Given that I am AVTinFOCUS, I guess I have a certain obligation for the focus in my images to be considered and sharp!
In Macro photography especially, it can be quite tricky choosing and achieving a point of focus, especially when working with a wide aperture. And once the point of focus has been selected, it HAS to be tack sharp to demonstrate that you nailed it!
For the past 6 months I have been using an Andycine X7 external monitor to check my focus. It’s so useful that I’m lost without it when I’m shooting away from base. It’s particularly useful when I’m shooting with my Lensbaby lenses, which are manual focus only.
The 7” Andycine X7 monitor can be used with a battery pack but, as they run out of charge super fast, I tend, when in my studio, to keep it connected to mains power. The X7 screen offers 2200 nits (the MacBook Pro is 500 nits) which is super bright and really useful in bright sunlight. Initially that led me to thinking that my images were brighter than they were - even though (silly me!) the histogram was shouting at me that this wasn’t the case!
The focus assist on the X7 is tremendous, and really supports my reason for using the monitor. And of course this is all relevant to other genres of photography - using the X7 is so much easier than relying on the camera’s small LCD screen.
For other specifics visit the Andycine site or view it on Amazon. There is a super YouTube video by Pal2tech which talks through the benefits and spec of the product. Frankly I think this guy’s videos are just great anyway!
I hope this was an interesting insight into my own approach - of course there’s still the subject of WHERE the point of focus should be! That, of course ,is somewhat subjective and forms part of our own creative approach.
I wish you happy shooting. let me know if you have your own unique approach to focus, I’d love to hear from you! And feel free to recommend the blog to a friend who might be interested.
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