7 FOCUS POINTS

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When you focus with the EOS 300 are the lights on the green cross supposed to go out to indicate that so many points are in focus or should they all stay green.

Should one try and get them all to light up.

Stupid Jeff

-- Jeffrey Alan Herrington (jeffreyherrington@hotmail.com), February 28, 2002

Answers

i could get upto 6 points in focus but never all the 7 points. i wonder what happens when all the 7 points are green. it mean either all the points are in focus or none, the later being most likely.

-- sajeev (chack74@yahoo.co.in), February 28, 2002.

Hello Stupid Jeff. It's more like Stupid Canon [gasp! shock, horror!] The selection of points is done automatically by the camera, in a seemingly random manner (see http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=007X21 for when I asked about this){sorry there's no fancy link, I don't know how to do one}

"Are the lights on the green cross supposed to go out to indicate that so many points are in focus or should they all stay green?" If a point in one of the seven rectangles you see in your viewfinder is *in* focus by the camera's reckoning, the corresponding green square on the green LCD lights up to indicate this. When focusing is over, those squares which do not contain a focused pint will not be illuminated.

"Should one try and get them all to light up?" Well, you could, if you're a bit of a masochist, and like to take photos with very little depth. But wait, I'm expressing a personal opinion here - you want subjective analysis. To get all seven points in focus, you will have to find objects or points of an object which are all *exactly* the same distance from you and the camera. As you might imagine, a photo like this could take hours to set up (masochistic) and would probably involve one flat subject, parallel to the focal plane and filling the frame (boring) Still, it's your camera and your film, so do whatever you want. I think part of the point of the 7 sensors is that you can point the camera, and get *something*, never mind what, in focus, even if it's off to one side of the frame, allowing you to get idiot-proof in-focus pictures quickly. Compare this with my 10-year-old EOS 1000F, which only has one focus sensor, in the middle of the frame. If what I want in focus is anywhere other than in between those brackets in the centre of the frame, I have to focus, hold the shutter release halfway, and recompose. This is the big advantage of the 7 sensors, whatever bad points they may have re: random unhelpful auto point selection.

Remember Jeff, if at least one square is lit up, thtere's at least one part of the frame in focus. Just remember to check that it's the one you want before you click.

Happy Snapping!

Dave

-- David Miller (david_miller@btinternet.com), February 28, 2002.


I usually use only one manually selected focus point, with partial metering pegged to it. But I have found that the freewheeling 7- point arrangement (letting the camera select) and evaluative meeting work very well if you have to shoot "blind": holding the camera over your head in a crowd, etc. Canon cameras are pretty smart and can be trusted to make good metering and focusing decisions.

-- Preston Merchant (merchant@speakeasy.org), March 01, 2002.

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