Back Button Focus Demystified

S
ome time ago, my old mum bought herself a new-fangled flat-screen TV. When I spoke to her a few weeks later, she was raving about it, telling me how brilliant it was. The next weekend I paid her a visit and she was keen to show off her amazing TV. I watched it for a few minutes and realised the colours looked rather muted and a bit blurry, so I asked her if it had looked this way from day one. She confirmed that it had, which left me confused.

After thinking about it for a moment, I went up to the TV to examine it and discovered that my mum had not removed the protective film of plastic on the screen—in this case, a semi-opaque matt film. So I grabbed one corner and peeled that film off the TV, and the picture suddenly went from washed out and blurry to vibrant and sharp. Whenever the subject of TVs came up after that, we always had a good laugh about her new flat-screen.

Why am I telling you this family anecdote? Because I wanted to illustrate how we often accept the way things are set up by default, even when this might be detrimental to our experience. We just accept that it has to be this way because that’s how it worked when we got it. Photographers are as guilty as everyone else of just accepting these default modes, default designs and default layouts. We don’t often stop and ask ourselves if there’s a better way of doing things. I’m here to tell you that when it comes to landscape photography, there’s most definitely a better way of focusing—one that will make your life easier and help you produce more consistently sharp images.