Focus Peaking – Definition and Quick Photography Tips to Be a Pro
Last Updated on November 30, 2021 by Peter Wood
You can find that some photographs color with digital highlights. All the elements in focus will highlight while shooting. Thus, you can get sharp and crisp photos in focus-peaking directly. It is a way to determine image focus when you have difficulties in confirming camera options or daylights. Moreover, you can take creative photos via focus peaking skills. You can continue reading to get more details.
Part 1: What Is Focus Peaking in Photography
In the past times, focus peaking is for video productions mainly. You can regard it as focus pull. It is a way to shift the focus from one subject to another in the same scene using manual lenses. Therefore, you can use focus peaking camera technology to catch people’s eyes too.
Focus peaking can detect the edges of the highest contrast objects in the still image. In most cases, the focus will highlight a bright color, such as red, blue, etc. The image focus on peaking color depending on the photographer’s choices mainly.
Part 2: Which Camera Has Focus Peaking
Most newly released cameras are focus-peaking cameras. You can do focus peaking work with a mirrorless camera equipped with an electronic viewfinder. Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera (MILC) with focus peaking feature appeared in the past 5 years.
You can create focus peaking works with some old models of Sony, Fujifilm, and Panasonic. The new focus peaking cameras have Nikon, Sony, Pentax DSLRs in live-view. Focus peaking works well with Nikon D850, Nikon Z6, Sony A7iii, Sony A 6000/6300/6400/6500, etc. But there is no focus peaking Canon models. For Canon owners, you can use focus-peaking on Canon with Magic Lantern only.
Part 3: Tips to Use Focus Peaking
When you set something in focus, you can see the focus peaking technology creating an exposure difference in the focus area. You can see the sharp edges in the image. Different peaking settings and operations will make creative focus peaking photography. Here are some tips and tricks about focus peaking shooting.
Focus Peaking Color
If you use a focus-peaking camera, you can trigger this function in the camera menu directly. You can change color settings to get a better contrast between the background and element. Red, green, white, and blue are popular focus-peaking highlight colors.
Focus Peaking Level
You can set the camera to the low, medium, or high focus peaking range to determine focuses. If you select the high focus peaking settings, the regions of the image will be extremely high. You can nail to focus with a better experience.
Magnify to Identify Focus Peaking
If you have no idea whether your image is sharp, you can magnify the image in the live view to get details. Before enlarging the image to fine-tune the focus position, you can use focus peaking or image splitting to solve the problem.
Part 4: Best Photo Viewer to Open RAW Photos
After taking many photos with the focus-peaking technology, you need to organize and edit those photos. If you want to browse many images on the computer continually, you can choose WidsMob Viewer. The folder-based RAW viewer is compatible with most RAW format cameras, including Panasonic, Pentax, Nikon, Imacon Express, Kodak, Leaf, and more. Therefore, you can open focus peaking photos on Mac effortlessly.
You can add one photo or the entire folder into the program to preview all images. The advanced algorithm and various photo viewing modes can meet your demand completely. By the way, you can get the basic photo editing features here.
1. View all photos captured by popular RAW format cameras.
2. View single, multiple, or folder-based photos at super fast speed.
3. Browse all photos in one window without extra operations.
4. Get an excellent preview experience from library mode, favorite mode, EXIF mode, slideshow mode, and full-screen mode.
5. Support RAW formats, JPG, JPEG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, and other formats.
Step 1: Launch WidsMob Viewer. You can import RAW photos from an SD card or external drive. Just connect it with your computer. You can choose Open from the File drop-down list to load all RAW photos or related folders. You will be in thumbnail mode by default. Just scroll down to preview all thumbnails at fast speed.
Step 2: Choose any photo you want to view. You can choose Slideshow or Enter Full Screen from the View drop-down list to enter into slideshow mode or full-screen mode.
Step 3: To mark your favorite photos, you can click the five-pointed star icon on the lower right corner. Later, you can click the icon beside to navigate to the favorite folder to access all selected photos.
Of course, you can share RAW photos to Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Photos, and more within the program. Just unfold the Share list on the top to get all available options.
Part 5: When You Should Not Use Focus Peaking
Compared with the traditional live view magnification, you can focus easier than before with focus peaking via manual lenses. However, focus peaking does not always work well in all situations. If you are shooting with an incredibly shallow depth of field, you'd better not use focus peaking. Because the sharpest area is hard to determine, you can use the slower but more accurate live view magnification to focus the scene instead.
These are the basic information of focus peaking technology and related tools. You can learn what focus peaking is and how to use focus peaking in photography. Thus, you can do better in manual focus. What’s more, you can get a super-fast photo viewer to browse and edit all RAW images with ease. If you have any focus-peaking photography, you can feel free to share it with us.