Spot Focus. Follow up to AnnieAK's comments

[spectr17]

Getting the image focused like I want seems to be one of my biggest headaches. After reading AnnieAK"s comments on spot focus I was wondering if I should use this feature more often.

I usually have autofocus on and go to manual focus if I'm shooting through clutter in the foreground. On my digital Oly 2100 it's so hard to tell if something is in focus in the viewfinder.

My camera has a spot focus or iESP settings. iESP focus selection is based on the whole image in the screen. Spot focus selection uses just the image within the AF target mark. iESP is the factory preset setting and is what I've been using.

Do you have any tips on focusing your camera?

 

[WildBird]

Jesse - What I do if focus is a problem is to zoom in tight to an area that I want to be in sharp focus and use spot mode to lock (AF center marks) on to an area with contrast. A horizontal line if viewing horizontally, or horizontal line if viewing vertically. I then keep the shutter release pressed half way to retain the focus and recompose the scene. WB

 

[AnnieAK]

Jesse,
I use spot focus all the time, not just for focus, but also to figure out what exposure to use. I've started using my Oly C3000 in manual exposure mode, but auto focus quite a bit. That way I can control the F-stop and speed for whatever kind of picture I'm taking. I seldom use the viewfinder to compose the pic, I use the LCD. Depending on how far away your subject is, the center of the viewfinder is not the same as the center of the LCD, and you're using spot focus, that is a problem. I found that out taking really closeup flower shots. My problem then with using spot focus is figureing out just exactly where the "spot" is, since there's no indicator on the LCD screen. This is can be critical if you've got a narrow DOF and you're trying to focus on a rather small object. I took 11 shots of a spruce grouse last week, and 10 of them were completely worthless because I managed to focus just a couple of inches off her head, and the settings were such that it made the grouse blurry. (the 11th pic was only so-so.)
I'm just about ready to say to heck with it and save up for a digital SLR!
Annie