Zone Focusing in Street Photography
Introducing the technique
Once upon a time I was asked to photograph a party in someone’s home. It was winter, so by the time the party started there was no light coming through the windows. And in an effort to create atmosphere the hosts and turned the lights down low. Really low. After missing my first few shots while the autofocuses whirled away uselessly I realised I was going to have to fall back onto my street photography playbook and zone focus. It saved my evening.
Zone focusing in street photography is where you leave you lens in manual focus and pre-focus on a point a set distance away from you. Now, whenever a subject is within that distance of you, you know it’ll be in focus.
That’s really all there is to it. So…
Why use zone focusing when autofocus is so quick?
Yes, your autofocus will work fine 90% of the time. But there still plenty of reasons to master zone focusing, asides from the one I’ve already given you, which is that it will help you out when the light is just too low to rely on autofocus.
Street photography is all about capturing the decisive moment. Autofocus is fast but it isn’t instant. Zone focusing in street photography gives you one less thing to worry about and helps you respond even more quickly to the scene unfolding in front of you.
And the quicker you are, the less obtrusive you are as well. Candid shots stay candid; you won’t accidentally get in the way of the scene you’re trying to capture. If you’re nervous about photographing strangers or in a public place, it will make you even stealthier.
What you need to know
Whenever you use zone focusing in street photography , there’s a distance in front and behind the point of focus which remains sharp. This is your depth of field.
The major influence over depth of field is your aperture. The larger the f/ number, the larger your depth of field will be. So more of your image will be in focus if you use f/11 than f/2.8.
It’s also influenced by the focal length of your lens. Wide angle lenses create greater depth of field than zoom lenses, which is why street photographers using this method prefer using lenses in the 35mm-50mm range.
If you’d like to know precisely how much of your image will be in focus then search for a Depth of Field calculator online. There are a host of apps you can download to your phone as well.
How to do it
So when you’re ready to give zone focussing in street photography a try, here’s what you need to do:
- Make it easier for yourself by choosing a wide angle lens and an f stop of around f/8. When you’ve had practice it’s useful to know build confidence with larger apertures like f/5.6 or even f/2.8, but starting at f/8 will increase the odds your subject will be in focus.
- Take your camera and manually focus it on a set distance in front of you. Remember that distance – that’s now your zone of focus.
- Any time an interesting subject enters that zone, take a picture.
