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Infinity Focus?

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T-Sin
Posts: 870 - Karma: 8,777
a lot of times when I shoot photos of sports, particularly skiing, I like to use infinity focus. I was just wondering if you guys use this at all or do you focus on the spot you want, then shoot the action?

I like my results, but another photographer at my mountain said that he has never shot in infinity focus.

Thoughts?
Apr 15 2014 1:00PM
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eheath
Posts: 61648 - Karma: 123,471
infinite focus is for shooting stars basically, youre not shooting into infinity when you shoot anything on earth.

I have noticed that for a nice deep focus, a tad before infinite is the most sharp. If im shooting on a tripod say a jump, ill use my expanded focus and look at the lip and setting my focus to 14m (or similar, depending on how far away you are) is always sharper than infinite.

Id suggest shooting two photos of the same thing, one at infinite and one a tad below and do some 200% crops, you'll notice the difference
Apr 15 2014 1:11PM
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cydwhit
Posts: 5074 - Karma: 43,034
Like just set the focus to infinity? yeah I do that when I'm shooting fisheye or astro-stuff but otherwise I auto-focus for a rough idea of where to be and then fine tune manually, depending on the light/aperture/angle my focus is at infinity sometimes but I wouldn't say I "infinity focus"
Apr 15 2014 1:13PM
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T-Sin
Posts: 870 - Karma: 8,777
Yeah I shoot Infinity for stars and such as well. I do use regular manual focus for sports shots as well, I was just doing the infinity, to see what it looked like and it actually looked decent. But now I see the difference!

Thanks Guys!
Apr 15 2014 1:40PM
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Laurent.
Posts: 10056 - Karma: 25,313
Cool kids use the hyperfocal distance.
Apr 15 2014 2:16PM
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123+ski
Posts: 2832 - Karma: 581
omnidataCool kids use the hyperfocal distance.


This. For fisheye video on the gh2, you almost don't need to set the focus.
Apr 15 2014 2:21PM
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Spiri7o
Posts: 2163 - Karma: 1,100
soemtimes I like the look if infinity for sports, but I'm a n00b
Apr 17 2014 11:57AM
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Spiri7o
Posts: 2163 - Karma: 1,100
Snowflake222soemtimes I like the look if infinity for sports, but I'm a n00b


sometimes*
Apr 17 2014 11:58AM
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RileySnyderPhoto
Posts: 688 - Karma: 1,451
Buzz Lightyear shoots infinity and beyond
Apr 17 2014 2:15PM
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