The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS/1000D Companion

Focusing Revisited

With your work shooting in Full Auto mode, you should now be comfortable with the autofocus mechanism of the XS, and pre-focusing—the process of pressing the shutter button halfway down to autofocus—should be second nature. While the XS's autofocus system is very good, no autofocus system can work perfectly in every situation, and there will be times when you'll need to override, or take manual control of, the XS's focus. Fortunately, the camera provides a number of autofocus control mechanisms.

Understanding Focus Points

The XS uses a nine-point autofous system. You've already experienced the nine autofocus points in the work you've done in Full Auto mode. So, you know that when you half-press the shutter button to autofocus, the camera assesses your scene and tries to determine what the subject is. It then focuses on that subject.

To let you know what it has focused on, the XS lights up any of the autofocus points that are on the subject it has chosen. When focusing, it's important to keep an eye on which points light up so that you know exactly where the camera has focused.

However, sometimes the camera chooses the wrong subject, especially if you're framing a scene with different subjects at different depths or a subject on the edge of the frame. Here's an example:

Figure 6-1. Here, we wanted to focus on the woman in the foreground, but the camera chose the wrong ...