I find it so helpful when I read posts by other photographers and how they got to where they are today. So, every so often I will post some tips and some things that I have learned that I think might help out you fellow photographers. One thing that I absolutely love is back button focus! I’ve been using this for a while now and this is something that you’ll either love or hate. It might take a little while to get used to, but after about a week or so you’ll get the hang of it! I personally love it and it had been ingrained in my muscle memory; it just makes sense to me!

So, you’re out with your clients shooting some portraits and you don’t have a focus point exactly where you want it to be, so you press the shutter release half way down, focus and recompose, take the shot, then repeat the process because as soon as you press the shutter again it will refocus. The focus-and-recompose technique is perfectly great and works well for a lot of photographers, but I didn’t love having to recompose every time I took a shot. This is where back button focusing comes into play.

Before I get into how to set up back button focusing lets talk about focus points. On most cameras, mine being the 5D Mark II, there are 9 auto focus points. One in the center and 8 surrounding that point. The center point is the strongest while the rest are much weaker. You can toggle between any of the 9 points based on where your subject is, but sometimes your subject doesn’t lie within any of the points. So you can choose to leave it at the center point and focus and re-compose (hold down the shutter release over your subject until you see the auto point turn red then re-compose to your desirable shot), but your subject may move out of the focal plane while it’s focusing or you may accidentally release the shutter and have to start over. There are cameras out there that offer more auto focus points and ones whose outer points are much stronger, but the above is still a factor when you’re shooting quickly and trying to capture moments! 

In the image below the subjects are off of the center auto point and to achieve this I would have had to hold down the shutter until they were in focus and then recompose to create this image. Then for any I wanted to take after that I would have to repeat the process. What I did instead was use back button focusing which allows you to separate the shutter release from focusing the lens. I know what you’re thinking, you would switch from one button to two?? Yes! With the focus being controlled by the a different button on your camera you’re able to focus and keep it the entire time you’re shooting without having to refocus your shot! I can keep shooting as long as my subjects don’t move out of the focal plane.

Here’s how you can set it up on the 5D Mark II (keep in mind each camera is different so you may need to check your manual to see how to set it up on your camera):

Go to your menu button and scroll over to the custom functions menu.

Scroll down to Custom Function IV and then change the default setting of 0:Metering + AF Start to 2:Metering start/Metering + AF Start. What this does is it changes the shutter to only activate the in-camera meter and take photos and moves the auto focus capability to the AF-ON button on the back of your camera.

 Now you’re all set! This will take some time for you to get use to and keep in mind that the camera will still take the photo even if it isn’t in focus. So it takes a little practice!