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Focus to Infinity?

Shane422Shane422 Registered Users Posts: 460 Major grins
edited October 17, 2007 in Technique
Pheasant season begins soon in Iowa and I've shot a lot of birds with my 12 gauge, but was thinking that this year I might enjoy taking pictures while others enjoy the hunt. These birds appear out of no where and fly fast. I was thinking of walking with the camera autofocus off and just leave it locked on infinity. So my question is, what will be in focus at infinity, and is this the best scenario to work with this fast action kind of shooting where you don't know where the action will be (we don't have a dog to point them). I'm also assuming that I'll adjust the exposure settings to freeze the action and give me the greatest DOF. So maybe f9 at 1/400th.

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    SloYerRollSloYerRoll Registered Users Posts: 2,788 Major grins
    edited October 17, 2007
    Shane422 wrote:
    Pheasant season begins soon in Iowa and I've shot a lot of birds with my 12 gauge, but was thinking that this year I might enjoy taking pictures while others enjoy the hunt. These birds appear out of no where and fly fast. I was thinking of walking with the camera autofocus off and just leave it locked on infinity. So my question is, what will be in focus at infinity, and is this the best scenario to work with this fast action kind of shooting where you don't know where the action will be (we don't have a dog to point them). I'm also assuming that I'll adjust the exposure settings to freeze the action and give me the greatest DOF. So maybe f9 at 1/400th.
    Depends what kind of day it is. I'd say bump up your aperture a bit more than that to open up your DOF. Depending on the camera, you may want to bump the ISO as well so you can keep the higher shutter speeds. (Strike that, the D50 is pretty horrible at high ISO's}I know since I own one}) It's a great camera though!

    I don't think MF @ infinity is your best bet. I'd say eyeball how far the birds will usually be away, AF lock on something that distance, then switch to MF. If a bird is out of your DOF it wasn't meant to be.

    I'm interested in hearing what pro's have to say about this though.

    -Jon

    I almost said to post this in Nature & Wildlife. Then I realized they would probably lynch you...
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