Caught By The Fuzz

As I’ve previously said, my 50mm lens doesn’t autofocus on my D60. This isn’t usually a stumbling block; even when my subjects are constantly moving, I manage to take a good number of decent shots.

Yesterday evening’s shoot at Fireside Culture Week’s opening night presented me with a different kind of challenge. Even though Lady Luck Productions’ performance involved moving subjects, it wasn’t nearly as tough to shoot as the concert by Najjah’s World. A few factors contributed to this predicament – namely, the dim lighting and Najjah’s movements. There was also one other factor at play, but I won’t explicitly mention it because some people may misinterpret what I’m saying.

The aforementioned factors led to my rangefinder being inaccurate, particularly when I was photographing Najjah himself. As a result, when I thought that my picture was in focus due to seeing the rangefinder’s dot, it actually wasn’t. I ended up taking quite a few fuzzy pictures, so I resorted to focusing through the viewfinder itself. I also used the backup singer, Ammoye, as a point of reference for my rangefinder.

Despite these challenges, I was able to get a few good shots of the concert using my newfound techniques – like this one.



This photo’s f-stop is 3.2, which is on the wide end of the aperture spectrum. With low f-stop values, my focusing needs to be particularly precise. Mind you, I can work around this fact by raising my f-stop to a value which forgives inaccurate focusing.

Then again, the resulting reduction of light passing through the lens is another challenge to resolve...