I’ve heard about back button focus (BBF) for some time. A number of photographers with amazing work say once they switched their cameras over to BBF they never went back. Last year I tried it once for about two minutes, I hated it because my hands didn’t know what to do without slowly thinking out each step first and by then the moment was gone. I insisted my thumb was too short and this back button focus thing was not for me!

 

 

Then in a forum the dreaded BBF topic came up again so I decided to just read a little more about it even though I have short thumbs.

I read an article by Steve Perry and watched this video explaining it.

Setting my camera up this time seemed super easy and was done in a matter of seconds. Maybe it’s ‘cause I know my camera better now. Last time it took me forever to find the button to change the type of focus.

 

 

So the next day I took my camera out with it set to BBF and then I heard it, I only had time to point and shoot. I looked at the lcd screen and muttered “It’s not my fault, it’s the back button focus”

That didn’t make the photo get into focus but it made me feel better for a minute even though it was my fault because I hadn’t pressed the button on the back to tell the camera to focus.

Then I heard Steve Perry saying “Give it a try for a couple weeks.” So I resisted the urge to change it back to the way I was used to with the half press of the shutter to get the camera to focus.

 

 

 

So next I got some low maintenance models

 

 

They were great,

 

 

We tried a few different locations.

 

 

Meanwhile, I’m behind the camera muttering “Focus first, shoot second. Oh, my, this does work!

 

 

Then I tried some challenging models. They had the nerve to say that dreaded “You can just photoshop out all my wrinkles right?”

Um, nooo.

 

I will be giving this a serious test and will let you know  in a few weeks if I thinks it’s great or switch back and say Thank goodness I’m done with that experiment!