hi, im at a hotel now, on the ocean and i was wondering how to focus in a pitch black situation where there is nothing to focus on, example, wide angle shot of sand and water. i have holograph AF on my camera but its useless with nothing around. Should I put my camera into manual focus, and focus to infinity? Im using a thirty second shutter speed.
You can probably focus near infinity at wide angle. A test shot will tell for sure. The ideal thing to do would be to focus at the hyperfocal distance, but it may be difficult to determine at what distance you are focused without a distance scale.
On your camera, the SONY-F717, there is a setting on the control wheel:SCN. Set it on that. Then in menu, set the camera on Landscape. (the icon is 2 mountains.)Now all you have do do is get the exposure correct. Manual focus set on infinity will work too.
I use the nightframing feature myself. It works alot better than trying to focus on nothing. It may take you a few shots to get the exposure right...also, try using a flashlight on the subject area at some point during the exposure...it will help illuminate the area without fouling up the photo too bad.
Option 1) Set your camera to "SCN" mode and then to twilight. Your camera will then light up your preview as much as possible , which you then can use to manually focus on.
Option 2) Shooting a landscape at wide angle and F2 : set your focus to 5.9 m and everything between 2.9 and infinity will be "acceptably sharp". Fore more info on hyperfocal focus, DOF etc. see www.dofmaster.com
Option 3) Use nightframing, but only for subjects at a few meters distance.
