Hi, my name is Richard. I'm the publisher of Photo Focus. And today I'm joined by Levi Sim, who's also a professional photographer. And Levi, you live in the backyard of this company, right? Yeah, they're made right in Portland. The lens baby assembly line is right up there. It's a pretty cool spot. So I know I had a chance to visit the factory. And today we're going to talk about manually focusing a lens, which I think a lot of folks would become dependent upon the auto focus features in their camera. And that's just not as creative, is it? It's not. And when I was first introduced to lens babies, I didn't really even consider them because I didn't know how to use manual focus. And so I was really intimidated. Which is easy to believe because let's just face it, you know, we drive automatic cars. You don't have to can code your computer. You push a button. It's start up. We run applications, but there are benefits. So we're going to show you a couple of different ways to manually focus, which will help you unlock a lens, maybe lens or any other lens that you're using like a vintage lens. All right, well, right now we've popped up something over here. So you can see it. We've got a car and we're going to be shooting our subject, but we've placed something in there. Grab that target for a second. Levi, you bet. This is from the folks over at X-Rite, right? And we've got basically a target on there. And that target is going to be useful for checking focus. Now, Levi, you use a regular X-Rite passport, right? I do. This one's the X-Rite color checker passport. Yeah. And it's only got the color grids inside it, which are really useful for making the color in a picture look good. This is actually the one that they sell for video purposes. And it has a focus target, which is really useful if you're using a manual focus lens. So why don't you drop that back over there? All right. So Levi did something really important there. What he did is he put the object closest to our subject. And right now, I'll punch in here so you can see this a little bit better on the camera. But we got those red lines, Levi. And what's happened in there? Why do I have this red overlay on my image? It's the coolest thing. And it's available in all mirrorless cameras. But it's also available, I think, at a couple of DSLRs if you're in live view mode. And it's called focus peaking. And it's a video. I mean, you've been playing with focus peaking for ages, but it's new to photographers. Yeah, you can see there as we rack through that that it finds it. And it's pretty cool. So focus peaking uses contrast detection to find focus. And it's a setting that you could turn on on the camera. Now, don't worry if you're recording video or even outputting the HDMI port. It doesn't record it. But whether you're shooting video or stills, it's really useful to know you have it. And it's in different places. But on this camera, it's really simple. I could push a button. And you see we got low medium high and off. So I'll put that on low to begin with. And we'll just zoom in. But you can see there that it's finding those edges. And this is a really good lens. The tighter it could focus there, the better. Let's open that all the way up. So I'm at 1.8 there, Levi. Now this lens gets 1.6. Now this lens gets really creamy, doesn't it? So it does. It's hard to focus when it's wide open. So in that case, what we can do is we can actually pop back out here and just take the shutter speed down a little bit. And that's going to make it easy to check that focus. And so it's not quite as blooming now. We punch in. And at 1.6, I don't know if we're ever going to get rock, tack sharp, but we could pump up the focus peeking there. So it's more sensitive. That's what the high level is. It'll make it a little bit easier. Now at 1.6, Levi. Oh, hey, that's not bad. That's not bad, right? It's going to be impossible there to get it. This lens goes creamy. That's the velvet part of the velvet lens. But there we go. We nail it, right? Yeah. So why do you like this? The focus peeking, it clearly shows me everything that's in focus in the picture. And it allows me to use creative lenses like the velvet 56 or the composer pro. I don't know if you've played with the composer pro, but you can tilt it. And then as I change focus, I see the focus peeking scooting across my frame with the tilt of the lens. It's just such a great way to work. And I still get a super razor sharp picture with the creative controls that lens babies give me. Go ahead and pull that target out of there. Now we'll go with just the subject itself here. And I'll punch in so you can see it a little bit better. And even without that target, if we're careful, we rack through that there. You could see it just starts to find those edges. And some of those higher contrast areas come in. Now what could be beneficial here is consider opening up your aperture a little bit. So you have brighter light. You need the edges, right? Right. And yeah, you'll see it better on edges, sometimes like the smooth contour of the wood here, just won't show it, but where you can find an edge or a defined line between something light and dark, you'll usually get good results. Yeah. And you can see it right there on the edges of that wood detail. It's finding it. And so I now know that that is sharp and in focus. Now we're actually doing two techniques there at once. We were using focus speaking, but even if you don't have focus speaking, Levi, most people can zoom in, right? I'm not zooming the lens, but zooming the live view. Right. Any camera made, I think, in about the last five years, allows you to do live view on the back of the camera and see exactly what's coming through the lens. And then you can actually zoom in on that image on the back of the camera and get a razor fine focus that way. So by punching in with the zoom control, you'll have the ability to punch in on the camera and different cameras will have different levels of magnification. And you can use your D pad or your wheels to move around that image. And that's going to make it a lot easier so you don't have to guess. But when you go to take the picture, it automatically resets. And you know, with minimal amounts here, we can recompose the frame and not lose focus there. You know, it's going to still hold. And I can still see there that focus peeking is also working. All the details are there. Right. I also like the focus peeking because it shows me clearly the depth of field. It shows me exactly how much of the picture is in focus from front to back. And when I use focus peeking with live view, it's actually been an education about what a certain lens length, the focal length, and the aperture relation to depth of field is. And so that's been really interesting for me. Go ahead and angle that car a little bit and we'll show that. So just a little bit back, like a 45 degree. Okay. There we go. Perfect. Right now, if we look at that, I'll punch in here. You could see that, you know, we've got focus on the front, you know, that's good. And as we move, you know, to set that, there we go. And as we move back, it carries all the way through to about there, then it falls off, right? Well, that's because I'm at F4. And we know about F4. Yeah, it's pretty shallow depth of field, especially on that telephoto lens like this. So if we take that to say F8, and we'll of course have to open up the shutter speed just a little bit, I see it's blinking. A lot of folks get confused here. You don't need manual controls. When it's blinking like that, it's telling me it's under expose. So I'll just simply change the shutter speed. And now I'm only one stop under exposed. And there we go. It's looking pretty good. And we've got the shot and everything looks to be in focus. If I punch in there, we see that at the back. And as we move all the way to the front, the whole car is in focus. So if my goal was to do a product photo, I might have to change my aperture. Right, or I might use focus peaking when I'm photographing a landscape. And I've got a great depth of field in front of me, a great depth of picture. And so that I can get a fern or a rock that's in the foreground in focus as well as the mountain all the way to the back. Well, one of the great things here, folks, is when you take the time to master the exposure triangle, knowing the relationship of aperture to shutter speed and how that all comes into play, all of a sudden it's really easy to get a great picture. And taking advantage of something like this gives you creative options. What I love about this lens, baby lens, is I really get three distinctly different looks. I can go down to a really tiny aperture. And that's going to give me a tremendous depth of field. I can go to something nice in the middle. And it's a very flattering portrait lens. Or I can open this all the way up. Now that's really blooming. So we'll have to change the shutter speed here. But you'll see that we get these incredible blooming highlights there. Let's slow that down. And it starts to take on almost a glowing quality. We'll punch in there. And you can see that we're getting the soft glow. It's really a fun lens to use. And if you have if you have anything in the background that that is a light, like if you had Christmas lights in the background or something, they turn into these glowing orbs that just radiate from the back. It's really cool. So this gives you an idea on how to use some of those manual controls. Make sure you check out lens, baby. They've got some great stuff. And over at Photo Focus right now, we're actually running a contest where you can win a brand new Fuji camera. And this lens. We're giving away absolutely for free. So check that out. And of course, try out some of their other lenses. People have known them for the really shallow, pretty depth of field. But now with some of these new lenses, like the Velvet, the Twist, we've got great control over really extending that depth of field and getting just what we want. Anything else you want to add? Just that these lenses are made like no others. They're so finely crafted. I mean, we've been in there and we see people, it's like a, oh, it's like a clean situation a little bit. They are meticulous about how they're assembled. And then the construction itself is just beautiful. Yeah. All metal lenses really fun to play with. And if you're just looking for something to take your photography to that next level, and you chew a lot of portrait shooting or product photography or even landscapes, these can be a great tool to put into your lens pack. Well, for PhotoFocus.com, my name's Rich Harrington. And I leave I said. Thanks for watching.