By Billy Teo, a freelance writer

NOT everything in your video footage has to look sharp all the time.

Having said that, there is no need to allow the camera to work on automatic mode all the time, giving free rein to the gadget to decide on important things like exposure and focus.

That is because there will be times when you want to dictate exposure (to determine brightness) and focus (to determine sharpness) for the best video quality.

For instance, wedding banquets will pose a challenge to the autofocus feature. The banquet hall is dim, the stage is lit by spotlights and guests are milling about, walking in and out of the shots - all of which are distracting.

In such cases, the focus fluctuates: the camcorder keeps 'hunting' for something to focus on, causing the footage to be sharp one moment and blurred the next and this continues until the focus is locked.

The result is bad footage.

There are also other situations that can confuse the autofocus feature.

These include shooting through a glass door, panning a shot across a fence made of interlocking wires, or making quick zooms.

Typically, sensors built into camcorders 'bounce' an infra-red beam to measure the distance between a central object distinct from the background. This gets the camcorder's 'brains' to adjust the camera's lenses for proper focus.

However, during tricky instances, the sensors will struggle, go out of focus and you end up with a blurred mess, which looks as if you forgot to put your spectacles on.

So here are some manual focusing tricks to get your camcorder to stay sharp all the time.

Depth of field: You focus only on the subjects near the camcorder - such as a person - while the background appears as a soft blur. Good for portrait photography.

Rack focus: You focus on a subject near the camcorder and then shift the focus to an object in the background - within the same frame. Good for injecting dramatic tension in your clip.

Focused zoom: Zero in on the subject, say, a flower, and set the manual focus such that the subject looks sharp.

Once the focus is locked in, you can zoom in or out of the subject with abandon, with no fear of a blurry clip. Remember to move the camcorder or the subject.

Go blind: You can deliberately shoot out-of-focus footage. This lets the camcorder 'represent' the viewpoint of someone losing their sight.

How to activate manual focus 

Depending on the camcorder, you may have go through the onscreen menu or press a button to activate the manual focus mode.

Some models use a joystick controller or an LCD touchscreen to allow you to move the cursor to either of two focusing extremes.

At one end, you have the infinity focus which takes in everything in a scene, including faraway objects. Look for the icon that looks like a mountain peak.

At the other end is a close-range focus, represented by an icon of a person's head. Only objects close to the camcorder are in focus while the background is a blur.

This is part three of a 10-part series on video recording basics.

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.

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