot metering and there's no difference between half-depressed and recomposing vs composing with manual focus.

This default action can be overwritten setting custom menu function C1 "Shutter release button AE-L".