50 Things Photographers Need to Know About Focus

35. SCALE FOCUSING

USING THE FOCUS scale on a lens to estimate the distance to a subject is called scale focusing. This technique is useful when you’d like to be quick and discrete, and don’t want any delay once the camera is in shooting position. It was standard practice on a large number of simple cameras from decades ago, but it can still be useful today even with the most modern gear.

In the lead up to scale focusing, there were fixed-focus cameras that featured small lenses capable of capturing sharp images so long as everything was a specified distance from the camera. For cameras with larger lenses and a shallower depth of field, focus ...