G1 focusing aid

[teekay]

Like others, I find that focusing the G1 can be a real pain at times, so I use the Manual Focus quite often.

As a guide when shooting at medium distances with no time to fine tune the focus by digital zoom, I scanned, enhanced and printed the scale shown in the Canon manual p.74 onto a small strip of thin paper, then stuck it on the back under the LCD screen. It sometimes helps.

I've put the image on a temporary page at:

http://www.netidea.com/~teekay/temp/canonfocus.htm

Teekay

[rimealbatross]

Can you please be a little more explicit what you mean by "focusing the G1 can be a real pain "?

Thanks!

[phuocle]

I think that he (or she can't tell from just the name - sorry!) that the G1 has problems trying to figure out what you want to focus on in a picture.

Let me give you an example: The other day, I took a picture of a friend standing behind a waist-high railing. There were some bushes directly in front of the railing, also about waist high.

I took the picture in portrait orientation (not the portrait mode of the camera!), RAW format, in P-mode (Programmed Auto). With that framing, my friend fills the top half of the picture (from his waist up). The bottom half of the picture was filled with the railing and the bush.

I took two shots. In one shot, my friend was focused correctly, in the other, the bush was. How did the camera decide that?

I use the LCD primarily as my viewfinder, and when I looked on the LCD, I can't tell the difference really. It's minor enough that it "looked" right until I brought it into Photoshop.

That's the problem I'm assuming Teekay is talking about. Correct me if I'm wrong.