We like to shoot with center focus. You may wish to expand it a bit. However, don’t just let your camera choose a focus over a large number of points as you will end up with an average focus vs a spectacularly clear focus. You want it sharp as can be.
We also use the continuous or Servo focus setting. This will focus on a subject, like a flying bird, and hold the focus on that subject as it moves across the scene. Try it…you will like it.
Some things you just have to focus manually. Night shots come to mind. We like to light up something maybe ten feet away and get that in focus, knowing that everything behind that is likely to be in focus on a long exposure. We might light up that element…perhaps a tree…auto focus on it to get it just right and then pull the focus switch into Manual to lock in that focus until we change the framing.
Many of the fancy cameras have something called Peaking color. Try that setting if you have it in your camera. When you then focus in Manual, it will highlight the part of the image that will be in focus…highlighting it in red or white or some other contrasting color. I completely love that feature…my old eyes might otherwise be just a bit off…and the Peaking color never lies.
Two important things on focus…
When photographing people, land animals, birds or even large fish…if you do not have the eyes in perfect focus you really don’t have much of a shot. Nail the eye focus. Some cameras have a setting to help you with that on both humans and animals…worth trying.
Second, I have had nights of shooting ruined because I did not look frequently nor carefully enough at the images I was getting. Learn to look frequently at the images you are getting in the view finder or back of the camera…blow them up as you review them to make sure they are in great focus…and repeat. Nothing worse than coming home from an all night shoot with a card full of images you think are great…only to find out they are all “soft focus”…close enough they look ok in the back of the camera after a quick glimpse…but not sharp on final inspection.
Those who say “I like my focus off just a bit” need to get into abstract painting. It is ok to blur the parts of the photo you want to blur…but if you have a main subject in the photo…for goodness sake…get that sucker in focus.
Aloha.